Small idea to simplify updating auto insurance card

You know how when you get your replacement credit card, it arrives a month or so before your old one expires, but is effective immediately? That's smart--no need to manage the transition by hanging on to the old one until the last day. You know what's dumb? How auto insurance cab cards work. They, too, arrive a month in advance. But unlike credit cards, the insurance cab card has an effective date. So you can't just immediately replace your current card with the new one.

Instead of trying to manage the transition--remember to put them in the car the very night before they expire--I just put them in immediately, along with the prior one (and I remove the prior prior). But I can foresee, in some moment of panic, one of my family members will pull out the expired card, and think they don't have the current one.

I expect there is a regulatory element to this. Like so many things in life, just a combination of independently reasonable policies and practices that combine to create an annoyingly flawed experience. Obviously, if anyone was paying attention and cared (regulators included, perhaps principally), the 6-month thing could be finessed. 

But in the absence of that, I think a reasonable hack may be available to an insurer, without requiring any regulatory chnages. Provide a copy of the new card, along with a repeat of the old card, with some kind of "EXPIRING SOON" stamp across the old one (or if regulators didn't like that, above the margins of the old card) Then you could just cut out, fold in half and voila.