“Automatic Fines for Lack of OSAGO Policy: Ensuring Protection for Car Owners”

2023-05-11 13:03:28

The introduction of automatic fines from cameras for the lack of OSAGO policies will increase the protection of the property interests of conscientious car owners and will help reduce the cost of policies for them. Evgeny Ufimtsev, President of the Russian Union of Motor Insurers (RSA), announced this to Vedomosti.

An analysis of compensation payments conducted by the PCA shows that the proportion of drivers without OSAGO policies is estimated at 10.1%, he noted. Thanks to the launch of the project on cameras, it can be reduced. “Reducing the number of drivers without OSAGO policies will increase the protection of the property interests of the victim in an accident, whose car was damaged,” Ufimtsev said. Otherwise, respectable traffic participants who have auto insurance may suffer from a driver whose liability is not insured, the source emphasized.

“Unscrupulous car owners driving without OSAGO policies create an additional financial burden on those who buy compulsory “autocitizenship” policies,” the president of the PCA believes. Firstly, these are the risks of being injured in an accident, the culprit of which does not have OSAGO, and trying to recover damages from him through the courts, he says. It is much more difficult and more expensive than receiving an insurance payment from a company. Secondly, the cumulative damage caused by such unscrupulous car owners to the entire OSAGO system is inevitably distributed to all car owners, the expert believes.

The Central Bank, relevant ministries and insurers are discussing amendments that will allow drivers who have not issued OSAGO policies to be fined for violating traffic rules under a traffic camera and driving without insurance, Ilya Smirnov, director of the insurance market department of the Central Bank, said in an interview with RIA Novosti on May 11. If, when fixing a violation of traffic rules, the car will be additionally checked for the presence of an OSAGO policy, one can count on a decrease in these violations, he noted.

According to Smirnov, a working group has been set up to discuss the amendments. The mechanism of information interaction between the RAMI and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the feasibility of the amendments are being discussed with insurance market participants. The Central Bank, which does not have the right of legislative initiative, is assigned a coordinating role.

Driving without an OSAGO policy has indeed become a significant problem, especially in the regions, says Yury Uryukov, an expert at the Autonet infrastructure center of the NTI of the Moscow Polytechnic University. The state seeks to strengthen control over compliance with the traffic rules, according to which the driver must have an OSAGO policy with him. Various mechanisms are being worked out to control the availability of insurance for car owners, but so far it is impossible to say which of them will be more effective, the expert notes.

“The problem is in the OSAGO system itself, it works in our country with great difficulty. The annual increase in the price of the policy eats up all the benefits of accident-free driving. And, despite this, most often insurance does not cover even moderate repairs,” Uryukov told Vedomosti. This explains the fact that more and more drivers refuse OSAGO, preferring to pay a fine of 800 rubles. Or buy a deliberately fake policy on the “black market” for 1500-2000 rubles.

The innovation is unlikely to affect the cost of OSAGO policies, Uryukov believes. “Insurance companies will always lobby to increase the cost of policies. We see that high competition does not really stimulate them to make significant discounts,” he stressed.

Automatic control of the availability of the OSAGO policy for drivers with the help of cameras for fixing traffic violations has been discussed for a long time, but so far there have been technical difficulties for its implementation, auto lawyer Dmitry Slavnov told Vedomosti.

Such a measure, he said, could be an effective way to deal with uninsured cars. “For example, for taxi cars, the cost of insurance is very high and many drivers forge a policy. Whom should a passenger contact in case of an accident if there is no policy or is it fake? In this case, the passenger is unprotected,” the expert explained.

The interlocutor added that there is always the possibility of an error in automatically fixing offenses on the road, but any driver can appeal his fine within 10 days.

The introduction of a system of double fines is unlikely to force unscrupulous drivers to purchase insurance, says auto lawyer Konstantin Yurkov. According to him, many car owners avoid OSAGO due to the fact that insurance often does not cover the entire amount of damage in the event of an insured event. In addition, insurance companies often refuse to pay out on formal grounds, forcing their client to go to court. “Litigation is an additional cost and time. Many cannot stand it and prefer not to buy insurance at all,” the expert told Vedomosti.

In December 2022, the PCA proposed to increase the fine for driving a car without an OSAGO policy to 5,000 rubles. The PCA said that the current fine of 800 rubles. has not changed for 18 years and its size should be comparable to the cost of the policy. In April, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Aleksey Moiseev announced that the Finance Ministry supported increasing the fine for driving without an OSAGO policy to an “economically reasonable level.”

Earlier, the authorities proposed to temporarily increase the period of car repair under OSAGO from 30 to 45 days. With such a recommendation, the committee of the Federation Council on financial policy turned to the Ministry of Finance. How long the innovation will have to operate is not specified in the recommendations. In addition to extending the terms, the senators suggested that the Central Bank and the RSA update the unified reference books with prices for spare parts when calculating the cost of repairs more often than once a quarter, due to their high volatility in the market.

1683813371
#introduction #automatic #fines #lack #OSAGO #affect #car #owners

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.