Loose Lines: Insurance Insanity [Issue 55, Dec-Jan 1994]

I think more than anything else, more even than the pathetic, irrelevant designs churned out of Japan during the past decade or two, the huge insurance hikes in the last couple of years have taken the heart out of motorcycling. The essential element of which has always been having lots of fun on the cheap (which probably seems like getting away with murder to those wedded to a new car every three years).

Even though new bikes sales have been terrible for the past five years there are still lots of cheap bikes on offer. Between £100 and £1000 there's a vast range of machinery, from usable 125 hacks on which to learn or commute, to middle-weight fours or twins, that will kill the fastest cage dead in town and keep up with the motorway fast lane. There’s even still room to hustle a little - buy cheap, run for a while and then sell without a loss or even make a little profit.
 
Those with vested interests in selling new or newish bikes in showrooms will deny all this, but my own experiences, letters and contributors from right across the country confirm what’s all too obvious from a cursory glance in MCN’s classifieds. What's holding the whole scene back is people unwilling to pay stupid money for insurance.
 
It might be easy, if you're selling high performance motorcycles, to dismiss this as of no concern. Why worry about a bunch of kids and ageing hippies screaming around town aboard cheap hacks? Because the former, given a bit of luck, eventually end up with a full licence and a pocketful of serious money. The latter can be so overwhelmed by the motorcycle experience that they let enthusiasm overcome their lack of money. That means motorcycle sales, even if they are buying used bikes privately, the people they buy from will then have the dosh to buy something new, or at least newer. But cut out the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of hacks then you end up with the sales of new bikes way down.

The way things are going, the only people buying bikes will be forty years olds, who'll probably go for Triumphs. New bikes in the upper capacity range are so expensive that the insurance rates bear some semblance to reality, as long as you stick with TPF&T, comprehensive is still too ridiculous. Recognising this, some companies, such as BMW and Triumph, offer better deals through their own insurance policies; assured, at least in these two cases, that their owners are both mature, sensible and not likely to arrange for their bikes to be stolen.

For sure, if you’re just about to collect your pension and want to potter around on a step-thru, then insurance is but a minor part of the minimal running costs. But for a mildly mature person such as myself, even staying with just TPF&T, we're talking hundreds of pounds for some motorcycle under 600cc. And like many other people who’ve been caught out by the hikes, I've never made a claim on any insurance policy during the past twenty years!

If you're 17, want to ride anything over 50cc then the rip-off merchants are going to charge as much if not more money for insurance than the bike cost! A lot of people can’t even get theft insurance even though they have no history of bike theft. The insurance companies insist that they make hardly any money out of motorcycle insurance but if you suggest slashing salaries (and the subsidized mortgages) of their employees they'll show you the door in no uncertain terms.

It really pisses me off to hand over loads of dosh to these, er, people when I know damn well that the likely perpetrator of any accident is going to be some half blind cager so wrapped up in TV inspired fantasies that it’s unlikely he’ll even bother to stop to pick up the pieces.

For the cost of the insurance the chances are that I could pick up the bits in a breaker to fix the bike myself, if I ever rolled it down the road; the simple reason that I’ve never bothered with comprehensive insurance. I would even question the idea of third party insurance - why should | pay for daft pedestrians who don’t look where they’re going or for some cager’s driving malpractice? Why shouldn't the people who cause the accident pay for everything?
 
Theft is the only real area where motorcycle insurance is necessary. Even here, the insurance companies are not willing to pay out what the bike’s really worth, dragging out the process for months and months, until the claimant is so distraught he accepts a pathetic offer. Readers have mentioned massive interrogation tactics when the theft is reported - surely a matter for the police rather than some suited gorila? - and refusal or massive hikes in rates when they go to renew their premiums. I mean, why penalise someone for something they have no control over and for which they have already paid the premium?

It has to be admitted that a minority of claimants have arranged for their own bikes to be stolen, or merely chucked them off the nearest cliff. In part the insurance companies only have themselves to blame as they are seen as massive money making companies who don’t give a damn about motorcycling. Many people find themselves full of joy at ripping the companies off - but it’s shortsighted in the extreme, as they get all their money back, by hiking rates the next time around.

The arseholes who go around stealing motorcycles are another matter. The pathetic penalties given out by the courts provides no discouragement whatsoever. Unlike the penalties brought down on motorcyclists who decide to set up minor deterrents, like booby-trapped shotguns. God help you, because the police certainly won't, if you give some thief caught in the act a gentle tap on the head with a tyre iron. You have to let him beat the shit out of you before you can respond. I would've thought chopping off a hand would be a cheap, excellent deterrent, or a couple of years sharing a cell with a hardcore psychopath.

We have, of course, all been brainwashed into the belief that we need insurance for everything. The latest laugh was some agent trying to persuade me that I needed to insure my TPF&T premium against an actual accident, so that all my legal fees would be paid when I tried to pursue a claim. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at such stupidity and I left without buying any insurance in that particular shop.

A constant stream of distraught letters indicates that many readers have given up motorcycling because they just can't afford to pay out the absurd insurance rates, even if they only go for third party; their £100 to £300 hacks not worth stealing. No-one seems able to comprehend why they should pay more than their bike’s worth for a year’s minimal insurance.
 
Another type of rider just ignores the whole issue, rides without any insurance. Usually, though, they own bikes that the police like to pick on - old, dirty and running on worn out tyres (if you have insurance and ride on bald tyres when involved in an accident don't expect much joy from the insurance company). It is perhaps typical of the effectiveness of British law that they can get away with quoting the old name in the logbook, never having registered the bike in their own name. The police, overwhelmed with crime and paperwork only rarely catch up with them. In the event of a terminal accident they are usually seen fleeing the scene; it’s cheap enough to buy another hack.

This, of course, is highly regrettable as it encourages people to break the law, adding to the dangerous degree of lawlessness in the UK. It will be only be a matter of time until we end up like the States, where anything goes and the bigger the gun you have the more likely you are to survive, and the alternative to an insurance claim will be some cager poking a shotgun out of his window and blowing you away.

Rather than have thousands of motorcyclists breaking the law it would be far better to make motorcycle insurance optional rather than compulsory. This would also give the insurance companies the kick up the arse they need after so many years of ripping off motorcyclists.  

Bill Fowler