A recent case where a Vancouver man was handed a fine for not insuring his e-bike when ICBC told him they didn’t cover the vehicle has at least one BC lawyer calling for clearer guidelines.
Speaking on The Jeff Andreas Show, Acumen Law’s Kyla Lee says there is a lot of confusion for drivers because they don’t understand the difference between things that are required to be insured, things that are actually insurable and things where you’re required to have a drivers license, but not have insurance.
“And those are actually three separate categories of vehicles with a fourth category being you don’t have to have a drivers license or insurance for certain types of electric bikes. And none of these regulations around this are made clear in any of the documentation produced by ICBC.”
Lee says even ICBC staff aren’t sure about what is always required. “If you call ICBC and you say ‘Oh I have this bike, do I need insurance or do I need a license?’ you’re going to get a different answer every time you call.”
“ICBC needs to update their policies. If they are not going to be insuring e-bikes then they need to change the Insurance Motor Vehicle Act so that insurance isn’t required for e-bikes so that people who are unable to purchase insurance aren’t punished because ICBC isn’t selling a product that it’s mandatory to obtain through them.”
Lee says a public education will also be a good idea. “So people are aware of what the different obligations are and what they need to know if they’re making that financial investment for e-bikes. This also applies to the e-bike companies because a lot of these companies market these bikes based on the fact that you don’t need a license or insurance and that might not actually be the case.”
