Honda Insurance Company
HONDA INSURANCE COMPANY
ROUNDUP
HONDA BETS ON US
Motorcycle insurance has become more like the weather than even the weather. Everybody talks about it, nobody has done anything about it, and when it's bad, we bikers get soaked.
American Honda Motor Co. has plans to change that. The problem has been building for a long time. As prices in crease, so do the costs of fixing damaged bikes and replacing stolen bikes. Almost by definition, motorcycle riders and owners fall within a higher risk group, in terms of age and sex. As court costs and jury awards go up, so does the cost of defending your self, or even of collecting what's due you, in court.
Nobody is better at working with figures than insurance companies. They know a cost curve when they see one. Adding to that, we motorcyclists are not universally popular and it~s frequently hard to get insurance for your road bike. If you al ready insure a house and car, you have leverage. If you're a younger man, with no other business to offer, you can have trou ble, or pay too much. And if the bike's being bought on time, the dealer must protect himself by insisting on insurance we've all learned this the hard way.
So has Honda. They're in the business of selling motorcycles. When things get to the point that sales of motorcycles suffer be cause the cost of insurance takes an ever increasing share of the monthly payment. putting a new bike out of the reach of a man who wants one, Honda gets con cerned.
In this case Honda officials got con cerned enough to call a series of conferences and meetings. among com pany people. dealers, and insurance com oames.
Instead of passing the buck, each party began working on things they could do to hold down costs. If, say, new Hondas were built with theft alarms, or more convenient locks, bikes would be harder to steal and they'd get stolen less. If dealers sold repair parts to insurance companies at a discouht. the way most car agencies do for crashed cars, the price for insured repairs would go down. If dealers sold frames only when the buyer had a bashed frame to trade in, stolen bikes would be harder to register and thus less worth stealing. If insurance agents could charge less commission, they'd get more business. If an insurance company could coordinate this campaign, the myriad requirements of the regulatory bodies in the 50 ever-so-sovereign states could be better understood.
This gets terribly complicated. Prelimi nary work started several years ago and at this writing, the complete plan isn't ready yet.
We have been told the general outline. American Honda and the First American Insurance Co. are working out a way for Honda dealers to be in the insurance busi ness. Buyers of new bikes, and owners of old bikes, can buy coverage from the deal ers. In states where everybody except in surance agents are prohibited from selling insurance, the dealers and local agents will be helped in working out some system by which the Honda program will be useful to both as well as legal.
Sorry. no rosy forecasts. The men work ing out the details can't promise 40 percent savings for everybody. They expect most riders in most places will be able to save some, but they don't know how much and there may be cases in which the Honda program can't offer anything not already available.
For now, it's good to know that some body. especially a somebody of the size and influence of American Honda. is doing more than pass the blame.
