They're out to get us!

As THIS news item confirms, there is an increasing trend in British biking to exclude cover for pillions on insurance policies, unless it is specifically requested. Certainly, whenever I renew, I am always asked whether I intend carrying a pillion and the policy is calculated on the basis of my response. Is this fair? After all, on top of yearly mileage ceilings, requirements on garage storage and Thatcham-approved alarms, assurances on no modifications being made to the bike etc etc (all of which are seldom applied to four-wheeled transport), it seems as though the motorcycling public in the UK is being subjected to an ever increasing raft of restrictions when it comes to insuring our pride and joy.    

It's the pillion restrictions that interest me for this piece. Car insurance policies don't cost extra because you want to use your passenger seat, so why should a bike policy charge for taking a pillion passenger? Clearly it comes down to risk. The added weight and abnormal weight distribution of taking a pillion on many bikes can dramatically affect the handling and require better balance and throttle control by the rider. There is an art to pillion riding and in all honesty not many pillions get it right. We all know what it's like, if they don't know what to do then they're going to hold onto you like a vice, wiggle about, adjust jeans/skirt/seating position etc. And if its your fat lardarse mate you need to drop home then your balance is going to be buggered. Either way, the pillion has a superior capability to mess things up.

This is where the rider has to take the primary responsibility. I'd like a quid for the number of times I've seen sportsbikes riders take their birds on the back, dressed only in skimpy top, shorts and flip-flops - and then they piss about. Bloody madness - as THIS shows. It pains me to say it but bikers don't help themselves sometimes.

As far as (private) insurance companies are concerned, it is their role to analyse and assess risk and quote accordingly - and shock, horror, they are in business to make a profit, not just to get you legally on the road! So long as they don't breach discrimination laws, they can pretty much ask anything about the circumstances under which you wish to be insured (where you live, whether the bike is locked up, whether you have mods, how many miles you do, what you will use it for). In short, it is in the interests of the insurer to have as much information as possible about anything that is relevant to how likely you will be to claim.

As an individual, you are entering into a contract that has been agreed on the basis of the information the private insurers have a legitimate interest in. You are bound by the information that you disclose, and subject to breach of contract if even the slightest detail is incorrect. If you don't like the questions one insurer is asking (or, more likely, the price increases entailed by your honest answers to those questions), then it's a free market - find another insurer. If there isn't another one cheaper, then that's it - that's how much it is worth for them to insure you for what you want to do. Take it or leave it.

And yet, despite all of that, there is a nagging feeling that this is all part of a much wider plan - along with recent EU proposals - to price or restrict bikers off the road under cover of the safety argument. Roughly speaking, it should be the case that insurance premiums are set by estimating the total number of customers, the total number of claims and the average cost of each claim. It is further broken down by many factors that help insurance companies fine tune the risk equation such as driving history etc. Thus, if an insurance provider sees an disproportionate increase in claims or cost of claims in a certain catagory of course they are going to increase premiums or stop covering that particular catagory. However, as is highlighted in THIS piece, that doesn't tell the whole story. It seems to me that insurers are going after certain sections of the biking public - and the EU is coming after us all.....