My local insurance dictatorship...
 

Every year come riding season, all motorcycle riders are faced with the biggest kick in nuts. In my wonderful province, Manitoba(thats in Canada,for those who dont know:)) we do not have any kind of variety to choose who insures our bikes. All insurance is a government controlled monopoly and they dont give a shit about riders. They make us pay for 90% of our premiums over a 5 month period from May 1st to Sept 30th. The price that I have to pay for a 1998 Firestorm you ask?....$1,568. And thats at a 20% discount....and I dont live in the city either. If I did, which they consider a "higher risk", that price would climb to....even better....$2,340. The worst part about it is that we have no choice. They have the entire monopoly. Don't like the price? don't ride a bike they say. Its total bullshit.

Local bike dealers are starving because no one can afford to pay $12000 for a new sportbike, and then have to shell out 300-500 dollars a month just to keep in insured, alot of my old riding buddies cant ride because they just cant afford it. They also single out sportbikes in general too, every year my premiums go up, but cruiser riders ones don't, and they don't pay insane amounts, but still alot($2000 for a brand new Roadglide Harley, for example).

The best part...they had an external audit done on them, and guess what....they had a mysterious surplus of 300 million! People were pissed and now they were ordered to pay every person who had a vehicle insured last year 45% of their premiums paid. Needless to say I'll enjoy getting my check for $1300 dollars. Too bad i'll just be giving it back to them to keep my bike insured.

Thats all for me......had to get it off my chest....I could go on forever with this.

that's INSANE! How much annually does it cost to insure a car up there?

even in Canadian $ that sux! :-o

Right now I'm paying $1,568 for my Firestorm, $1,790 for a 06 Mazda3 GT, and $1,520 for a 06 Honda CRV per year.....all with a 20% discount. Makes me angry just thinking about it. I dont have as bad as someother people, my buddy pays $2,200 for his 08 Ducati 1098 and $1,800 for a 09 BMW K1300, in addition to his car and truck! Thats what happens when there is no competition, they can set any price they want, and you have to pay it, because you have no other choice.

That's more than a kick in the nutz it sounds like you donated them. Not to piss you even more but i pay $95.usd yearly on a 99. Sure it's not full coverage but whats the point on a bike that I've had since 02 and would bring 4k on a good day.

Can you registrate the bike in US and drive with US plates?

I agree, I pretty much have given them my left nut to keep my bike insured. The biggest piss off? Our neighbouring province, Saskatchewan, also has public, government controlled insurance and to if I lived there my bike would only cost around $600-$700 per year for full coverage. But you cant just register there and use their plates, you'd have to be a resident of there, with an address and all your vehicles would have to be too. Its getting to the point where people are getting really pissed off with our insurer. They got into hot water a month ago too for get this.....paying for rehab, giving lump sum injury payouts and all expenses for car theives who stole or knowingly riding in a stolen car and get into a wreck....and they dont even have a licence or insurance....how screwed up is that? And my mother in law gets t-boned by a F350, breaks multiple ribs, severe lung bruising and lacerates her liver and now has poor liver function because of it and what do they tell her???...."you'll have to prove that your liver isnt functioning and we're not going to pay you anything". It makes me so angry just thinking about these bastards.

That's horribly expensive. I didn't know Canada did govt insurance. I learn something new every day.

I pay just over $100 a year for insurance (just liability coverage), and I think that's fairly normal in the states (for our bikes) unless you opt for more coverage. Can't complain about that.

It's situations like this that are turning me more and more into a libertarian.

It also puts things into perspective for me when I inevitably go on my yearly rant about having to pay $14 for an emissions inspection on my car, even though they don't even check the emissions. At best they plug the car into their computer for a second, but last year they didn't even do that. I pulled up, they took my credit card, swiped it, gave me a receipt, and I was on my way ($14 poorer).

If anyone watches "Parks and Recreation" on TV, I feel like Ron Swanson who is a raging libertarian but happens to work for the government. I'm a walking oxymoron. I spend a lot of my day trying to figure out how to not spend any taxpayer money, but then I get paid with taxpayer money.

It's not govt controlled in all the provinces, just some, like mine. Makes me just want to up and move somewhere else. There's gonna be a party in the streets when they finally cave to public pressure and allow private insurers into the game. We dont even get any option of choosing different levels of insurance such as liability only...you either get everything, or you dont drive a registered vehicle.

Sounds like its time to move!

I wish it could be that easy.....if I didnt have a wife, new baby boy and a nice house with a great shop, I honestly think I would.

As a Junior High Social Studies teacher, if my students did not recognize this as a form of communism, I would be upset in my failure to accurately prepare them for society and its tragic consequences.

You guys up there should start building prison camps,..........................................yo ur gonna use them soon.

You know, I was just thinking (which is never good) . . .

I wonder how many of those in the states, who are currently for federal healthcare/insurance (i.e., obamacare), would be opposed to federal vehicle insurance? I bet it would be a significant portion.

I know it's not exactly the same thing, but it's the same principles at work.

On the government healthcare issue, I have to say, its not all that bad. It is nice to be able to go to the hospital with your pregnant wife, get in, have a baby, and leave not having to worry if insurance will cover it or not having insurance to cover it at all. Don't get me wrong, it does have its faults, wait times can be long and not everything is covered(ie, glasses, dental, therapy, prescriptions...all of which must be covered by private insurance) and there are people who abuse the system badly...I know this first hand as my wife is an ER nurse and brother is a radiologist. Actually they are talking about and some provinces have already adopted a pay for use system for those who can afford it and dont want to wait. I know my retired mother wouldn't have been able to afford her cancer treatments on a small pension without healthcare. There's always 2 sides to the coin. But our vehicle insurance system is flawed badly....Its not totally gov't controlled, they consider it a "public" corperation. Politics have no say in it, they can make suggestions to them, but as a corperation they can choose to do what they want. 30 years ago, we had private insurance, as some dumbass thought this would be so much better, and its been a monoploy for them ever since.

Does a motorcycle riders course help lower your costs?

Nope...but they did make it mandatory a few years back for anyone who wanted to get their bike licence, because they control everything that has to do with your drivers licence too!

In Alberta, it is not government controlled. For my 1998 Firestorm I pay the exact same as I did for my 2001 Ninja zx6r.... the paltry sum of $292 for full year coverage. I only have minimum insurance on it, so no theft, etc etc. In BC, my father in-law pays about $600 for six months of coverage.

My BMW will full coverage is $1200 with very low deductibles, and getting home insurance on top of the car insurance ended up saving me more than the cost of home insruance. Get home insurance to make car insurance cost less... wtf!!

Government insurance in Canada can f-off and die.