Well, it’s worse than I thought. The Oklahoma legislature is not relying on the DMV to someday provide a database to catch uninsured motorists…they’re accepting proposals from 3rd-party vendors to create this system.
They plan to install 20 cameras around town to read your bar-coded car tag as you drive by. The car tag record will provide your personal and auto information to compare against a database containing records from all auto insurance companies. If you’re not in there, the 3rd-pary vendor will mail a ticket to your house and try to collect. The vendor will then split the collected money with the state.
A similar system in current use in the UK has been a disaster in errors, one mistake resulting in a death.
Even the vendors vying for the contract are expressing concern about the potential lawsuits and public backlash due to errors.
"If the query response is returned with a disclaimer regarding accuracy, and a citation is generated based on inaccurate data, that will ensure negative press and possibly litigation, none of which will help generate revenue and so, projections must be reduced," a vendor stated in an April 27 amendment. "The vendor and DPS will be accused of 'trolling'... not really knowing status but hoping that enough vehicle owners will actually be driving uninsured vehicles to make the system profitable. This is certain to create a vast number of failed citations, a very high level of bad press, public resistance and reduced revenues... If a name and address is sent in a broadcast email to many insurers, that would be in clear violation of both state and federal DPPA laws, inviting challenge in the courts and also greatly reduce the ability to provide revenues to the state; that too means that current projections would have to be reduced; this is a serious problem with the current system."
And check out this pompous reply by some stoopid Oklahoma bureaucrat.
[ DPS responded that mass-emails of private information to insurance companies would not violate driver's license privacy laws because the for-profit company would be operating on behalf of DPS. "It is respectfully suggested that the vendor concentrate on providing a system for verification of out of state car tags and spend less effort on concerns about OCIVS, per the RFP," DPS responded. ]
You know, I hate uninsured drivers as much as everyone else, but this isn’t the way to go. Our state government is giving permission to some company to troll among citizens for offenders, access our personal information, and hunt us down for money.
It seems that a better way to get more people to buy car insurance is to help them get a job, by removing obstacles to business. The two are directly linked (see previous post).
Oh, and the state legislature has already budgeted and thus spent the projected “revenues” for the first year of operation. They hope to get the system installed by this summer. This plan was first approved in 2006. They’re going to spend our tax money to pay for this. It will be wasted – I don’t see how this will bring in the revenues projected. Even if they manage to get blood out of a turnip (money from someone who can’t afford insurance), I see the money going back out in legal settlements. One vendor anticipated a 20% error rate. It’s ineffective and intrusive.
We are hurtling toward that sci-fi world in which you walk into Gap, your eyeballs are scanned, and an automated voice starts talking to you about the jeans you bought six months ago. I want my privacy, and I want the stoopid politicians to stop trying to solve every damn “problem” they think they see. They create 10 more problems and throw my money into the wind. Just stop. You’re not smart enough to solve the problem.
More info: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/31/3165.asp
No comments:
Post a Comment