Editor:
As a newcomer to the White Rock/South Surrey region, I thought I’d write about my initial experience with the ICBC.
I’m from Ontario, and have been driving for more than 50 years. My only experience with car insurance has been from three incidents in parking lots, when the car was parked and I was not in the car, and twice when the car was stolen from outside my house.
I think of myself as a careful driver, who’s never had a driving accident.
Yesterday, I met with ICBC to set up my B.C. insurance.
It appears that the “no-fault” accident I had last year – while my car was parked at a shopping centre while I was shopping, and was hit be a careless driver – is considered to be, by ICBC, an “at-fault” accident by me.
Apparently, Section 13 of an ICBC document states that any “no-fault” claim from Ontario and two other provinces is deemed to be an “at-fault” if any money was paid by any insurance company to anyone. To note, it cost about $1,600 to repair my front bumper and headlight assembly, which was paid by another insurance company, and I was deemed to not be “at-fault”; my cost was $0.
As a result, my new B.C. insurance had a five per cent one-year discount instead of the significant discount I was expecting from reading news articles about B.C.’s famed “no-fault” insurance and discounts for “good” drivers.
So now I’m deemed to be a “poor driver,” and I must wait for several years to prove that I’m reformed while slowly heading towards the significant discount I had expected.
As one of my in-laws warned me before I came: “B.C. stands for Bring Cash.”
It would be nice if the law was written to ensure that someone was actually driving when an accident occurred.
Ron Elliott, Surrey
