No car insurance, no registration

Dear Mahatma: You know my peeve about momentary tags and unlicensed automobiles. My query is whether or not or not a driver can insure a automobile that isn’t registered. — Your Western Arkansas Correspondent

Dear Correspondent: Our instant thought was not solely no, however heck no.

Naturally, when counting on reminiscence we fall right into a gap. (Clever Orwell reference.)

So we pitched the query to Scott Hardin of the Department of Finance & Administration. He hit it out of the park. (Baseball metaphor.)

In Arkansas, he reminded us, a automobile should be insured so as to stay registered. And DF&A now will get updates in actual time if a automobile is registered right here and insurance expires or is ended. The proprietor then is notified and should get hold of protection or the registration might be canceled.

Prior to this transformation, Hardin stated, it might be as much as every week between the time insurance lapsed and DF&A (and legislation enforcement) realized it.

What a surprise is expertise. Then we received to considering — at all times dicey — and requested Hardin in regards to the variety of uninsured automobiles. He stated about 9.2% p.c of registered automobiles are uninsured. The state has about 2.75 million registered automobiles. So roughly 250,000 are unregistered.

Some of those automobiles are in storage. Our family has performed this — take a automobile out of storage, name the insurance man, get it insured, then lapse the insurance as soon as the automobile is again in storage.

But it might take a brand new stage of naive to suppose 250,000 automobiles in Arkansas are in storage. We suspect most of these uninsured automobiles are on the highway and about to get into an accident with some poor man who has been correctly insured for 50 years.

Dear Mahatma: At night time coming from the airport once you flip off Interstate 440 onto the ramp to Interstate 30, there’s a giant inexperienced signal indicating Interstate 630 forward. But the signal at night time is illegible. It must be fastened. –Devoted Follower

Dear Devoted: The Arkansas Department of Transportation completely likes to be alerted to issues.

Please go to idrivearkansas.com. Find the contact button and report this drawback. Then tell us what occurs.

Dear Sir: In previous columns, the subject of automobiles with well-expired momentary paper license plates has come up. How a few contest to see who spots the oldest expiration date? I’ll begin: November 2021.– Margaret

Dear Margaret: We had a contest a few years in the past when it was proposed by an avid reader. (All our readers are avid.) Just a few candidates poured in. The profitable temp was, like yours, remarkably outdated.

We’ll go on one other contest, though readers are welcome to ship in no matter outrageously outdated plates they see.

Vanity plate: BRDNRD.

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