Insurance unstuck for city motorists
Compulsory stickers on a car in Shanghai
From May 1, drivers in Shanghai won’t have to display their compulsory traffic insurance stickers, traffic police announced on Monday.
In China, the law requires all motorists to paste their compulsory traffic insurance and annual inspection certificates on the upper right corner of the windshield.
Li Gen, a public relations officer with Shanghai traffic police, said Shanghai is one of the first cities in China to allow motorists to not paste insurance stickers, although the law still requires it.
The move was made possible by data sharing between traffic police and the insurance regulatory commission, police said.
However, motorists still need to display their annual inspection certificates.
The new sticker rule only applies to Shanghai, so motorists will have to observe the rules in other cities which still require the stickers.
In another change affecting motorists, when registering a car plate, having the car inspected or paying fines for traffic accidents, they will no longer have to provide police with their compulsory traffic insurance paper.
Xing Peiyi, head of Shanghai traffic police, said insurance information has been correlated with information on motorists’ accounts on the “Shanghai Jiaojing” app. Drivers can show police their digital insurance paper on the app if they are stopped or have their car inspected.
Previously, failure to display the insurance sticker could lead to a fine or even temporary confiscation of a vehicle.
Last week, Shanghai traffic police conducted an online poll asking people if they would welcome fewer stickers on their windshields, By Monday afternoon, 94 percent of about 9,700 people had said they would.
Daniel Fan, a motorist who lives in Shanghai, said the measure could have been introduced earlier with modern methods replacing inefficient and unnecessary ones.
“I think the purpose to have the stickers on the windshield is to remind motorists to pay insurance and have their car inspected, but to display the stickers has become the purpose and even something punishable if one fails to do that,” he said.
