Cedric Stephens | The economic costs of motor crashes

The Government enacted The Dogs (Liability for Attacks) Act in 2020. It imposes a legal duty on dog owners to exercise management and control of their animals. This is to ensure that they do not cause injury in public places.

Persons convicted of offences under the law are subject to fines of $500,000, or $1 million, or $3 million. The law was speedily passed in the wake of a series of horrific incidents that resulted in injuries, some of them fatal.

According to the Jamaica Information Service, the House of Representatives passed, on December 10 this year, a series of regulations governing the nomination, selection, and appointment of persons to the boards of public institutions. The measures are intended to improve the supervision of these entities and eliminate perceptions of corruption. They were passed after questions were raised about the governance of some public bodies. Government and opposition members unanimously supported the new regulations.

STILL TRAUMATISED

Motor vehicle accidents occur daily. Some result in multiple fatalities in addition to property damage. Persons who have had the misfortune to have been involved in crashes that resulted in injuries and/or property damage and their families often discover, when they are still traumatised, that the amounts payable as compensation under motor insurance bear no resemblance to costs, expenses, property, and/or court awards in the real world. The social and economic costs of these crashes are not collected by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica.

Twelve years ago, in ‘Time is ripe to overhaul the motor insurance compensation system’, I cited the case of Linford Jackson, a crash victim. He was one of ‘scores of persons in the Rio Grande Valley whose lives were disrupted by dysfunctions in the motor vehicle injury compensation system’. He nearly lost his left leg while travelling as a passenger in a market truck. He had hopes of getting an insurance pay-out to help ease his pain and suffering and help to rebuild his life.

Ten years later, those hopes remained dashed. “The insurance say dem no business,” he was quoted as saying.

The Motor Vehicles Insurance (Third-Party Risks) Act became law nearly 83 years ago. The country gained its independence nearly 23 years after that legislation came into effect. Yet our lawmakers have done very little to revise it despite substantial growth in the number of vehicles on our roads and our citizens mainly, who are being killed and injured daily.

I viewed a video last week that was produced on behalf of the Ministry of Transport & Mining. In addition to featuring photographs and speeches by the minister, and the head of the Island Traffic Authority, it contained information about a driving simulator. The device, which consists of controls that are typically found in vehicles, a monitor or screen, and computer software, allow the driver to practise as though he, or she, were commanding a real vehicle under different situations. It will be used to assess the readiness of learner drivers for the road test to gain an official driving permit.

This is a good move when examined in the context of the changes that have been made to the road network, the imminent replacement of the Road Traffic Act with new regulations, improvements to the law enforcement infrastructure, and most importantly, the need to significantly reduce the number of traffic accidents.

Kudos notwithstanding, is it too much to ask the officials in this ministry, or is it the Ministry of Justice, to increase the current (colonial) limits for personal injury and property damage under the Motor Vehicles Insurance (Third-Party Risks) Act? Three years ago, I compared the limits that apply under Jamaican law with those of some of our neighbours (see chart). Ours was at the bottom of the list.

SCANDALOUSLY LOW

The value of the lives of Jamaican citizens, to the extent that these limits in the law reflect the monetary value of the life of an average citizen, is scandalously low. In the United Kingdom, in contrast, the minimum amount that is payable in that country for a toe injury that occurred because of a crash is the equivalent of $934,321 (£4,500) while the maximum is $9 million (£44,000).

Section (6) of the Jamaican law reads: “The Minister may, by order, subject to negative resolution, amend Subsections (2), (3) and (4) of this section and Subsection (1) of Section 7 [the sections that set the limits] to change the amounts specified therein, so, however, that such order shall not affect the validity of policies or securities in force at the date of commencement of the order until and unless such policies or securities are renewed after the date of commencement aforesaid.”

A negative resolution is a parliamentary procedure. In this case, the secondary legislation, the increase in the limits, passes into law automatically.

Put simply, according to my research, all it involves is paperwork that could be done by a first-year student at Norman Manley Law School. What are the reasons for the inaction? Can’t we walk and chew gum? Once again, Barbadian lawmakers have left their local counterparts in the dust.

Cedric E. Stephens provides independent information and advice about the management of risks and insurance. For free information or counsel, write to: aegis@flowja.com or business@gleanerjm.com