6. Vehicle or Car / Damage or loss

I am going back again to the application or proposal form to write about the three terms: Vehicle or car and damage or loss.

What is a vehicle? The term vehicle or car are used in the Private Car Package Policy application interchangeably. Anyone can have a picture of a vehicle or of a carin his mind. However, a picture of car or vehicle cannot be considered as definition. What is a vehicle? For example, one of the questions in the application form is: ‘date of purchase of the vehicle by the proposer while emphasizing the word vehicle. Yet, the title of the application is Private Car Package Policy.

I searched insurance dictionaries and earlier the policy wording with regard to the definition of the word vehicle or car. Both the words are not defined in Private Car Package Policy wording. Section 1 of the policy wording says loss or damage to the vehicle insured. What is a vehicle then? Vehicle excludes rubber, nylon, plastic parts, tyres, batteries, tubes and airbags as there is a huge depreciation on them. Fibre glass components,painting, wear and tear, mechanical or electrical breakdown, breakages are also excluded from Vehicle!

The question that was repeated many times in the article: What is a vehicle? The tyres, electrical circuit, the seats, the engine, the fibre glass components, airbags and batteries etc., are not a vehicle. When all these parts are combined in a harmonious manner, the vehicle comes into being. These parts on a standalone basis are nothing. The vehicle does not exist either in the seats or in the steering wheel or in the engine or in the tyres. The whole has parts. The parts do not have a whole! Yet our insurance companies list out what they do not insure in a car! When you are not insuring all parts of a car, how can it be said the car is being insured? What these insurance companies are doing is legalized cheating in the name of compulsory insurance.

Now the question is about loss or damage…which are very simple words. I was checking for the definition of these two words. The policy wording is silent about the definitions. I also refereed the dictionary of insurance terms regarding loss and damage. I found the following:

Loss – (1) The basis of a claim for damages under the terms of a policy. (2) Loss of assets resulting from a pure risk. Broadly categorized, the types of losses of concern to risk managers include personnel loss, property loss, time element loss, and legal liability loss.

Damages – money whose payment a court orders as compensation to an injured plaintiff. Fines, penalties, or injunctive relief would not typically constitute “damages.”

If you closely check, both these words have quite different meanings. The dictionary gives a different meaning altogether other than the meaning that is intended by thePrivate Car Package Policy.

These insurance people are experts in plucking the feathers on an egg. That is what is evident from the words – loss or damage. I ask you all – can there be a loss without damage? Or can there be a damage without loss? Damage and loss co-exist. In every loss there is a damage and vice versa. They are inseparable. If I were to take a book and tear off a page, is it a loss of page or damage to the book or is it both?

My anguish is having paid the premium, I am in a state of utter confusion. The given policy document does not offer any explanation whatsoever to the genuine questions that one may ask. Since motor insurance is a compulsory, no one cares to explain these terms. Well, if they are not written in the policy document who cares to explain? Billions of dollars are paid in premiums by the insureds every year in India. But for the compulsory law, I would not have taken the policy. Motor insurance is considered as social responsibility…our responsibility towards the society and none in the society know what these terms used in the policy stand for. Either the IRDAI and the insurance companies are too intelligent or the policyholders are dumb for paying the premium without asking questions. I only support the policyholders!

---