Let’s say I get pulled over by the police. The officer asks me for proof of insurance. I hand him my insurance card that I printed from the Geico website.
Would a cop accept that as proof of insurance, or not?
Let’s say the insurance company that covers our company cars emails me .pdfs of our insurance cards and instructs us to place them in each vehicle. The do not send us a “hard” copy, just the .pdf to print. Is that sufficient proof of insurance in case one of our drivers is asked for it?
Contact your local Police Dept. and ask them. Chances are, if that’s what your insurance company offers what choice do you have? When stopped if the cop doesn’t believe you, accept the ticket and go to court. Of course you will arrive in court with a hard copy proof of insurance and a hard copy letter from your insurance company explaining why they only send out electronic copies of proof of insurance to save overhead costs. Unfortunately all of that cost savings has now been negated by all the time and effort it took them to write, print and post to you the hard copies you now have in your hand.
I assume the cops check your policy number against your plate and other identification. Undoubtably one of the many SDMB gendarmes will be along shortly to confirm or deny my rank supposition.
The insurance cards that I print out from my computer and the “hard copies” that I have received from my insurance company in the past are completely indistinguishable; black text on regular copy/printer stock. Do yours have a gold seal, embossing, or such?
To niblet_head, yes, they will accept them.
This is what I get from my insurance company. I’ve been in a few traffic stops over the years, and as far as the cop knows, a PDF file that I printed out on on my own printer is indistinguishible from a hard copy that might have been mailed to me.
That is exactly what I have, and a NY cop has accepted it. Don’t they go back to their own cars and find out anyway? In my state, if my insurance lapses, the DMV knows IMMEDIATELY and I think within 24 hrs they suspend your license, so the cop would know right away.
Officer Friendly has never questioned the printed out form that I profer. And he would if’n he could based on his behavior otherwise.
Wisconsin just went to being a mandatory insurance state, so we recently got some memos on this. There are key items the insurance card has to have (vehicle model/year, plate, VIN, insurance company name with phone number, policy number, etc.).
Cards printed off the internet are acceptable. Easy to fake, I suppose. But keep in mind an officer can call the number and confirm the policy is in force.
Also, if you’re caught faking it not only will you get cited for not having insurance, you’ll get charged with Obstructing, a jailable offense that is far more serious than driving without insurance.
What I have right now is printed from the website. I requested cards from Geico itself to see if/how they are different. IIRC, they come on card stock as others have mentioned.
I’m being told by my DMV that I cannot present a print out as my proof of insurance. That is has to be “original” because print outs are too easy to fraudulently change. But I have the capability to fraudently change anything and print it on card stock. How is that different?
Further, if it’s good enough for a police officer during a traffic stop, why isn’t it good enough for the DMV? Further further, if I hadn’t moved I could have renewed my tags online (because now my renewal notice has an old address). According to the DMV website, “your insurance information will be verified”. But they can’t verify my insurance information when I go there in person?
This all seems a little ridiculous to me, but of course I have no choice but to comply with an inconsistent, apparently illogical set of rules if I want to get my tags.
I won’t even go into how the DMV insists their website says I have to have an original when it doesn’t. I send the exact text to the DMV via email and they say, “It says original”, when it doesn’t. It just says I have to have proof of insurance. Moreover, an original print out, according to the DMV, is a copy. And they don’t take copies.
(Except that all of our company cars in IA and MO have .pdf print outs. Our insurance company has never sent us “cards”. They always send me our cards as an email with a .pdf attachment. I’ve never been asked to get them “original” cards from our provider because their counties won’t accept the .pdf print outs as proof of insurance.)
BTW, I am totally willing to admit that I am wrong, wrong, wrong. It just seems to not make any sense, so I turn to Dopers. Who I know can set me straight. 
I use GEICO and the new “cards” that I get every 6 months are just printed on plain paper. They come on a regular sheet of paper and are perforated so I can tear them out for storage in wallet or glove compartment. I think there might be some color shading on one of their cards (I’m not the car’s primary driver, so I don’t look at it much), but it would be hard to distinguish from anything printed out on a computer.
Mine are on plain paper. But the cops don’t really worry about the cards – they look up your driver information and it will tell them if the insurance is up to date. Hell, a card issued yesterday would not even be valid today if you choose to cancel your insurance. But if you cancel, your insurance will notify you’re DMV and it will go on your record immediately.
So the card doesn’t matter.
Gracias.
Man, I am so tempted to go in there with a perforated “original proof of insurance” that I made on my computer and see if they accept it.
License or registration? It would make sense the registration on the car was suspended. It does not make sense for the driver’s license to be suspended.
Some states (like Texas where I’m at) have gone to a central database. The officer just punches in the license plate into his in-car computer and it tells him if the car has current insurance. We still get proof-of-insurance cards mailed to us though. I guess as a backup in case there’s a database error.
Ironically enough, CA has had electronic reporting of insurance info for a number of years. Some schmuck made a left in front of me a few months ago, completely smashed up the front end of my car. About 2 weeks ago I got a letter from the DMV reminding me of my obligation to declare proof of insurance at the time of the accident since the damage was greater than $750.
Apparently it was less work for them to print out the form, sign it, and then mail it to me, and then receive it back and process it; than it was to query their computer to see my policy had been in force for years.