Uninsured Vehicles Plague Roads in Barbados, Revealing High Risk for Accidents and Injuries

Amid public outrage over two deaths from hit-and-run drivers, major insurance companies have revealed a staggeringly high number of uninsured vehicles causing injury and death – between one in three and one in four vehicles on the road.

In the past six days, the number of road deaths this year doubled to eight from seven accidents. And one motor vehicle insurer comes across uninsured vehicles in one in every five accidents a month.

Available data shows that there are about 50 000 vehicles on the roads without insurance, according to the General Insurance Association of Barbados (GIAB).

GIAB president Randy Graham told Barbados TODAY that what is worse is that many other vehicles are not registered with the Barbados Licensing Authority and therefore are not captured in its estimates.

“The last count that we heard from them was 160 000, 170 000 vehicles on the road…could have increased again. So the gap really is the difference between how much we have insured and how much they have registered. So, if we have 150 000 and they got 170 000, 180 000, 200 000, that difference is what we suspect is the uninsured vehicles,” he said.

“The other component is that the Licensing Authority only has the ones that are registered with them. What we are seeing is that people are putting cars on the road without registration. If they are doing that, nobody has that number. And there is definitely a gap between what they have registered and what we have insured. So, that gap tells us how big the problem is. What we know for sure is that gap is widening, and that is our concern.”

Graham contended that uninsured vehicles which are involved in accidents cause harm to law-abiding individuals who buy insurance.

“If they get hit by somebody who [doesn’t] have insurance cover, it is on them to repair their vehicles and to deal with the injuries and so on. It is downright unfair,” he argued.

“The bulk of the problem financially ends up being at the persons who are law-abiding citizens.”

Graham could not provide a figure for industry-wide losses stemming from accidents involving uninsured vehicles. But one leading insurer put its losses so far at around $4 million.

“It is my experience that people that are involved in accidents with no insurance and/or no driver’s licence or expired driver’s licence, they are the ones who run from the scene of accidents,” Peter Harris, general manager and director of Consumers Guarantee Insurance (CGI), told Barbados TODAY.