With the start of the new year, it just got tougher for South Carolina motorists who dare to drive without insurance.

In addition to fines and revocations of vehicle registrations, South Carolinians who fail to buy coverage now also risk losing their driver's licenses.

The stiffer penalties, which kicked in Jan. 1, reflect changes to existing legislation aimed at cracking down on uninsured drivers. Such efforts to catch and punish violators led last year to the creation of a database to log and track drivers suspected of breaking the law.

"The laws as they were didn't really have any teeth," said Rep. Bob Walker, R-Spartanburg. "You start taking away people's licenses and it will get their attention."

Walker, who is also an independent insurance agent, sits on a seven-member working group trying to come up with ways to implement the 2-year-old legislation. During the last legislative session, lawmakers adopted a few of the group's recommendations.

Those tweaks went into effect at the start of 2005 and included the decision to take away driver's licenses from the most egregious offenders.

Another change reduces the number of days suspect drivers will have to comply with the law once they receive a notification letter from the Department of Insurance. Previously, regulators gave motorists without insurance a 45-day grace period to get coverage. That's been trimmed to 20 business days. In both cases, a driver is assessed a $5 fine for each day their policy has lapsed, up to a maximum of $200.

Under the old rules, when the grace period expired, the worst that could happen was that the state would revoke the driver's registration and tags. Those sanctions still stand, but Walker says the threat of losing a driver's license was the clincher needed to affect change.

"If you get rid of a husband's registration, the wife can then turn around and register the car under her name," Walker said. "But now we'll take their licenses away, and every time they are stopped they will be charged again and again."

Insurance companies say as many as one of every four motorists in the state hits the roads every day without insurance. That has pushed up premiums for everyone else, they say.

Walker has said that costs on the uninsured-motorist portion of auto policies have gone from "next to nothing" to $50-$100 a year. He expects rates to come back down as more and more rogue drivers are forced to buy insurance.

The linchpin of the beefed-up enforcement effort is the insurance department's digital database, which monitors motorists who prematurely cancel their policies. The logic is that anyone cutting their policies short might be trying to beat the system by continuing to drive with insurance cards that look valid but aren't.

Drivers falling into this category will receive a letter from the department telling them they need to furnish proof they are currently insured. Anyone who cannot do so is subject to the fines and other penalties.

A special enforcement unit, dubbed the I-team, has also been put together, and is made up of 28 state troopers called out of retirement to enforce the stricter rules.