Commute – Do you need Insurance

Had a conversation with someone at work this morning who noticed my bike in the foyer.
A small but amicable discussion ensued about cyclists blasting thru red lights and ‘if’ they hit anybody, and the accident was the cyclist fault, they wouldn’t be carrying insurance.

My question is – if we are cycling on the roads do we require to have insurance incase of an accident ?

Not required to by law no but third party insurance is available from CTC/BC etc.

No, you don’t ‘need’ insurance.

If you join CTC, you get it as part of the membership if you want some insurance

‘if’ they hit anybody, and the accident was the cyclist fault, they wouldn’t be carrying insurance.

But that wouldn’t prevent the driver (or the driver’s insurance company) claiming for damages off the cyclist.

Is it possible to insure yourself for injury whilst biking (commuting)?

Not possible to insure yourself, to be an insurance body you need to have cash way in advance of any possible claim – so to start as a car insurance company you have to have the backing of hundreds of millions IIRC.

If you have a house, you might have personal liability insurance as part of your home insurance. But, you’re not required to have insurance to ride a bike on the road.

You could knock somebody over while running for a bus, so should probably also consider having pedestrian insurance. Or you could fail to hold a door open for someone and it culd break their nose.

Sounds like you are looking at some form of personal liability insurance.

I have no idea if such a policy exists though.

What miketually said – it’s often part of your home contents insurance.
I think I’ve got something like £2,000,000 3rd party liability cover on mine.

A small but amicable discussion ensued about cyclists blasting thru red lights and ‘if’ they hit anybody, and the accident was the cyclist fault, they wouldn’t be carrying insurance.

If you continue that argument you could say that pedestrians should have insurance too, as they’re just as capable of causing an accident as the rest of us.

An alternative view is that having insurance encourages folk to sue.

As a nurse I now carry insurance as part of my union membership but until the last few years it was the policy of my union not to insure members so as not to encourage folk to sue individual nurses.

My home insurance gives personal liability cover. To be sure I checked it did indeed cover using the bike on and off road and I was told it was absolutely fine. I got them to make a record of the conversation to be on the safe side..

Is it possible to insure yourself for injury whilst biking (commuting)?

Of course. You could buy health insurance, AD&D, personal injury, sickness and disability insurance, personal accident etc

As has been mentioned above several times, the usual line that "cyclists don’t have insurance" is a complete load of baloney. Most cyclists do have insurance under their household insurance policy. This gives you 3rd party cover for most things – the only normal exclusion which would affect most people being for driving motor vehicles, which tells you something about how the insurance companies view the relative likelihood of causing injury/damage whilst cycling or driving!

TJ, are you suggesting that we join a commuters’ union? 😉