MOTORING NOTES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 14 January 1931, Page 2

MOTORING NOTES

MOTOR INSURANCE . srezai SHOULD UNLUCKY DRIVERS BE PENALISED? (By Gerald Ely, London, for '‘The Mail” Are insurance companies justified in refusing to accept bad risks under the scheme of compulsory insurance introduced by the new motor legislation in Great Britain? The question is prompted by the appearance in the House of Commons the other day of a private Members’ Bill which seeks to make it obligatory upon insurance companies to issue policies to motorists who have no conviction against them for any driving offence under the new Act.

Reading the clauses of this private Members’ Bill, one is impressed by its air of sweet reasonableness and its apparent championship of a hapless section of car owners, namely, those who are so dogged by ill-fortune that they are compelled time and again to come upon their insurance company for damage claims. 1 do not think this class is a large one nowadays when the standard of driving is much higher than it was even two years ago, but it certainly exists.

From time to time cases are brought to my notice of motorists whose driving, upon length of experience alone, must be deemed to be irreproachable, yet who run into bad luck the moment they take the wheel of their car. Nothing really serious ever happens to them, or the insurance company would just pay a lump sum to their widow or their dependents and finish with it, but they are continually in trouble. One day it is a dented wing, another day it is the radiator that has come into contact with a lamp-post, and upon yet another occasion it is the back of the car that suffers. These are all accidents which do not involve the insurance company in large amounts of money except when the car butts into a china shop window or the like. But lam told that a large number of small claims from one individual worries the insurance people much more than one or two isolated claims for large amounts. They begin to look upon the assured person who is always filling up forms, as a menace to their actuarial structure and they would rather not have him on their books.

Sometimes they try to discourage him by making him pay the first few pounds of any claim, and if that is of no avail and he still has accidents which exceed the amount by which he is penalised, they tell him as politely as they can to go to another company. But the other companies are no more eager to have people with such a record of disaster, and accordingly these Jonahs of the road follow the only course open to them. They do not insure. Under the new British law this alternative means that they can no longer drive a car, for only insured motorists are permitted to Lake out a licence. Hence the Private Members’ Bill published the other day. The question raised is, however, a very difficult one. Admittedly it seems only common justice that the insurance companies, who will presumably reap some benefit under the new compulsory insurance scheme, should be made to take tlie rough with the smooth, but it would create a most repellent legislative precedent if a Government were to force a commercial undertaking to take on risks which were believed to undermine the whole basis of their prosperity. Some people will point to the fact that already the British Government compel cinemas to take a proportion of British films despite tlie fact that many cinema managers allege that such films are inferior to American productions.

FILM ANALOGY I do not claim to be an expert on films, but it seems to me that British films cannot he such a millstone round the necks of the cinema proprietors, or they would give less evidence of prosperity. The case of the insurance companies is entirely different. If they operate their business on a faulty actuarial basis the whole structure must fall to the ground, and all their policy-holders—un-lucky or hitherto lucky—must he involved in the crash. That is, of course, assuming that the proportion of bad motor insurance risks likely to be revealed when compulsory insurance has operated for some time, actually is serious. To my lack of expert knowledge as to the finance of the films I must add a lack of knowledge of the finance of motor insurance.

On the whole it seems to me that if there were a real case for the Bill, the Transport Minister would have incorporated its provisions in his own Act. If he has not done so it may be taken that only a very small number of really unlucky motorists exists and that the old aphorism that hard cases make bad law applies. My own view, despite my sympathy for all motorists in distress, is that if a car-owner suffers from chronic hard luck on the road, it is better for all concerned that he should give up motoring. Private Members' Bills, in the British Parliament, rarely survive a second reading and they are usually so much waste paper. Assuming, however, that the Bill under discussion should become law, I do not see how the Government will be able to resist the claim of the insurance companies that premiums in the case of bad risks should be prohibitive in amount. It is all very well to lay down, as in the Bill, that the premiums to be fixed in such cases must be arrived at by agreement with the Minister of Transport. Such a provision does not prevent that Minister from agreeing with the insurance company that £lO per h.p. is not too much to charge a motorist who damages property or knocks someone down almost every time he goes out for a spin. It would, therefore, come to the same thing in the end, for few car-owners can afford to pay away £IOO or £2OO for motor insurance each year. LOOKING FOR TROUBLE Some motorists find trouble at hand in their own neighbourhood; others go into foreign parts to look for it, and, as so often happens if their car is a good one, they do not find it. In the latter category must be placed the two young motorists—Mr C- E. Shippam and Mr J. B. Dixon —who returned to London the other day after making a tour of the world m u Riley “Nine.” In these days of “stunts” of all descriptions, adventurous youth has a hard time to induce the world to give its applause, and I suggest to Messrs Shippam and Dixon that they would have created a much greater stir if, instead of permitting their car to carry them round the world, they had themselves carried the car round the globe. But these two young men are modest fellows and they only wanted to demonstrate that a British light car can go anywhere that any other car can go. They have abundantly proved their point, and have thus helped to promote the confidence of foreign countries in British productions. They were away seven months and covered approximately 18,000 miles, during which they met appalling surfaces and the most arduous conditions. But they won through, as also did their car which gave them no trouble of any description The car was equipped with special coaclnvork mounted on a chassis which

was standard except for additional petrol tanks and larger road wheels with rear axle gearing to suit. The eoachwork incorporated several items of interest such as special provision for the tool kit in the doors, comfortable sleeping accommodation with mosquito protection and copper water tanks.