Kochi: Why should motorists as a whole pay for the increase in premium caused by drunken driving, over-speeding and overloading? Traffic experts point out these three factors as major reasons for accidents, but only a minority of motorists indulge in these and make the majority pay through frequent hikes in insurance premium.
Public insurance companies, who are the only third-party policy providers due to heavy loss in the sector, agree to the fact that policy premium should be raised for these high-risk motorists. Krishna Das, assistant administrative officer of a public insurance company, says “It is necessary that the premium of motorists who indulge in drunken driving, over-speeding and overloading should be raised as they are doing it at the expense of other motorists who have to pay for the damage these people cause in the form of hike in premiums.”
The high level of loss incurred to the public insurance companies through third party policies can be offset in this way, say public insurance company officials. M M Sulphey, development officer of New India Assurance Company, says “For a premium of Rs 100, we incur a claim of Rs 200. This loss is due to the high level of accidents in the state, which is caused by factors like drunken driving, over-speeding and overloading.”
While insurance officials ask for an increase in premium for traffic offenders, police officials are of the view that no insurance cover should be given to these people. KE Joy, assistant commissioner of police, said “Insurance cover should not be given to over-speeding motorists. We fine over-speeding motorists for Rs 1,000 through petty cases, but criminal cases are charged in serious cases.”
Even when all agree that insurance premium should be raised for traffic offenders, lack of provision in the law, absence of a good monitoring system and scarce equipment for tracking down offenders come in the way of implementing the raise. Mr Sulphey says “There is no proper system to monitor whether a claim was caused by over-speeding or overloading. We have provisions in the law that allow us to cancel a policy or reject a claim citing overloading, but we do not have the authority to conduct any checking to verify it.”
Law doesn’t seem to favour insurance companies in cases of overloading and over-speeding. Insurance officials say that in motor accident cases, courts mostly don’t consider whether there was overloading or over-speeding. This attitude of the courts together with lack of necessary equipment to determine speed makes for an easy getaway for traffic offenders.
Even though State police procured some speed radars a few years ago, they are very limited in number. Mr Joy says “We now have only one speed radar in Ernakulam. To make up for that, we employ policemen in civilian clothes along highways to inform about speeding vehicles. We stop these vehicles at the next junction and fine them.”
At present, the burden of loss due to third-party policy is borne by public companies alone. Public companies cannot reject the customer as the policy is one stipulated by law and has to be provided by them. But how long will these public companies last to bear this loss and how long will motorists be penalised for a minority of traffic offenders among them?
