Uninsured cars, likely to be removed from registers

The ordinance stipulating cars for which owners did not buy a civil auto liability insurance policy (RCA) should no longer be registered is likely to be complemented this April with the measure of removing uninsured cars from registers, according to the chairman of the Insurance Surveillance Commission (CSA), Nicolae Crisan.

“We will propose this measure, but it is up to the Parliament”s approval,” says Crisan.

The Government at the end of last year adopted the ordinance stipulating that registration of cars lacking an RCA should be suspended. In line with this, the owners of uninsured cars will receive notification from authorities starting April, and in case they do not buy an RCA policy over the following three months, the registering of the respective cars will be cancelled.

The measure relating to the removal of uninsured cars from registers had been included in the initial draft of the ordinance, but it was excluded in its final form.

CSA chairman says the stipulation pertaining to the removal of uninsured cars from registers was left out from two reasons. The first is the fact that the Cedam database, including information on all the RCA policies sold by Romanian insurance companies currently contains too many errors for the time being, and hence the possibility of insured cars being removed from registers.

The second reason for leaving out the respective stipulation is the fact that driving a car that has been removed from registers on public roads is considered a crime and is followed by a penal punishment.

“This is what the Police feared, that they might end up with a lot of trials on their hands,” says Crisan.

The first comparison between the Cedam database and the database including all cars registered in Romania showed that around one million of the four million registered cars lack an RCA, with the level of insurance coming to about 75% at present.

“I hope we will reach 90% insurance coverage this year,” says the CSA chairman.

Crisan states that starting this year, Cedam data base is likely to include the accidents caused by each insured person, so that starting next year insurers might be able to apply the bonus-malus system, namely raising or reducing the RCA insurance premium depending on the number of years during which the insured person caused accidents. angela.placinta@zf.ro