Is Ontario Anti-Motorcycle?

Motorcycle insurance in Ontario has always thrown me for a loop.  To emphasize that strangeness the Toronto Star recently printed a searing indictment of Ontario's motorcycle insurance policies.   In it a rider who has been out west (California and B.C.) comes back to Ontario to experience the disastrous way Ontario does things.  He suddenly finds his $2-300 a year insurance rates multiply by ten to well over two thousand dollars a year, for the same bike!

In breaking down Ontario insurance he discovers some discrepencies that appear to be practically criminal:

"My motorcycle was assessed as if it was new — $20,000. But if I have a crash and the 12-year-old bike is destroyed, will I receive $20,000? Of course not. The payout would be more like $4,000 or $5,000. For the insurance companies in Ontario, this must the gift that keeps on giving."


So, you're insured on a new bike no matter what, but you're only paid as little as possible on the back end.  That's the kind of quality fairness that exemplifies Ontario's approach to insuring motorcycles.

When I called in to see what a second bike would cost to insure I was told that another bike would essentially double my insurance.  I pointed out that I could only ride one at a time and having two would mean both would have fewer kilometres than a single bike.  They just smiled and said that's the way it is.  If you read that Toronto Star article you have to be asking yourself, "why is this the way it is?"

Last year we went out to B.C. and discovered that my wife could easily rent a scooter with a G license and go for a ride around Victoria.  We had a fantastic time and she came closer to considering two wheels as a mode of transport, but not in Ontario.

To ride a scooter in Ontario you need to take courses and work your way through the graduated motorcycle license.  Ontario is determined to keep people off two wheels even if it is a much more efficient way of getting around.

The block is systemic, from insurance practices that are out of sync with the rest of North America (and the planet) to governmental regulations that are more focused on milking citizens for license money than they are on offering access to an environmentally friendly, efficient and exciting way to get around.  Ontario couldn't help but become more efficient with more people hoping on scooters and motorbikes to get where they're going, but that isn't the vision.  Ontario isn't about environmental consideration, efficiency or excitement.

Free parking, but Ontario makes riding
so difficult to access that it's empty.

How un-bike focused is Toronto?  On my recent trip down there I could use HOV lanes and park for free downtown, but the bike parking area was virtually empty.

After reading that Star article I'm thinking that Ontario is anti-motorcycle.  The government supports an insurance industry out of whack with the rest of the world and throws as many blocks as it can at riding.  Ontario may be the most over licensed and expensive place to insure a bike in the world.

Below I looked up costs randomly in the US and the UK and Ontario is way out of whack with the the results.  If I lived five hundred kilometres south of here in urban Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (instead of in rural Ontario), I'd be paying about $295 Canadian for my insurance this year (that's with equivalent policy).  I currently pay almost $900 a year on a twenty year old bike that I bought for eight hundred bucks.  A second bike in PA would cost me an additional hundred bucks, so I'd be paying about $400 a year for both.  In Ontario I'm paying three times that.

When I first started riding I considered a new bike for safety reasons.  When I requested a quote on a new Suzuki Gladius (a 650cc, mid sized, standard motorbike), I was quoted at about $3000, but most insurers just refused to offer coverage - this on a guy in his forties, married with auto and home insurance and a family.  Had I been in England I could have quickly been insured with equivalent coverage AND road support and bike transport in a breakdown for about $950 Canadian in my first year of riding.

Considering the blocks to access on basic scooters and the insurance madness, Ontario isn't maybe anti-motorcycle, it's systemically anti-motorcycle.

Inside Motorcycles had a good article on the benefits of integrating motorcycles and scooters into a coherent traffic plan.
It would be nice if Ontario followed the research and encouraged more people onto two wheels.

My buddy in Japan got back to me - he pays $161 a year in motorcycle insurance... in Japan, one of the most expensive places to live in the world!

LINKS

Just to torture myself I got a quote from Progressive as if I lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - my stats, my bike.  The cost for basic insurance was $75 a year.  To get Ontario equivalent insurance it went up to $226 a year.

Are you feeling the love yet?

£467 works out to about  $950 Canadian

Think it's expensive to live in the U.K.?  Not if you're insuring a motorbike.  MCN's site has a listing of new motorbike insurance costs (on the right).  A new Gladius in Ontario will cost you well north of three grand to insure new if you're a new rider and assuming you can find someone to insure you at all.  The quote on the right is full insurance with more bells and whistles than the Ontario minimum including road side assistance and bike return in case of a breakdown.

What is the average cost of motorcycle insurance?

"Drivers above the age of 25 with a good driving record usually qualify for good prices. Combine those factors with liability only coverage and a touring bike and you are looking at $200 to $500 a year"  - Ha!  Not in Ontario

"You can reduce your rate further by purchasing motorcycle insurance through your auto insurance carrier, owning a home, having good credit, and taking a motorcycle safety course." - I have all those things (auto, house, good record, good credit, a safety course) and my auto insurer wouldn't touch me. They said to come back after I'd been riding for a few years.

