The Supreme Court has suggested creating a special fund to compensate three categories of vehicle accident victims who are usually short-changed by insurance firms.
First, there are those hurt or killed in hit-and-run accidents, where the offending vehicle can not be traced. Second, come those who have accidents while driving vehicles whose insurance had lapsed and was not renewed. Third are those who, by pure chance, happen to be traveling in a vehicle that meets with an accident: if, for instance, they had taken a lift from an unknown driver. (the court calls them ‘gratuitous passengers). Hearing the case filed by Jai Prakash, a motor accident victims against the National Insurance company, the court said the fund’s corpus could be built up by imposing a new cess on petrol or a one-time tax o/n every new vehicle sold.
A three-judge Bench also had a slew of other suggestions to help these accident victims. The clause relating to ‘third party insurance’ could be amended, it proposed to include all others, apart from the owner, involved in the accident, to take care of gratuitous passengers too.
It instructed the state director general of police to ensure that an ‘accident information report’ is sent to the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal within a month of the FIR being registered.
Published in The Insurance Times, February 2010
