George Osborne hates cyclists

[mickle]

Else why would he do this?

https://www.eta.co.uk/2015/12/02/in...-compensation-shortchanged-by-george-osborne/

 

[slowmotion]

Else why would he do this?

https://www.eta.co.uk/2015/12/02/in...-compensation-shortchanged-by-george-osborne/

I have no idea of the details, but ETA do have a fairly hefty financial incentive for not being impartial in that advertorial, don't they?

 

[steveindenmark]

Possibly another good reason for cyclists to take out personal accident insurance.

 

[Drago]

That's ok, cos I should think most cyclists also hate George Osborne, so the young and yang are in balance.

 

[srw]

What an odd article.

If Osborne hates cyclists, he must hate drivers even more. For every cyclist suffering a minor soft tissue injury there will be dozens of drivers, mostly alleging whiplash. Very few minor injuries of the sort discussed go anywhere near the courts - they're processed through out-of-court processes, which are cheaper, quicker, less adversarial, and result in just the same amount of damages. There is no suggestion, as far as anyone knows (the details are extremely thin as yet) to amend the amount of compensation awardable.

Brokers might doubt that insurance premiums will go down as a result, but the evidence is against them. Last time a major change to compensation procedures was brought in (LASPO, two or three years ago), insurance premiums dived by 20%, even though the changes were only worth 5% at most. The CEO of the UK's largest insurer has already announced that he'll be cutting premiums by an average of £50 as a result of the latest changes - even though motor premiums are currently at an unsustainably low level and need to go up by about 25% for the market to make money.

 

[glenn forger]

Yet insurance broker ETA Cycle Insurance believes it’s not guaranteed these savings will be passed on to drivers via cheaper insurance premiums.

“Whiplash claims have fallen by more than a third in the last four years and yet still the insurance industry has not reduced premiums,” says ETA. “More importantly, no safeguards are yet in place to safeguard the right to compensation and legal representation when cyclists and pedestrians are hit by cars.”

http://www.bikeradar.com/commuting/...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

[srw]

[QUOTE 4039504, member: 9609"] If people want to spend more then they should do so at their own cost and risk.[/QUOTE]
Mostly they do. The cost of repairing drivers' own bent metal via accidental damage cover is considerably higher than the cost of repairing other drivers' bent metal via third-party liability cover.

Which is why a car with stupidly expensive replacement parts will cost more to insure (all other things being equal) than a car with cheap replacement parts.

 

[Pale Rider]

even though motor premiums are currently at an unsustainably low level and need to go up by about 25% for the market to make money.

The point about car insurance being a loss maker is made regularly.

What I fail to understand is why do so many companies advertise so hard to get business which is not profitable?

All motorists are legally obliged to have insurance, so there's no need to advertise its availability at all.

 

[ufkacbln]

The original statement is about ALL Insurance, it may affect cyclists, but to extrapolate that to being a measure against cyclists is worthy af the DAily Wail!

Whiplash is an issue with many claims being fraudulent, and the insurance companies are part of this!

We were side swiped when a car drove out of a parking space into the side of the car. Bent car, but at that speed no injury

For the next 6 weeks we were inundated with calls from the insurance company's cas managers asking if we were sure we were not injured and suggestingthat a whiplsh would enable us to claim a "considerable sum"

We were even asked specifically at one point if we were "sure we didn't want to report a whiplash injury"

 

[srw]

Whiplash is an issue with many claims being fraudulent, and the insurance companies are part of this!

We were side swiped when a car drove out of a parking space into the side of the car. Bent car, but at that speed no injury

For the next 6 weeks we were inundated with calls from the insurance company's cas managers asking if we were sure we were not injured and suggestingthat a whiplsh would enable us to claim a "considerable sum"

Point of order - these almost certainly weren't case managers employed by or for the insurance company. They were probably employed by claims management companies, a scourge on the country, whose business model is to get details of the victims of accidents by any means possible (many of them illegal) and the monetise them by selling them on. They add absolutely nothing to anybody's claim, and are at the heart of the increase in both whiplash claims and in industrial deafness claims. Both of which, at the end of the day, we all pay for.

 

[srw]

The point about car insurance being a loss maker is made regularly.

What I fail to understand is why do so many companies advertise so hard to get business which is not profitable?

All motorists are legally obliged to have insurance, so there's no need to advertise its availability at all.

