I suspect this will come as a surprise to no-one but I really dislike insurance. That’s not to say I don’t want it: If I were in an accident or had my beloved Daytona stolen, I’m sure they’d be one of the first people I called and once they paid up, i’d be singing their praises. Probably. Well, possibly…

No, the problem to me is that the government says you have to have insurance to ride (at least in Canada and the UK). For the record, I don’t think that’s wrong, although it really is just another road tax. It’s just the way they do it: The decree that you have to have road tax and then do little to regulate the industry that provides it.

So, what’s prompted this outburst? I just tried to renew my insurance for my Daytona. Actually, I’ve been doing this for a while. My previous insurance was quoting me a fairly hefty hike in rates for this year (or so I thought, anyway) and so I decided to call around and see what I could find. I spoke to a very nice agent during February and got a decent quote, although I let him persuade me to wait a month to activate it. I know he was only trying to help and at the time, it was pretty good advice; after all, he forewent commission for a month, but recently when it came time to send him a check, he re-ran the numbers. $1200 had suddenly become $2700. He was very apologetic (as you would expect) and promised to sort it out. A few days later, I still hadn’t heard from him despite a couple of voicemails and emails. I finally managed to get through to him the other day and he still tells me it’s being sorted out and not to worry, but in the meantime I’m looking out the window and seeing what is perhaps the first decent riding week of the year go by.

Yesterday he calls me back, just to let me know there is no further progress but that doesn’t help me. So cap in hand, I went back to my former insurance agent and asked if that old rate was still good. Joy of joys it is and a sale was made. At 11:13am this morning I finally got on a bike for the first time this year and made merry for the next hour. Well, I would if my hands weren’t so damn cold…

But back to my point. It may sound like I am pissed at the agent: I’m certainly not, and I dare say I will give him my dirt bike insurance and maybe the new bike I am still sorta-kinda-thinking about getting (and by that I mean will be ready for delivery next week). No, the reason I’m not pissed about him is that I talked to him and quite a few other agents too. They all told me the same. Their underwriters jacked up the prices and they’re only reselling those policies and so have to follow suit. But my man on the inside also told me how the industry worked. It seems that the cost of an insurance policy is determined in Canada by assigning codes to bikes – VICC codes I think he called them. And it seems this year that anything remotely resembling a bike with decent performance has had it’s codes pushed through the roof. Most sportbikes are now at least twice as expensive and that now seems to include nakeds too. The notable exception to this rule seems to be Sport Tourers and (surprise surprise) cruisers. Has no-one seem the ZZR-1400? Sure, it has panniers, but it also has about 160bhp.

I know the arguments that are made: Its the kids. they buy over powered sports bikes and crash them, jacking up the prices for everyone. Personally, I’m not sure I buy that any more as I played with some online quotes. Whilst this is far from scientific, it seemed that my age or how long I’d had my license for played very little role in moving my rates. The only thing that did was choosing a cruiser or a tourer.

And this is my beef: In the real world, shouldn’t my being 36 qualify me for a better rate? Shouldn’t the fact I hold a motorcycle license in three countries and have been riding for over fifteen years get me a discount of some kind? Or maybe it did and what I am seeing is a systematic if underhand campaign to remove sportsbikes from our roads. You can call me paranoid if you want, but I think there’s something to it and we should all be writing letters to our MPs, dealers and other bodies to try and understand why

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