Uninsured Drivers Add to Road Chaos

Friday, 18 November, 2005

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Salima Ghafari

While officials at the Afghan finance ministry are busy trying to impose a nationwide car insurance system, the impact has yet to be seen on the 230,000 registered vehicles which battle it out on the chaotic streets of the capital Kabul.

Since there are no working traffic lights, and the police are apparently helpless to control the anarchy on the roads, accidents are common.

Most of the vehicles in Kabul - along with another quarter of a million vehicles around the rest of the country - are uninsured. Although insurance has been mandatory since 2002 on those brought into the country, only 75,800 actually have such coverage.

For the tens of thousands imported before the new rules came into force, it is left up to owners to decide whether insurance is worth the cost. So far, only 36 have taken out policies.

Drivers registering a vehicle for the first time must pay one-year’s insurance premium before they are issued with official documentation.

Drivers are supposed to keep up the payments after the first year – but few do so. And since motorists do not have to produce a new insurance card when they renew their road permit, many are left without cover either through ignorance of the rules or through choice.

With premiums at just 10 US dollars a year for most passenger vehicles, it’s not so much cost that leads drivers to stop paying as the sense that they are being cheated by the state-run Afghan National Insurance Company.

Khalid, a 20-year-old in the 11th grade at the Alam-e-Faizad School in Kabul, is one of the few people of his age to own his own car, a white Toyota Corolla.

"I bought the car two months ago and was given an insurance card via the traffic administration after I paid the compulsory ten dollar premium. Within two months, I had two accidents because of traffic in the city," he recalled. "When I went to the insurance company, they laughed at me and told me, 'we don’t have the money to pay you for the damage to your car'."

Sima, one of the rare women drivers in the capital, told IWPR she had a similar experience with the company, "I work for a foreign organisation and have a red estate car. I paid 14 dollars to insure my first car one year ago. But when it was involved in an accident and I referred the matter to the company, they gave me a negative response, in a very off-hand way."

The national insurance company counters by saying the problem is that most Afghans don’t understand how third-party-only cover works.

Sayed Mohammad Sapand, an official with the company, said the firm was simply following normal practice with third-party insurance by only paying compensation to those not responsible for the accident.

"We will pay for losses according to reports from traffic and district police on the scene. We pay out to the owner of the car which has been damaged by the fault of the other car, and not to those who have violated traffic rules," he said.

Taxi driver Nazir, who spoke to IWPR outside the insurance office where he had just been to complain, said he had been treated very badly. "They told me to go away or they would beat me up,” he said.

"Six month ago, I insured my car by paying ten dollars and I received a card. My car has been in three accidents since then and has been badly damaged."

The 22-year-old driver acknowledged that he had been involved in a few accidents and, like the others interviewed, declined to say whether he was at fault.

While drivers were quite open about how much they paid in insurance premiums, the insurance company appeared reluctant to disclose details of the grading system or how much it would pay out. But IWPR was told that premiums are determined by horsepower for cars, tonnage for trucks, and the number of seats for buses.

"If a car is stolen or lost, the company is obliged to pay an amount in line with its commitment to the car owner, provided the claim is supported by the traffic and district police," said Sapand.

Often, if an accident only involves property damage, motorists sort out the compensation between themselves. When injury or death is involved, police automatically arrest any uninjured drivers and the courts determine the penalties, regardless of whether there is insurance in place.

Under a tradition known as “nanawatai”, the family of a driver responsible for causing a death or injury can formally apologise and offer a sheep or calf to the victim's family. If they accept the compensation, they may plead with the court on behalf of the driver, which can result in a lower sentence.

At the finance ministry, Deputy Minister Abdul Razaq Samadi insists the vehicle insurance system will get better.

"Every day we are seeing changes to the insurance system, but it is not enough,” he said. “We are working on policies which will revive a nationwide insurance system, which will be a very important revenue source.”

Back on the city streets and perilous routes through Afghanistan's mountains, the reality remains that insurance counts for little, and pre-2002 cars remain outside the system. According to Abdul Shukoor Khair Khawah, head of the interior ministry's traffic department, "We still have no plans to insure the older vehicles."

Salima Ghafari is an IWPR staff reporter in Kabul.