It’s time to increase the amount of commercial vehicles’ liability insurance to alleviate the suffering of victims and their families, especially when there are fatalities.
To protect and properly compensate victims of similar incidents, Agri Party-List Rep. Wilbert Lee called on his colleagues to approve House Bill (HB) 8498, or An Act Increasing the Compulsory Third Party Liability Insurance (CTPLI) for Commercial Vehicles and Total Indemnity Claim for Death or Injury of Any Passenger, Third Party, or Pedestrian without the Necessity of Proving Fault of Negligence.
“The news can inform us about these road tragedies, but they do not show how much families suffer because of these accidental deaths,” Lee said in a news release on Sunday.
He recalled the death of a motorcycle rider who was decapitated after being hit by a truck along Edsa in Mandaluyong City on Wednesday morning.
The following day, a truck driver died and three others were injured when the truck collided with a passenger bus along the highway in Balaoan, La Union.
On the same day in Quezon province, a driver of a trailer truck loaded with two backhoes died when his vehicle fell into a ravine in the municipality of General Nakar.
“Ang masakit dito, nawalan ang mga pamilyang ito ng mga mahal sa buhay, tapos malalaman nila na PHP100,000 lang ang pwede nilang i-claim sa CTPLI at PHP15,000 sa no-fault indemnity (What’s painful here, these families already lost a loved one, yet they’ll learn that they can only claim PHP100,000 for CTPLI and PHP15,000 for a no-fault indemnity),” lamented Lee.
HB 8498 seeks to increase the amount of insurance claim for death or injury per accident to any passenger, third party or pedestrian without the necessity of proving fault or negligence from PHP15,000 to at least PHP1 million for any four-wheeled or more commercial motor vehicles designed to transport goods/cargoes and/or persons, with gross vehicle weight (GVW) of up to 4,500 kilograms (kg); or PHP2 million for any commercial motor vehicle designed to transport goods/cargoes and/or persons, with GVW of more than 4,500 kg.
“There is a difference in the amount of insurance claim because the likelihood of an accident increases with the commercial motor vehicle size,” Lee said.
HB 8498 also amends the definition of “passenger” in the Insurance Code to include those who have not yet purchased or have boarded the motor or motor vehicle and non-paying persons who are expressly authorized by law or by the vehicle’s operator or his agents to ride without fare.
The measure adds pedestrians, persons traveling by foot and mobility-impaired persons using wheelchairs on or near a roadway, to those who can claim insurance.
Lee said no amount of money can bring back a person’s life but if the bill is passed, accident victims and their families would have sufficient indemnity. (PNA)