CALIFORNIA GRANTS ILLEGALS DRIVERS LICENSES BUT FEW ARE INSURED

California haS issued driver’s licenses to an estimated 605,000 undocumented immigrants illegal aliens. At that time, immigrant rights groups and traffic safety experts said it means more drivers will be properly trained, licensed and more likely to have car insurance. “We believe that this new law increases safety on California roads by putting licensed drivers behind the steering wheel,” Artemio Armenta, a spokesman for the California Department of Motor Vehicles, told the Los Angeles Times.

Via Fox News: Southern California mom-of-two Jennifer Brawley had just been rear-ended by a truck driver near Rancho Cucamonga, and was preparing for the post-accident ritual of exchanging insurance information when the driver handed her his cellphone. A voice on the other end explained that his non-English speaking friend had no coverage.

Police came to the scene and determined the driver had a valid license, and sent him on his way. Brawley, grateful to be unhurt, was nonetheless left with a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. In the push to grant illegal immigrants driver’s licenses, Californians had been assured that doing so would spur them to get safety training and insurance coverage. Nearly a year-and-a-half later, there’s no evidence it worked.

“It is hard to pinpoint whether the bill has had an impact or not,” said Jeffrey Spring, spokesman for the American Automobile Association’s California chapter.“We have no way of knowing.”

The law, and a three-year, $141 million program designed to implement it, did not provide for a way to measure if illegal immigrants are any more inclined to buy insurance.

“There are no statistics regarding how many new license holders under AB 60, purchased vehicle insurance,” said California Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman Artemio Armenta. “We cannot relate our vehicle insurance data to driver licenses because the vehicle registration information is only associated with individual vehicles and cannot be used to identify any trends related to AB 60. Drivers under AB 60 are not tracked or singled out any differently.”  “The DMV cannot relate our vehicle insurance data to driver licenses because the vehicle registration information is only associated with individual vehicles and cannot be used to identify any trends to AB 60,” Armenta said.

The DMV estimates that at least 1.4 million drivers will apply for a license over the next three years. As of March, the state had issued approximately 696,000 driver’s licenses under the program. The program does not compel them to get auto insurance, and even if they get the coverage required to register a vehicle, they could stop paying premiums as many drivers do. Read the whole story here.