Where I live has some of the hightest rates for car insurance in Canada. It's actually scandalous and to the point where the provincial government came within a hair's breadth of losing the last election over the issue. The insurance companies claim they're getting whacked by huge payouts on accident claims and that's why we're getting soaked. Personally, my insurance rates aren't that bad (compared to some others) but I'm up for renewal in November and am dreading the "sticker shock".
What peeves me is that I don't drive my car that much any more, particularly in the summer and fall months. Now that the kids are back to school and there's no babysitting runs, the car can sit in the driveway for days on end. Both hubby and I commute by bike, run errands on the bike etc. The only time the car goes on a trip is basically when the destination is out of town.
I called the insurance company about rates for people who cycle commute (or use public transportation). To my way of thinking, our lifestyle considerably reduces our insurance company's underwriting risk. It's hard for my car to be involved in an accident when it's sitting in the driveway.
My insurance company: no dice. Never heard of such a thing.
I called a competing company. Well, they do have a reduced rate for people who don't commute by car. It's a $9 reduction, semi-annually -- not exactly a big bonus on a bill that easily runs over $1000.
The agent had a couple of minutes to chat so I asked him the whys and the wherefores. He agreed that cycle commuting did vastly reduce the insurance company's risk of underwriting but "if they had such a rate scheme, then everyone would do it". I pointed out that in that case, their payouts on accident claims would drop like a stone and more or less solve their payout problem for them. He agreed.
"Besides", I continued "do you think it would be such a bad thing if we suddenly didn't have a couple of zillion tonnes of hydrocarbons dumped into the atmosphere every day?"
His first comment had been that there was no way to ensure that only the low-usage customers got the benefit of the reduction but I thought that was easy enough to fix. Every year at renewal, I provide the insurance company with the odometer reading on the car. If I make a claim and the adjuster finds the odometer reading is out by 50000 km, then they just disown the policy.
It seems to me that this should be a fairly easy route to go but apparently I'm the only one. If nothing else, the whole situation rather kicks dirt at the insurance companies' claims that they base their rates on calculated risk factors and that the people more likely to cause an accident (lots of speeding tickets, convictions for impaired driving etc) are paying their share through higher premiums. It's pretty obvious that there are a lot of insurance premiums being subsidized by the very low use people.
I've thought about giving up the car completely but it's just not a practical option at this time.
Anyway, that's my rant.