An e-bike hit me and caused $3,000 in damage to my car. The e-bike driver had no insurance. How do we find out who is at fault and can I go through [my own] insurance even though he doesn’t have insurance? What are my rights as a driver? – Dayo, Ontario
If a bike hits your car, you’ll have to answer a few questions, an insurance expert said.
“The first would be: Do you have collision coverage?’” said Adam Mitchell, chief executive officer of Whitby, Ont.-based Mitchell & Whale Insurance Brokers Ltd., which operates as Mitch Insurance. “Two might be: Is your deductible less than $3,000? If the answer is no and no, then you’re probably at a dead end.”
Let’s back up. There are three main types of car insurance coverage: liability, collision and comprehensive. Liability coverage is mandatory everywhere in Canada. In most provinces, the other two are optional.
Very simply, liability covers damage and injuries that a driver causes to other people, vehicles or property. Collision covers the cost to repair your own vehicle if you’re in a collision and you’re at fault. Comprehensive covers almost anything else that isn’t a collision, including theft and vandalism.
In most provinces, if somebody hits you and they’re entirely at fault, something called Direct Compensation Property Damage (DCPD) in your basic policy will usually cover the cost to repair or replace your car – but only if the car that hits you has insurance.
But if they don’t have insurance at all, if it’s a hit-and-run or if they are riding a bike, e-bike or any other vehicle that isn’t required to have vehicle insurance, the damage will usually only be covered if you have collision insurance.
With collision insurance, you have to pay a deductible. So, if the repairs cost $3,000 and your collision deductible is $1,000, your insurance company would cover the balance of $2,000.
“It wouldn’t be uncommon to have a $1,000 deductible,” Mitchell said. “It goes much higher with high-value vehicles, namely because of the theft problems these days.”
Faulty reasoning?
If you do have collision insurance and your deductible is less than the cost of repairs, then you should figure out who was at fault, Mitchell said.
Several provinces, including Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland have specific fault-determination rules that decide which driver is at fault in most situations. Sometimes, the fault is shared.
“If you have collision, you are within your rights to file a collision claim,” Mitchell said. “Now, whether it’s sensible to do so is a math equation triggered by the fault-determination rules.”
If you were even partly at fault, your insurance company could raise your rates. Or if your policy has accident forgiveness on your first collision, and you were to file a claim, you could lose that.
“If you’re speaking to [your insurance company] and you’re disclosing an accident, they could put that on your record,” Mitchell said. “Even if they deny coverage or confirm you don’t have coverage, they could be recording [an at-fault collision] on your driving record.”
So, it’s a good idea to check the rules before submitting a claim, Mitchell said. Generally, the rules are cut and dried.
“If you’re opening a door and a cyclist hits your door, you’re at fault; it’s your job to make sure it’s clear,” Mitchell said. “Same as if you’re merging out of a parking spot into traffic and a cyclist hits you. … Although you would describe the cyclist as reckless, well, actually, the onus is on you and maybe you didn’t see them.”
Home advantage?
If you do make a collision claim, could your insurance company try to get the money back from the cyclist – if they know who they are?
While insurance companies could sue the cyclist, that costs them money and is unlikely unless there’s a lot of damage, Mitchell said.
“If you started adding three more zeros [to the value of the claim] and we’re getting up to very large numbers, then that’s a different case,” Mitchell said. “But at $3,000 [in damage], for example, it would cost the insurance company more just for a lawyer’s letter to even attempt [a lawsuit].”
But what if, for example, a cyclist slammed into your parked car – meaning they were at fault – and gave you their name and contact information?
I’d love to think that you could shake hands and [the cyclist] would go to a bank account and bring you $3,000 for the damages,” Mitchell said.
But if the cyclist didn’t – or couldn’t – pay, you could make a collision claim through your insurance company. Then you could try to sue them in small claims court for the deductible.
Although cyclists don’t have vehicle insurance, they may have liability coverage under their home or tenant insurance – or if they privately bought bicycle liability insurance.
“There is a small little allotment inside many homeowners’ policies called voluntary property damage and voluntary liability,” Mitchell said. “If you’re at my house and you break my favourite vase … you can file [a claim] with your company and be writing me a cheque [typically for up to $1,000]. You don’t see this used very often, but in a case where a cyclist stayed around and was willing to [pay], they could consider this coverage.”
Cyclists at disadvantage?
Could the answer here be requiring insurance for cyclists the same way we insure drivers?
“Where would you draw the line there? Is it [the size] of the e-bike motor? Does a three-year-old with a tricycle need it?” Mitchell said. “I think in the grand scheme of things, the amount of damage that [bikes and e-bikes] can do is nowhere near any order of magnitude of what a vehicle can do.”
While there might be “rare fringe cases” where bicycles cause severe injury and death, a car requires insurance because it is “a big, deadly hunk of metal with huge horsepower that [can] easily kill and maim people,” Mitchell said.
If Ontario passes proposed legislation to remove bike lanes on three major roads in Toronto, Mitchell expects more conflicts – and crashes – between cars and bikes.
“We could very well be getting more tangle-ups in Toronto in the coming future [without] demarcated lanes keeping everybody separate,” he said. “Nine times out of 10, the bike is going to be the loser.”
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