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Contributed by: Allan Kirk - New Zealand Motorcycle Safety Consultants
MegaRider.Com
Will paying $275 to register your bike after 1 June 2002 make you happy?
But that\'s nothing!
In a year or two or three you are likely to be paying over $600?
Is this likely?
Regrettably, YES !
. 1. The ACC portion of the registration fee is going up to $217.50 on the 1st of July, 2002. That brings the total motorcycle registration fee to over $275.
2. The ACC Minister has also pointed out that at this level \'.motorcyclists will still only fund 35% of the total cost of injuries from motorcycle accidents.\'
So there\'s still room (and we believe, the inclination) to increase the motorcyclist\'s levy to over $600 when the time is ripe.
What\'s behind this?
Motorcyclists and car drivers used to be in the same ACC levy group and both used to pay the same levy.
About 20 years ago there was a move to separate motorcyclists out of the ACC class for car drivers into a separate ACC class for motorcyclists so that they could be levied a separate, and larger fee.
At that time a massive protest ride as organised through Wellington to Parliament. Riders came from as far away as Auckland. When the Parliamentarians saw the level of protest, the suggestion to separate out motorcyclists was dropped.
Some ten years later, about ten years ago, the Rt. Hon. Bill Birch, the then ACC Minister, did sign the motorcyclists into a separate class with just a small increase in the ACC levy. Gossip of the day reported that Birch was persuaded to do this by the ACC on the grounds that with only a small increase there wouldn\'t be too much opposition, and then later, when any fuss had died down, more substantial increases could be imposed.
That\'s where we are now. A much more substantial increase (nearly $79.00 - about 57%) has been imposed.
But what can we do about it?
Firstly, if we want to ride legally, we\'ll have to pay that outrageously punitive ACC levy.
But if we wish to stop the ACC in their tracks we must make our feelings and concerns known to the Minister and her parliamentary colleagues - this is, after all, an election year.
1 You can write to the Minister, and any Member of Parliament, at Parliament Buildings, Wellington, without using a stamp on the envelope or postcard.
2 You can write to your local Member of Parliament and anyone standing for Parliament in the election.
3 You can phone any or all of your local candidates and/or go to their meetings, ask questions, talk with them and tell them what you think.
4 You can fax the Minister at 40-495-8436.
5 You can e-mail the Minister at Leanne Dalziel
6 You can fax and/or e-mail any Member of Parliament - phone their local offices and get the numbers and addresses.
7 You can phone the Minister\'s office at 04-470-6562 although it is doubtful if you will get to speak to her personally.
As proven twenty years ago, Parliamentarians take notice of a lot of angry and provoked people. The challenge right now is to create a virtual demonstration using e-mail and other means of communication rather than an actual ride to Parliament Buildings. So many people march on Parliament these days that Parliamentarians are getting blase about these events.
So, it is VERY important to e-mail or write to the Minister. The ACC people have made up their corporate minds and aren\'t going to take any notice of anything you have to say. So far, they have persuaded the Minister to go along with them.
Our job now is to persuade the Minister to listen to us, the people who elected her, the public, and not to the ACC guys who beaver away in their ivory towers remote from the real world.
What should be our objective in writing to the Minister?
There are two main ones and probably others you can think of.
The first we see is to persuade the Minister that she should take much less notice of the slanted advice given to her by the ACC and her advisers. She must be made to realise that the advice from the ACC is largely divorced from the real world in so far as it relates to motorcycles and their riders.
We must persuade the Minister that the ACC\'s one-eyed monetary take on the collection of ACC levies is not the correct one to take.
The second objective is to persuade the Minister to re-combine motorcycles and cars into the one class so far as the ACC vehicle levy is concerned. If her predecessor, Bill Birch, could separate them at the stroke of his pen, the present Minister, Hon Lianne Dalziel, can reverse that action equally easily. Re-combining motorcycles with cars would mean that the ACC levy would be the same as that for cars (which is a lot less than motorcycles right now). It would also make it impossible for the ACC ivory tower theoreticians to suggest motorcyclists should be singled out and penalised so viciously, unfairly, and rudely in the future.
Its entirely up to you to decide what approach you want to take. Feel completely free to use the data in these pages to support whatever case you wish to make.
What can you say ?
THE CLAIM THE ACC IS A \"NO FAULT\" BUSINESS
Whenever the ACC is challenged because the costs, to it, of motorcyclists\' injuries are largely caused by other road users and roading organisations, and over their insistence that motorcycles are a separate class of road user and therefore ultimately responsible for covering the cost of their injuries, they, the ACC, reply that their\'s is a \'no fault\' organisation.
The message is that it would be unreasonable, if not impossible, to attribute fault to the vehicles which cause those injuries because doing so would \'punish\' their owners and drivers.
In fact this is a far-fetched interpretation of the Accident Insurance Act 1998. The preamble to the Act reads \'An Act to maintain a no fault, comprehensive, insurance-based scheme to rehabilitate and compensate ........ those persons who suffer personal injury ....\'. Clause 7 of the Act specifies that \'This Act continues a \'no fault\' accident compensation scheme to provide statutory entitlements for all persons .. who suffer personal injury ..\'. These two extracts make it clear that the \'no fault\' provision applies to the persons who suffer injury, not to those who pay an ACC levy.
