The Ontario Liberal Government is moving to make it mandatory for a seatbelt to be available for every occupant in a vehicle. One person, one seatbelt . According to Donna Cansfield, the Minister of Transportation, there is nothing in the Highway Traffic Act to prevent people from getting into a vehicle that doesn't have enough seatbelts. This change in the law is in response to the deaths of four passengers, who were riding in a vehicle which had an insufficient number of seatbelts.
Already the proposed law is under attack. The Progressive Conservative Leader, John Tory is concerned that the law won't go far enough because the Liberal's are going to allow exceptions. NDP House Leader, Peter Kormos said that the proposed law is not severe enough. He believes that the driver and not the passenger should be accountable. He suggests that the driver shouldn't even be allowed to start the vehicle until everyone is buckled up.
Currently, passengers can be fined for not buckling up unless there is no seatbelt available to them. Drivers can be fined and lose demerit point for not buckling up. New drivers holding a G1 or G2 license are legally required to ensure that the number of passengers in the vehicle is limited to the number of working seatbelts. These laws sound pretty strict to me.
Interestingly, Ontario's annual seatbelt campaign ended less than two weeks before this accident. The message was that drivers should ensure that everyone in the vehicle buckles up. It was claimed that more than one-third of drivers and passengers killed in Ontario weren't wearing seatbelts (although this does not mean that their deaths are solely attributable to the failure to wear the seatbelt). Despite this statistic, the politicians claimed that the seatbelt awareness campaigns were working as our roads were very safe, and our accident statistics very low. Have the deaths of four people altered our safety record so much? Is the fact that we are entering an election year the driving force behind the claimed need for these changes?
Would these proposed new laws have prevented the fatalities? Let's consider what happened in the accident this weekend. From the few facts available, the driver of the van drove through a stop sign and was broadsided on the driver side by a tractor-trailer. The entire driver's side was ripped away. Had there been seven passengers, wearing seven seatbelts, would the fatalities have been avoided? At this point we don't know, as this information is not yet been available.
What consumers should be asking is: how will the insurance companies adjust accident claims under the proposed new laws? Currently, the Ontario Auto Policy allows an insurer to deny income replacement benefits and/or collision coverage, to an insured who drove the vehicle while not authorised to drive at the time of an accident. Will the adjuster deny a claim to a driver who is fined for not wearing his or her seatbelt?
This is a real possibility. An Ontario insurer has already successfully sued an insured, who was involved in a single vehicle accident, for breaching the conditions of her G2 license by having more passengers than seatbelts. They were awarded a judgment of over $23,000 collectable from the driver. This was the amount the insurer paid to the leasing company, which owned the vehicle insured under the policy.
Readers might say that this decision was correct, but will they feel this way if they are the ones having their claim denied because of a seatbelt infraction, which is totally unrelated to the accident or the driver's ability? I'm surprised that Peter Kormos, who has been a long time and vocal critic of the insurance industry, overlooked this point.
Susan Saksida, CIP is an Insurance Consultant. Questions or comments can be emailed to insurancecompliancematters@rogers.com .
Feeds