The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia recently announced significant changes to how it calculates its insurance premiums. You can read a blog about it here but in a nutshell, the amendments, which could be implemented as early as this fall, include increasing Driver Risk Premiums and Driver Penalty Point Premiums by 40 percent over the next two years. That means any drivers with driving-related Criminal Code convictions, 10-year Motor Vehicle Act convictions, tickets for excessive speeding or distracted driving, or roadside prohibitions can expect to pay more. Motorists with four or more penalty points within a 1-month period also face higher premiums.
Another significant change is that as of April 2019, your driving record will be used to calculate your autoplan insurance rate. So any violations in your past will result in you paying more.
The BC government’s main justification for this hike is a public survey it conducted earlier this year that asked the public to vote on the fairness of ICBC insurance policy. It showed 82 percent of nearly 35,000 respondents agreed with the idea that drivers who are found to be at fault in crashes should pay higher premiums.
We decided to take a closer look at the survey. With the help of SENSE BC (Safety by Education Not Speed Enforcement), an advocates group for BC motorists, we found issues that call into question the legitimacy of using it as a basis for policies that will hit a lot of people in their pocketbooks.
The survey was geared towards certain answers
The government is facing the goliath task of recouping ICBC’s financial losses that are in the billions of dollars. It is under tremendous pressure to find new sources of revenue for the insurer and increasing premiums is clearly an attractive idea.
Before it can do this, however, it must win the war of public opinion. It needs to show people are in favour of getting certain drivers to pay more.
Derek Lewers, a researcher with SENSE BC, believes the way the survey was structured meant there was only one possible outcome: turning drivers against each other.
“There wasn’t any chance for people to give their opinion,” he said. “Or say what the problems are and how to fix them.
“You will never hear anyone say, ‘I’m a bad driver’. Everyone else is a bad driver.”
“When they ask, ‘do you think that bad drivers should pay more for insurance than everyone else?’ Who is going to say no to that?”
Ian Tootill, co-founder of SENSE BC, felt the survey had a “built-in bias” and had leading questions.
On some of the questions, respondents were asked to rate certain statements out of five, one ranging from “strongly agree” and “strongly disagree”.
Mr Tootill said: “It doesn’t give you the option to say I think you should go back to the drawing board.”
The survey is more like a public relations exercise for Attorney General David Eby than a fair and balanced poll of public opinion.
“Whenever you want to make some changes,” Mr Tootill said. “You have always got to put out the there that you have gone out and consulted the public.
“You have to be able to show you went and did your due diligence.”
What makes a ‘bad driver’?
One of the most problematic omissions from the survey is its failure to define “bad drivers”. Not being specific about what the major causes of crashes are, allows the government to include a wide range of behaviours under the umbrella of so-called bad driving.
“They didn’t ask, well, who is a bad driver?” Mr Lewers said. “What defines a bad driver? That’s where the problem comes in.
“The government and ICBC and their propaganda machine will tell you that people on phones are the causes of the majority of crashes and they are the bad drivers. That’s what this is targeting.”
Mr Totill took particular issue with using the penalty point system to decide who decide so-called bad drivers.
“The penalty point system needs to be revamped,” he said. “There is not a proper correlation between future at-fault crash risk and penalty points.
“For instance, if you drive over freshly painted lines, that’s two penalty points. If you run a stop light, that’s two points There’s an assumption and bias built in that people who get tickets are dangerous drivers.
“They have got to rely on the objective data and make a decision based on that.”
He went on to say: “Bad drivers are those who are causing the crashes and the behaviour that leads to those crashes is what needs to be targeted. The penalty point system has been the means of doing that in the past but the problem is there is no empirical safety foundation to it.”
Enforcement targets
Mr Lewers says the new method of calculating premiums is doomed to fail once average people “doing reasonable things” realize they will be forced to pay more.
He said: “You will never hear anyone say, ‘I’m a bad driver’. Everyone else is a bad driver.
“What they fail to realize is is that if you look down at your phone and touch your phone you are now designated a dangerous driver.
“The enforcement is targeting average behaviours, people who are doing reasonable things and they don’t realize they are now the target.”
Let’s face facts, we are addicted to cell phones. It’s become a habit to check them constantly. We are not advocating texting or calling while driving and drivers are rightfully punished for doing so. But in the attempt to stamp out all distracted driving, legislators have been overzealous.
Driving enforcement is not dealing with the real issues
Earlier this year, we revealed that ICBC was exaggerating the number of driving fatalities as a result of cellphone use. The government frequently uses the incorrect figure of 78 deaths per year as its reasoning behind increasingly harsh legislation against using electronic devices while operating a vehicle.
Mr Lewers explained: “[The government has] been telling us for years, people on cell phones are the problem, speeders are the problem. They created their own narrative.”
He added: “If they are going to put all their enforcement to target the wrong problems they’re not going to solve the problems, they don’t want to know [about the actual problems] such as crashes as a result of failure to yield.”
He said if you look at ICBC’s annual reports, one of the biggest causes of its financial black hole is that the cost of repairs has skyrocketed.
The technology that is saving lives, such as cameras and sensors, is also making the amount the insurer has to pay out for repairs and replacements more expensive.
To try to counter this, ICBC needs to find new sources of revenue, which may be why it is seeking to increase the cost and volume of traffic tickets.
Mr Lewers predicts that once average drivers start to get designated as bad drivers and see their premiums shoot up, there will be an “uprising”.
I completed the ICBC survey and it’s desired answers were obvious. This was in no way shape or form due diligence by David Eby. He is manipulating public opinion pure and simple with the goal of reaching deeper into drivers wallets. Most British Columbians have not yet figured this out yet.
I’ll bet you’d agree with me that all governments do these things in a manner to enhance their position. The survey made me angry because I made the mistake of believing for 1/2 a second that it was legitimate.
Your observation about the ICBC Fairness Survey is bang on. It was seriously skewed to achieve a desired result which would provide “public support” for rate increases. I expected better from David Eby; he’s a disappointment.