Putting a premium on injury

Amazingly, given all the insurance money we cough up, there’s a good chance many of my drivers aren’t insured. There’s been lots of loose talk recently about ‘grey fleets’ and how drivers on employee ownership schemes don’t have insurance because they aren’t ticking the box marked ‘business’ in the documentation. Commuting yes, business, no (two different boxes).

One speaker at a conference I went to recently told a story from a previous conference (these guys don’t get out much). Having established that most of the business audience didn’t run a company car, he asked them to raise their hands if they drove their own car on business: most said no. Then he asked them if they drove there today: most said yes.

Either that proves most business folk regard conferences as a day off (love to hear that being argued in court), or that there’s simply cohorts of drivers running business errands without insurance.

With this in mind, I asked our insurance connection about it. Of course business people do more miles, but wouldn’t a simple mileage allowance cover that? After all, my classic car insurance limits me to 4500 miles a year. Ah but, said the insurance stooge, the greater worry is that business drivers are more likely to carry passengers in the car.

Come again? My drivers are solitary creatures. In fact I suspect many of them love the job because it rids their precious car of all the relatives that fill it to bursting on the weekends.

Anyway, why should these passengers bump up the insurance, assuming they existed. Then the penny drops. Many pennies. It’s all down to personal injury claims. Three different people in the car, three potentially different company lawyers all frothing at the mouth at the extent of the scratch on that sales manager’s writing hand.

At that same conference, one risk expert told a story of the £1,700 personal injury cheque they got from Direct Line after his wife had an accident and suffered mild whiplash. They didn’t even claim themselves: these days the insurance company’s in-house solicitor does that as a matter of course. Und-er a couple of grand and it’s not even contested.

Of course this guy took the money – it’s hard to be principled with the cost of a family holiday in your hand and the prospect of a couple of hours of phone tennis to give it back.

Two issues raised here. One, the awesome power of the word ‘business’ to force up government-mandated expenditure, and two, the horrifying state of the insurance industry. How, in a world of five-star NCAP cars and stultifying Health and Safety rules, are we paying ever more to fund ever larger personal injury claims? I’d ask you all to rise up and protest, but I’m pretty sure ‘angry rebellion’ isn’t covered by the company insurance.