More protection for road accident victims
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• The Motor Insurers' Bureau is a relatively little known organization. Most road users are unlikely to get directly involved with the Bureau but it plays a highly important role which is tending to expand. A recently published booklet, The Motor Insurers' Bureau, by Donald B. Williams, comes out at a very appropriate time for a new agreement made in April between the Minister of Transport and the Bureau considerably expands the scope of the compensation arrangements made by the Bureau when road users are killed or injured by "hit-and-run" drivers.
When an uninsured driver causes a road accident, who pays? Sometimes, the Motor Insurance Bureau does, but inevitably its liability to compensate victims is hedged round with qualifications.
An incorporated company. the Bureau was set up in 1946 under Agreement between the Minister of Transport and the major motor insurance companies. It has plugged a number of gaping holes in the legal protection of third parties against accident risks but the author of this booklet believes that the MIB should go even further, accepting liability for passengers in vehicles who are
not at present compulsorily insurable: There are over 3,000 accidents each year in which the driver is untraced. By a new extension to its Agreement the M1B may decide after investigation to .compensate the hitherto unprotected victims, who have a right of appeal to Queen's Counsel.
Mr. Williams" booklet, the only one on its subject, deals with the difficulties of claimants and with those of the Bureau itself. It reviews the court cases in which the MIB has been involved, reveals the way it operates and sets Out the Agreements and explanatory notes.
The author can pride himself on helping to change the terms of reference of what has been called "an entirely novel piece of extrastatutory machinery" for he was the solicitor who pressed for a Parliamentary debate after a teenaged girl passenger who had received serious brain injuries was refused compensation by the MIB. Subsequently the girl received an ex gratia payment of £10,000 from the Bureau.
The Motor Insurers' Bureau is published by Oyez Publications, price 14s, and may be obtained from The Solicitors' Law Stationery Society Ltd., Oyez House, Fetter Lane,
London, EC4. J.D.