Insurance News - Thursday, June 20, 2012

New System To Verify Alabama Auto Insurance Coverage

About 22 percent of Alabama’s drivers don’t have liability insurance, but a new online system could change that starting next year.

The system will allow officials who issue license plates to immediately verify the insurance status of the vehicle’s owner. If insurance can’t be verified, proof of insurance will have to be presented before a tag is issued.

The new system was necessitated by the passage of the Alabama Mandatory Liability Insurance Law, which State Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, helped sponsor during the 2011 session.

read more...

The new Alabama system is similar to the Unisured Vehicle Project (UVP) in Ontario. The UVP is an initiative that is led by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario that will provide an electronic means of determining whether a vehicle carries mandatory insurance coverage at the time their license plates are being renewed. The vehicle identification number and mandatory coverage status of each insured vehicle are maintained in a database by Insurance Bureau of Canada on behalf of the insurance industry.

read more...

Driverless Cars Inching Closer To Reality

Last month, Google received permission to test driverless vehicles in Nevada. The state set regulations for the companies before issuing the permit, but before we get to those, there are some obvious concerns that other motorists have about the new technology.

The California Senate has approved legislation that would have the California Highway Patrol develop standards and performance requirements for "autonomous" vehicles to be licensed for testing and operation on public roads.

Building autonomous vehicles that don't cause accidents is a difficult but crucial challenge. It's not enough to be as safe as the human driver. We need to be crashless," said John Maddox, an associate administrator at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and keynote speaker at the Driverless Car Summit in Detroit.

read more...

Sebastian Thrun helped build Google's amazing driverless car, powered by a very personal quest to save lives and reduce traffic accidents.



Driverless car driving through heavy city traffic.