Back in June, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White announced that automobile insurance verification would be conducted by a new system that checks auto insurance electronically twice a year.

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What's Different About Checking Insurance Status Electronically?

The biggest change from the way we used to do it to what we're doing now would be numbers. According to the Illinois Secretary of State's Office, the previous method for checking an Illinois driver's car insurance was verified for around 3 percent of Illinois drivers. Now, by doing it all digitally, that number is at 100 percent.

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A Bunch Of Illinois Drivers Have Found Out The Hard Way That The System Works

Since the Secretary of State's announcement earlier in the summer, 2700 Illinois drivers have had their licenses suspended because the electronic verification system showed that they were driving without any auto insurance. No information was made available showing how many of those drivers have been driving uninsured for years before being caught.

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Is This Electronic Verification System Here To Stay?

It seems a pretty safe bet, given the success that the program has already had in suspending the licenses of nearly 3000 people. Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White:

My office has led the effort to establish and implement an automobile insurance verification system online which will serve to reduce the number of Illinois motorists driving while uninsured. The message is simple: if you don’t have auto insurance, get covered now. It is the law.

White's office says that the vast majority of vehicle owners will not have to do anything, as electronic verification of automobile insurance will be confirmed automatically.

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

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