Caribbean Car Insurance – Devil In The Detail
By Peter Polack
Peter Polack
One of the many regular bills oppressing Caribbean people after electricity and water is car insurance.In this there is no wine,women and song just payment or you end up before the court.
It is a recurring mystery to any well thinking member of the criminal legal profession why failure to insure your vehicle,usually because of failure to pay from dire circumstances, should lead a person in desperate need of employment to have multiple absences from their job to attend court before facing a financial penalty for which they have no reasonable expectation of paying.
The two greatest evils facing a poor person desperately holding on to a job are a financial penalty when there is no money to pay as well as absences from the workplace that will inevitably descend into unemployment.
Perhaps the answer is a means test for convicted persons with a proportional levy and time that reflect their circumstances. Not the robotic issue of fines without any basis in reality.
We then look up to the sky like Pippi Longstocking to wonder where did all the crime and social unrest come from.
Simple. Overburden the downtrodden then hold your breath.
Baby steps.
One solution start is that of private car insurance in the Caribbean which impacts all the upwardly mobile which is pretty much,everybody. The Wild Wild West of the business sector only shows its head when an insurance company unexpectedly closes or some vehicular accident victim, dead or alive, is uncompensated.
This is only worsened by the exasperation of consumers with car finance which requires expensive comprehensive insurance for those with fixed income such as government employees.
Tight finances requiring time to pay leading to a second expense penalty because your are unable to pay cash.
The old game of last lick as you stand, befuddled.
One common sense answer lies in Canada with many of it’s provinces having compulsory, government owned and operated car insurance. Yes, no plethora of private car insurers like the privateers of old.
In Manitoba, the single province insurer provides a premium based on your details and amazingly, settles all claims in house. The end result is not only omni coverage but reasonable premiums with all claims settled promptly. A Caribbean dream.
It may take Caribbean governments time to take a small step into a big future but there it is, ready,willing and able. Guyana is the most likely candidate to dance first given its recent and unique cash distribution otherwise a glimpse into the future.
It could happen.
Notes
https://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100516/business/business7.html
Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer in the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.