Some companies do manage to sell car insurance profitably, some of the time, by having better technical analysis than anyone else. Some companies have a business model whereby the insurance policy itself is sold as a loss leader and the profit comes from ancillary services (breakdown cover, legal expenses cover, NCD protection). Some companies are new enough and slick enough that their expenses are very low and they can make money out of what they sell. Some companies rely on inertia - they attract new policyholders with an artificially low premium and then whack it up in years two and three. Some companies do motor insurance because it provides them with just about enough contribution to expenses to enable them to do more profitable lines like household and commercial, and because it diversifies against those other lines to give them a more stable profit overall. Some companies do motor insurance because they're not brave enough to stop and sack all of their motor staff.

The advertising is done because it works to get business in through the door. If you have decided that you're going to sell motor insurance you need to make sure that your price is cheap enough for enough people that you have to be towards the top of the Money Supermarket screen, and that your brand is recognisable enough that those people who care about quality will select you rather than someone else.. The way to do that is by advertising.

 

[oldroadman]

[QUOTE 4039504, member: 9609"]The change I would like to see within motoring insurance that I believe would significantly reduce premiums; A limit to how much will be paid to repair a car. For instance I was chatting to someone a little while ago who needed a replacement door mirror for his stupid german 4x4 monster car, it was something astonishing like £700 To me that is unreasonable, I see halfords do door mirrors for £25 so let us put a max claim for any door mirror at £35. If people want to spend more then they should do so at their own cost and risk.
It appears to me that your average motorist is paying a premium to cover the potential costs to repair idioticly stupid cars.[/QUOTE]
Door mirror for my modest car (which is electric and heated) is quite expensive. Anyone suggesting that a mirror on a modern car can be replaced for £35 (including labour, painting, and the actual part from manufacturers) is considerably incorrect. Although I do agree that some manufacturers of urban tractors and mid to upper range vehicles and the like really "milk it" on spares generally, not just mirrors. Those massive mirrors on coaches (which we should be pleased to see as they improve vision) come in at over £1,000 a go. Drivers who get them knocked off are likely to be very unpopular!

 

[shouldbeinbed]

^^^ +1 ^^^^ someone nicked the outer faring from my Qashqai drivers door mirror recently. £110 for plain black plastic or £130 for colour coded. That is only the plastic cover.

I got a non Nissan produced one from a scrappers in Bolton, that was £40 and needed a bit of brute force and heating up to make fit well enough.

 

[PK99]

[QUOTE 4039504, member: 9609"]The change I would like to see within motoring insurance that I believe would significantly reduce premiums; A limit to how much will be paid to repair a car. For instance I was chatting to someone a little while ago who needed a replacement door mirror for his stupid german 4x4 monster car, it was something astonishing like £700 To me that is unreasonable, I see halfords do door mirrors for £25 so let us put a max claim for any door mirror at £35. If people want to spend more then they should do so at their own cost and risk.
It appears to me that your average motorist is paying a premium to cover the potential costs to repair idioticly stupid cars.[/QUOTE]

Bollocks like this seems to come up regularly: Miiror glass £10 -£25 yep.

Retractable, tiltable swivleable, bendable back on impact with cyclist/pedestrian heated mirror and indicator unit £2/3/4/500 plus

 

[oldroadman]

[QUOTE 4081766, member: 9609"]OK, maybe I was being a bit silly with such a low figure of £35. However I still think limits should be placed on how much insurers need to pay out towards car repairs. By all means have a car with wondrous all singing all dancing £1,400s worth of mirrors, but it is unreasonable to expect others to be responsible for such frivolities. If you want an utter nonsense of a car then you should be covering the nonsense part with your own insurance. So for instance; if an old dear accidentally swiped off one of these sticky out bits in the supermarket car park, then her insurance should only cover the cost of a basic mirror, lets say £100 from her insurance then the other £600 should be coming out of your or your insurers pocket. It is just utterly ludicrous having a £700 door mirror, utterly pointless.

Old people are being priced off the road with high premiums to cover minor bumps and scratches in car parks, any dint under an inch in depth should just be considered as fair wear and tear. Cars should be designed to be a lot more practicable than they are.[/QUOTE]
An opinion you are entitled to have and express, perhaps better to motor manufacturers where in is the source of the issue.