Bizarre Insurance

It pays to give your insurance broker a call each year and make sure you're paying the best rates available.  In my first year of insurance I went through the best insurance company for a starting rider and paid $1250 (this is in Ontario).  I called this week to make sure everything was in order and suddenly found my rates dropping by over $200.  

It turns out that Echelon Insurance has some strange ideas about how to judge your insurance rates.  According to them if you live in a rural area (with less people and less chance to run into them) you pay more in insurance.  You'd think that most insurance companies would consider urban and city areas more accident prone because, you know, they are, but Echelon doesn't.  If you live in a rural area (I know most people don't, but I happen to), then make sure you keep looking for alternatives to Echelon.

RidersPlus checked out alternatives for me and found Intact insurance doesn't have Echelon's bizarre logic when it comes to insuring motorcycles.  Suddenly I'm paying $1015 a year for insurance on the same bike because Intact doesn't work under the strange idea that riding alone in the country is somehow more dangerous than being surrounded by distracted drivers in the GTA.

It pays to check with your insurance broker each year as you renew your insurance.  Don't just renew, have a conversation.  That quick talk saved me a couple of hundred bucks this year.

Motorcycle Insurance

I've been frustrated with motorcycle insurance and the blanket approach it takes to covering a bike, even one you're not riding.  When I'm paying the same for a new car as I am for a seven year old bike that I use for only a few thousand kilometres a year, usually in very good road conditions, it strikes me as unfair.  The car does about five times as many kilometres and can do much more damage in a crash.  It also has to drive through snow storms and the other perils of winter driving while my bike sits in the garage undergoing a full maintenance overhaul.

Maintained to within an inch of its life and spending
the most dangerous driving time of the year in a garage.

Speaking of maintenance, the bike sees a heck of a lot more of it that the car does, especially in the winter.  The bike is checked before each ride and sees weekly maintenance and checks on a larger scale.  The bike is a cherished tool of self expression, the car is an appliance.

When I called up the insurance company I've been with for over twenty years and asked for a quote they said they wouldn't even consider me, but told me to come back in a few years.  Nice, eh?

I finally got in touch with RidersPlus, who specialize in bikes.  It wasn't cheap, but they got me sorted out quickly.  My first bike isn't a big cc monster, I tried to be 

One of these things is not like
the other, though both are the
same in the eyes of insurance

sensible with my first ride and only considered mid-displacement machines.  Having insured a lot of cars, I knew what could happen between a Mustang and a Crown Vic, yet in motorcycle terms these two vehicles would be considered equal simply because they have the same displacement.  

I was on the verge of getting a KLR (a big, single cylinder on/off road bike) when I came across the Ninja.  It has almost identical displacement though almost nothing else in common with the KLR.  One is a sport bike for the road, the other is an all terrain bike that rides on the road when needed.  The Ninja is fast and agile, the KLR sturdy and stable.  With such different intentions and abilities, I expected the Ninja to be a much more expensive option, but was shocked to be quoted the same price.

What is at the bottom of my insurance despair is that a second bike costs me pretty much the same as the first. At the Toronto Motorcycle Show last weekend I stopped by RidersPlus again and had a chat.  The guy there confirmed that your insurance does in fact drop quite significantly over the first few years of riding and by my forth or fifth year I'd be able to insure two bikes for basically what I'm paying for one now.

Honda CB500X, a nice fit, multi-purpose
machine that is easy on insurance

In the short term if I want to minimize insurance costs while I'm learning to ride, a low displacement bike is the key.  I sat on the Honda CB500X at the show.  A nice, tall bike that could handle a wider range of duties than the road focused Ninja.  I'd be giving up a bit of power, but even a 500cc bike still has a much better power to weight ratio than most cars.

Another option is to dig up an older enduro bike, like the Suzuki DRZ-400.  This would be a go-anywhere bike that I'd get used and not worry about tipping over occasionally.  Being an even lower cc bike, it would be even cheaper on insurance.

Notes

Some interesting Stats-Canada vehicle collision statistics - very easy to look through.  It shows a downward trend in accidents, injuries and deaths over the past twenty years.  Glad to see my insurance is coming down with it.

Forbes Article: The most dangerous time to drive - A Saturday in August in an urban environment.  It turns out the most dangerous places to drive are where there are a lot of other people - places most bikers avoid like the plague.

North American International Motorcycle Show

Hey NAIMS, you coulda had my wife there... a master's degree,
great job, but you're not appealing to her demographic...

My son and I went down on Friday morning in -25°C  temperatures for our first ever motorcycle show at the International Centre in Mississauga.  My wife didn't come because the advertising on the website (which also had a complete lack of social media) put her off.  I suspect you'll get a better class of customer with more in their pocket if you appeal to educated women interested in the sport.  I'm not sure who you cater to with the twinkies, but I suspect they aren't great customers.  You'd also bring in many more younger riders (I think the average age at the show was about 50) if you embraced social media.

