Comments on: Arrowtown, Wanaka and Fairlie

By: Mosher

Mosher — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 01:20:00 +0000

You do have to ask if ACC is fair, as some people won’t drive and therefore won’t be at fault for most motoring accidents (jaywalking notwithstanding).

However, I’m sure ACC covers more than just auto accidents? Also, the whole society here seems less litigious.

By: robd

robd — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 01:16:00 +0000

One other reason in NZ for low insurance premiums is ACC, a compulsory government run insurance scheme, you pay 1-1.5% of earnings and get back any medical or loss of earnings (within reason) when you are involved in an accident, so theres no massive personal injury claims like for whiplash etc.

The majority of people do have car insurance because its cheap, your average 15 year old scoob STi driver wont tho.

By: Mosher

Mosher — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 01:05:00 +0000

The other thing they do well is effectively run a monopoly on certain types of insurance. There’s no need for competition in motoring insurance in the UK, for instance, as it’s mandatory. Likewise house insurance if you have a mortgage.

I like NZ for them not making motoring insurance mandatory. Premiums here are a lot lower, although there are huge numbers of people who decide just not to bother as they don’t need it. Mind you, that’s the same situation as in the UK anyway. It just costs you a lot more back home to be “legal” than it does here.

By: Dewi Morgan

Dewi Morgan — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 09:45:00 +0000

I can understand the bamboo rafting thing.

Our guide, when I went rafting, said they lose people to rafting fairly regularly, in the rainy season - which sounds I admit like the usual "scare the tourists so they think that what they're doing is more dangerous and exciting than it really is"...

Like you said, the river was easily fordable in places even by hydrophobic hamsters, but the walls of the gorge told a different story about the rainy season. Large treetrunks and heaps of driftwood three metres over our heads.

And he claimed that, yes, people do raft on the river in the rainy season. Hence the deaths.

If that's true, it would explain the higher premiums. Unlike bungee jumping, parachuting, snowboarding and so on, bamboo rafts don't seem to come with any kind of harnesses, safety guys, on-hand medics, danger ratings, etc. Which is a bit like taking untrained snowboarders/skiiers onto an unrated slope in the wilderness.

I generally trust insurance companies (ok, "trust" is far too liberal a word) to know how to make money, and how to keep it. They make money by making sales, which means making their prices competitively low. They keep money by not covering the stuff they expect to pay for, or charging more for those things.

But yeah, charging a premium outside rainy season is still silly.