In other words, all persons covered by the Act who suffer an injury, will be paid compensation regardless of whether they are \'at fault\' or not. To put it another way, if you are injured while you are covered by the Act, you will be paid compensation even if you were breaking the law, were careless, negligent, thoughtless or \'at fault\' in any other way. The \'no fault\' principle applies to the injured persons, not to the payment of premiums.
Beyond that, it doesn\'t seem to have occurred to the ACC that it is essentially unfair to charge motorcyclists for the costs of injuries suffered through crashes caused by other vehicles.
In effect this is saying to motorcyclists \'If you are silly enough to ride a legally registered motorcycle on a legally designated road in accordance with the road code, and if you are then injured by another vehicle being driven illegally (contrary to the road code) then you can pay a huge levy for your completely legal action which ended in your injury\'. Weird, isn\'t it?
All this adds up to the fact that the ACC: Ø Thinks it is \'punishing\' other road users if they are required to pay a very slightly increased levy because they injure motorcyclists; Ø Doesn\'t think it is \'punishing\' motorcyclists for being injured by other road users who aren\'t obeying the road code, and then having to pay a very large (over 43%) increased levy for the privilege; and Ø Interprets \'no fault\' in their Act as applying to the size of a levy as well as to the clearly intended application to the injured person.
A local Member of Parliament, who asked the ACC Minister about these concerns, reported back, somewhat shamefacedly, that the Minister\'s \'answer\' was that \'the money has to be collected to pay for treating the injuries\'.
It seems that the ACC and the Minister\'s advisers are so locked into a rigid pattern of thought that they can\'t see the obvious even when its pointed out to them.
There are, in round figures, two million (2,000,000) cars registered in New Zealand and, again in round figures (according to the Motor Registration Centre at the end of 2001) forty thousand (40,000) road motorcycles registered in New Zealand. An increase of close to $80.00 per motorcycle equals an increased income to the ACC of 80.00 x 40,000 = $ 3,200,000. $3,200,000 divided by the total of registered cars and motorcycles - 2,040,000 = a bit under $1.60 per vehicle, car and motorcycle.
Do you think this would be a fairer approach, and more in line with the Prime Minister\'s emphasis on fairness, than the present punishing increase of just under $80.00 per motorcycle?
All that has to be done to achieve this is for the Minister to sign a piece of paper re-combining cars and motorcycles into one class for the purposes of the ACC levy.
5. THE ISSUE OF CROSS SUBSIDISATION The ACC has made a point that the present situation involves cross-subsidisation of motorcyclists\' injuries by other (largely car drivers) road users. \'Cross subsidisation\' is a bureaucratic and political code for \'wrong\', \'improper\', \'unfair\' or even \'evil\'.
From all the data provided above it is clear that it is difficult, if not impossible, clearly to differentiate in detail between the crashes which are the fault of a motorcyclist and those which are the fault of another road user.
In general, of course, as has been shown very clearly, at the very least, half the costs of all motorcyclists\' injuries are the result of another road user failing to keep to the road code, not to mention poor road maintenance and the use of dangerous roadside barriers and fittings, such as Armco barriers.
From one point of view, with about two million cars on the road and only forty thousand motorcycles, at least some car drivers must be actively hunting for motorcyclists to run down.
The ACC and her advisers may even persuade the Minister to propose that motorcyclists should pay a levy equivalent to fifty percent of the costs of treating the injuries suffered by motorcyclists on the basis of the above data. In reality those data show that at least something more than 50% of the injury costs to motorcyclists are due to other road users, etc. Beyond that it is also clear that the infrastructure available to collect the data will not be accurate to more than plus or minus 10%, with sufficient reliability, to allocate responsibility for injury costs. This leaves us with the fact that between 60% and 80% of the costs of motorcyclists\' injuries are due to other road users, not to mention the fact that so many motorcyclist injuries are caused by motorcyclist-unfriendly roading.
Further to that, the \'user pays\' principle, which has been around for the best part of a couple of decades now, has, in that time, been expanded to include both \'the polluter pays\' and \'the person who causes the problem pays\'.
Whilst the motorcyclists have \'caused\' some of the problem (of injuries which have to be paid for to be fixed), it\'s the other road users etc who have caused the majority of those costs - who caused (the majority of) the problem, and who should, according to this principle, which is widely used in local Government, pay.
The only reasonable and responsible response to these data is for the minister to re-combine cars and motorcycles into the one group for purposes of the ACC road user levy.
The influence of motorcyclists and car drivers on each other is of such a complex, convoluted and intricate nature that separating the two, in terms of responsibility for crashes and injuries, with the current availibility of data, cannot achieve a level of reliability which will be satisfactory.
Re-combining motorcycles and cars, as advocated above, is a properly fair, intelligent and coherent answer to motorcyclists\' and the ACC\'s concerns over the levy.
Motorcyclists Please Act Now!
We are looking for riders interested in helping in this campaign against the ACC levies.
We need you to tell all the bikers you know about the problem and encourage them to write to the Minister, their local MP, and even the Prime Minister.
We also need local helpers who are willing to help other bikers write letters (some bikers may not know quite where to start) - maybe you could draft up a couple of standard letters and let the motorcyclists put in their own starting paragraph (we don\'t want form letters sent).
If you can help out in the second area, contact ALAN KIRK
This is a serious problem. We MUST do something about it.
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