Old white guys & twinkies, it's a weird,
backwards, and kinda creepy
dynamic, time to change it up

Since it was my first time at a show like this I was a bit worried that I was bringing my son to a de-tuned strip club, but I was pleasantly surprised.  There were a few other families there and the crowd represented a typical Canadian cross section.  With the bike clubs on hand, the variety of bikes on show and the various supporting retailers, this wasn't a biker bar scene at all - it's a shame that the advertising doesn't show this for what it is.

There were little herds of Harley aficionados trying too hard in their leathers and badges, but they were a minority.  On our way in from the parking lot an older fellow we were walking in with gave us a discount coupon, and the people in the show were encouraging, accessible and not at all snobby (which is nice when you're a n00b).

We spent the better part of four hours walking around and missed an entire hall.  The amount of material was prolific, from the gear to the bikes themselves.  Two brands really stood out for me and the others were generally a disappointment.

You'd normally be hard pressed to get me interested in a
Harley, but they make it easy to like them, and what a
good looking bike!

I'm the furthest thing from a Harley Fan, but Harley Davidson Canada put on a great show.  They took a good chunk of floor space, had a lot of room to try out bikes and were more than willing to focus on developing a relationship with their customers rather than leaving it to dealers who are only interested in moving units.

Having dealers take care of your brand loyalty is like have the tigers at the zoo do the job of the zookeepers.  If they can drum up any customer relationship building at all they're only pretending, all they really want to do is feed themselves a sale.

I ended up throwing a leg over a bunch of Harleys and I'm much more curious now than I was before, well done HD.

Shows like NAIMS are an ideal opportunity for manufacturers to develop a relationship with their customers, and I was surprised that so few did.  I want to be a Triumph fan, I'm from the UK, I love their bikes from a design point of view, but they were only there through a local dealer who parked the bikes so close together that it was impossible to sit on many of them (which was no doubt the idea).  The special 'deal' on Triumph t-shirts had them on 'sale' for $60... for a t-shirt.  Between the inaccessible bikes, the over-priced merch and the dealers rolling their eyes whenever your kid wants to try and sit on a bike, we didn't spend much time in Triumph land.

After the show I'm reconsidering how and why I might become attached to a specific make, or even whether I should (though motorcycling seems particularly intense in its tribal approach to brand).

Beautiful naked bike, the Z1000... it's got me
thinking...

Another manufacturer who didn't take my loyalty for granted was Kawasaki.  My first bike was supposed to be a Honda or a Suzuki and it ended up being a Ninja. It's been a great first bike and the KLR has long been on my mind as an alternate/multi-purpose bike (though the insurance chat later is making that unlikely).  Kawasaki has been good to me so far, and the show only made me more of a fan.

Like Harley, Kawasaki showed up instead of only being there through dealers.  The reps they had on hand were friendly, helpful and approachable.  The bikes were displayed in a way that encouraged you to try them out, and Kawi also brought the bling (which I immediately put up in the garage).  

Kawasaki was never on my bike lust list when I was younger (I was all about Interceptors and Gixers), but as an adult buyer they have my attention.  Well done Kawasaki!

The rest of the bike show was a whirlwind of gear and meet and greets.  Two Wheel Motorsport was there, and I had a quick chat with my motorcycle course instructor (while getting a great deal on a Bell Helmet for my son - I'm all about Bell helmets since seeing Rush).

I had a chat with Riders Plus Insurance.  They insured me in my first year of riding and were helpful and efficient.  This time round I was curious about how insuring multiple bikes work.  They told me that buying a second bike means you're doubling your insurance payments.  This doesn't make a lot of sense to me as I can only ride one bike at a time.  I expected something like you're insured at the rate of whatever the highest cost bike is plus 10% for the paperwork on the other bike.  What I was told was that you get a 10% discount on your second bike and pay another full set of insurance on it... which makes owning multiple bikes not really financially viable, so that dream goes down the toilet.

I was looking for Motorcycle Mojo as we wandered about since I've been emailing with the publisher, but couldn't find them!  This show really is huge.  But I did find The Widow's Sons.  After a round of secret handshakes I got some contact information.  A number of guys in my lodge have bikes but don't ride with others.  I'm wondering if I can start a local chapter, or perhaps join the Grand River Chapter.

My son and I both really enjoyed the show.  It let us throw our legs over a lot of bikes and talk with a wide variety of people in the sport.  It was a wonderful thing to get excited about riding again even as the temperature outside turned truly arctic.  Kawasaki & Harley both get nods as my favourite manufacturers of the show.  Their stand up showing has me questioning brand loyalty based on some weird sense of belonging rather than a manufacturer's interest in genuinely developing a relationship with their customer.  As a new rider I'm looking to be wooed.  Harley & Kawi both did some quality wooing.

My suggestion?  Get yourself out to the North American Motorcycle Show and bring your family along, they'll have a great time and maybe even get a sense of why you love riding like you do.  

I hope the show will reconsider the marketing angle and get away from the twinkie/biker thing on the website and embrace social media next year.  If they do, maybe I can convince my wife to come along with us.

Some pictures from the show.