Insurers shed light on young driver policy at OTA meeting

TORONTO, (Oct. 20, 2004) — Trucking insurers recently attempted to answer an age-old question: How old do drivers have to be in order to qualify for coverage?

At an Ontario Trucking Association Safety Council meeting recently, a handful of insurance companies in attendance indicated that they all have policies which allow for insuring new drivers and that the “25 year-old threshold” isn’t carved in stone.

The OTA reports that the insurers said that any carrier hiring a younger driver right out of driving school needs to provide an adequate level of documented mentoring, training, etc., to show that the carrier practiced due diligence in the hiring process. The reason, they say, is to ensure that there is a legal defense available should this new driver be involved in an incident which results in significant damages being sought.

Legal actions for damages, once a primarily a U.S. phenomenon, are increasingly prevalent in Canada, and without sufficient evidence that the company did its due diligence in hiring and training the new driver, insurance companies are unwilling to accept the risk of insuring them without any legal defense being established.

Therefore, as long as appropriate due diligence has been done and documented, any new driver, regardless of age, should be able to get insurance, the companies said.

The insurance industry’s intervention in trucking operations has always been hotly debated. Moreover, some carriers wonder what the insurers deem to be “an adequate level of documented training.”

One of those truckers, Lori Martin, who runs a fleet of fewer than 10 trucks in Brantford, Ont., told Today’s Trucking earlier this year that she had to turn away a driver with a good record because he’d earned his licence at a driving school that didn’t meet the insurance company’s criteria.

A spokesperson for Markel Insurance admitted her company has a different underwriting protocol for smaller operations. “Where an operation does not have a bona fide fleet safety director with the ability to train, we prefer that they have only more experienced drivers,” she said.

To meet Markel’s standards as a recognized program, a school must be “three-way accredited” — they have to be an accredited facility, use accredited instructors, and delivering an accredited curriculum. Markel recognizes two accrediting bodies: CTHRC (Canadian Trucking Human Resources Council) and PTDI (Professional Truck Driver Institute).

Some smaller operations argue that not all good drivers graduate from the aforementioned programs, and the industry can’t afford to turn away such desperately-needed drivers who may not be able to afford programs such as CTHRC or PTDI.

However, many say there’s a point to the insurance companies’ policies. After all, insurers are the ones left to make the big payouts after a serious accident. Moreover, insurers must take matters into their own hands since the training industry in general has done a poor job at regulating and standardizing the output from the schools.