DMV Boosts Estimate of Uninsured Drivers to 5 Million

The state Department of Motor Vehicles has been underestimating the number of uninsured motorists in California for years and now believes that it is close to 5 million, or about 25% of the state’s drivers, DMV Director Del Pierce said Thursday.

Previous DMV estimates had put the uninsured rate at about 15%. But Pierce said recent reports from an outside consultant and new statistical analyses by DMV researchers had led to the higher figure.

Calculating the number of uninsured drivers is complicated because the DMV must rely on estimates of the numbers of unregistered vehicles and unlicensed drivers. Also, under law, uninsured motorists are officially recorded only if they are stopped for other violations.

The new, higher estimate was made in a report to legislators that said California’s uninsured rate is the nation’s fourth highest.

John H. Sullivan, the undersecretary of the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency who oversees insurance matters for the Deukmejian Administration, said Thursday that the way to reduce the number of uninsured is by enforcing the mandatory-insurance law and making affordable auto insurance available.

“We have some enforcement, but we do not have affordable insurance,” he said, noting that Gov. George Deukmejian has been trying to work out a legislative compromise with Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown (D-San Francisco) to provide for low-cost, no-frills policies.

The chairman of the state Senate’s insurance committee, Alan Robbins (D-Tarzana), said Thursday that unless such legislation is adopted this year, he favors letting the mandatory auto insurance lapse at the end of the year.

“We can’t extend authorization for the police to arrest people without insurance when the government of California has not done its job to provide an affordable insurance alternative,” Robbins said.