Insurers call for police take-up of uninsured vehicles

Amid public outrage over two deaths from hit-and-run drivers, major insurance companies have revealed a staggeringly high number of uninsured vehicles causing injury and death – between one in three and one in four vehicles on the road.

In the past six days, the number of road deaths this year doubled to eight from seven accidents. And one motor vehicle insurer comes across uninsured vehicles in one in every five accidents a month.

Available data shows that there are about 50 000 vehicles on the roads without insurance, according to the General Insurance Association of Barbados (GIAB).

GIAB president Randy Graham told Barbados TODAY that what is worse is that many other vehicles are not registered with the Barbados Licensing Authority and therefore are not captured in its estimates.

“The last count that we heard from them was 160 000, 170 000 vehicles on the road…could have increased again. So the gap really is the difference between how much we have insured and how much they have registered. So, if we have 150 000 and they got 170 000, 180 000, 200 000, that difference is what we suspect is the uninsured vehicles,” he said.

“The other component is that the Licensing Authority only has the ones that are registered with them. What we are seeing is that people are putting cars on the road without registration. If they are doing that, nobody has that number. And there is definitely a gap between what they have registered and what we have insured. So, that gap tells us how big the problem is. What we know for sure is that gap is widening, and that is our concern.”

Graham contended that uninsured vehicles which are involved in accidents cause harm to law-abiding individuals who buy insurance.

“If they get hit by somebody who [doesn’t] have insurance cover, it is on them to repair their vehicles and to deal with the injuries and so on. It is downright unfair,” he argued.

“The bulk of the problem financially ends up being at the persons who are law-abiding citizens.”

Graham could not provide a figure for industry-wide losses stemming from accidents involving uninsured vehicles. But one leading insurer put its losses so far at around $4 million.

“It is my experience that people that are involved in accidents with no insurance and/or no driver’s licence or expired driver’s licence, they are the ones who run from the scene of accidents,” Peter Harris,  general manager and director of Consumers Guarantee Insurance (CGI), told Barbados TODAY.

“I have CGI, and potentially $4 million in losses we have paid as a result of the negligence of uninsured drivers, and we are unable to recover these funds or we spend a lot of money trying to take these people to court to recover these funds.

“We [authorities] are not doing enough to identify persons whose vehicles have not been insured or remain uninsured…and that is serious.”

The insurer also revealed that his company’s statistics show that 20 per cent of their accidents every month involve uninsured vehicles.

He said these accidents involved property damage and personal injury, “and the third party who caused the accident, who was negligent, has no insurance”.

Anton Lovell, general manager of another leading underwriter – Cooperators General Insurance – said the gap between the insured and uninsured is widening.

“It is a real problem we are having in the industry,” Lovell told Barbados TODAY. “What we are seeing is that before, out of five accidents, one involved an uninsured driver, but now one in four is uninsured.

“Whenever our reports come in…one person either [doesn’t] have insurance or a drivers’ licence, and it is causing big problems in the industry.”

Lovell urged police to impound uninsured vehicles in an answer “to this madness”.

“We have to get a real grip on this,” he said. “When the police go to the scene and either driver doesn’t produce their insurance or doesn’t produce their licence, they shouldn’t be allowed to move the vehicle from there. Police should impound the vehicle.”

He said only if the driver can produce a valid insurance certificate and pay for storage should he be allowed to repossess the car.

Lovell’s suggestion to impound was backed by Harris, Graham and Communications and Public Affairs Officer with The Barbados Police Service, Inspector Rodney Inniss.

But the police spokesman said a pound for vehicles is still under discussion.

Graham said he believes enforcement would be effective once the technology is in place.

“We have to find a way for the police to be able to tap into the same system for vehicle registration to see whether a car has that insurance,” the GIAB head said.

He argued that the government’s electronic vehicle registration system and cameras would make impounding work effective where police would be able to ascertain the status of a vehicle’s insurance on the spot.

emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb