Lowering auto insurance rates doesn’t involve “rocket science,” Alberta Premier Ralph Klein scoffed last week. To prove his point, he vowed to sit his MLAs down together in the same room one day soon to lower rates for 80% of Alberta drivers. His ideal is one-size-fits-all insurance. “What we want to achieve is comparable levels of premium payments for the middle of the pack so to speak . . . you, me.”
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London’s green streets
One year ago this week, London began to charge private automobiles and commercial vehicles £5 ($12.50) a day if they either entered or left its downtown core between 7 a.m. and 6:30 pm. The reviews of this unprecedented experiment – designed to reduce traffic jams in one of the most heavily congested cities in the world – are now in, and they’re rave. The pundits who almost all predicted disaster are red-faced. London has cracked gridlock and unlocked economic efficiencies.
Kangaroo court
Wednesday, Nov. 5: “We’ve been impressed by your recent columns on auto insurance in the Post,” the insurance industry’s public affairs rep tells me over the phone. “Would you be willing to go to Fredericton next week and offer your views at a luncheon?” Thus began my adventure into the zany workings of lawmaking in New Brunswick.
2 Fast 2 Cheap
Canada’s private automobile insurance companies gouge almost all their customers. But there are exceptions.
Americans love their car . . . insurance
U.S. auto insurance is not only fairer, it’s cheaper, thanks to free enterprise. Politicians and other advocates of state control should keep that in mind.
Pay-per-minute auto insurance
Pay-per-minute automobile insurance — a new approach that a major U.S. insurance company has tested in the Texas market — is a hit with consumers. On average, the hundreds of Houston-area drivers who signed up are saving 25%, and some — those who don’t drive much, or who are insuring a lightly driven second or third car — are saving up to 50% over what they had been paying for traditional automobile insurance.
Road safety
Next month, a coroner’s inquest will investigate one of Canada’s worst-ever highway calamities – the fiery 84-vehicle crash last September on a stretch of the 401 between Windsor and London. That stretch, which took 8 lives on that occasion and many others before and since, is dubbed Death Alley. Other stretches on other Canadian highways have names like Killer Road. All told, 3000 Canadians lose their lives to traffic accidents each year.
Coming soon to a subway near you: Part 4
The 20th century has been ruled by the automobile; the future belongs to urban transit. Continue reading Coming soon to a subway near you: Part 4
Coming soon to a subway near you: Part 3
The 20th century has been ruled by the automobile; the future belongs to urban transit. Continue reading Coming soon to a subway near you: Part 3
Coming soon to a subway near you: Part 2
The 20th century has been ruled by the automobile; the future belongs to urban transit. Continue reading Coming soon to a subway near you: Part 2
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