[cgh]

> The ICBC has a literal state sponsored monopoly over car insurance

No, this is only true for the most basic plans (called Autoplan). For anything beyond this, eg third-party liability, collision, comprehensive, etc., you can buy private insurance or go with ICBC for those plans too if you want.

[Jensson]

But that basic insurance is extremely overpriced compared to similar insurances in other countries, and it is mandatory so you have to pay it.

[InitialLastName]

If it's overpriced (relative to payouts) and the funds get returned to the population at large (through public services and mitigation of indirect damage caused by drivers) then that sounds like a very effective way to get drivers to pay for their externalized costs (in a way that other countries' privatized, profit-limited insurance schemes doesn't afford).

[int_19h]

I lived in BC 10 years ago, and the notion that ICBC is extremely overpriced for no good reason seemed to be the prevailing and rather strongly held belief cutting across the political spectrum there.

I'll grant you that this is anecdata, but if there are any public opinion polls demonstrating that ICBC is doing what it's doing with an actual consent of the governed, I'd love to see them.

(Elections don't satisfy this because people effectively vote on many different issues as a batch, so a few hot-button issues can dominate everything else in practice, making it impossible to interpret the outcome as a mandate for a particular policy unless it was one of those hot-button issues.)

[wirrbel]

What is overpriced for an insurance? people pay their fees and get damage compensation in case of a successful claim. So an insurance can be overpriced if the compensation is way lower than the fees on average (administrative overhead or extracted profit from the insurance provider) and then of course you can hold the opinion that the insurance's coverage is too hight, which also leads to higher fees to begin with.

Anyway, you can pretty sure simply analyse this with the business data.

If you make a poll you'll just poll for the public sentiment. And frankly "the tax is too damn high" can be heard everywhere pretty much regardless of the taxes.

[aceofspades19]

The issue with ICBC is that you are forced to do business with them no matter how you feel about their business practices or how much they are charging. ICBC can change their pricing completely from year to year and there is nothing you can do about it if you need to keep driving your car. This is not even an exaggeration, a few years ago ICBC did adjust their rates such that some people were suddenly paying thousands more per year despite having no claim history, They have since changed the fee structure since then but it is a bit scary when your premiums go from $2000 per year to $5000 or more.

[goodcanadian]

I have lived in BC a couple of times in my life. The popular perception that it is overpriced is definitely a thing. To add my anecdatum, ICBC was more expensive than other jurisdictions that I have lived in, but not outrageously so. Is it overpriced? Possibly. Is it extremely overpriced? I am inclined to think not.

[mthoms]

That’s similar to my experience. For the couple claims I’ve had, the process has been flawless with ICBC. Not so for my extended family in Ontario.

[megablast]

> then that sounds like a very effective way to get drivers to pay for their externalized costs

It is a start. But there is one guarantee, driver hate paying for what they use.

[rkagerer]

You don't need to compare to other countries; there's a big difference simply compared to other provinces. Here's my own anecdata: I lived in Ontario where insurance was easy. A variety of private companies offered competitive rates, and I renewed every year by simply phoning my insurer or broker and giving them my credit card number.

When I moved to BC, my rate didn't change by much. But the rest of the experience got worse. For starters you had to go into an office for everything. In my case, it took a few times to get it right. They screwed up my license and insurance twice - things like name, address, etc. (In one case a field in their database was blank that a future agent said shouldn't have been possible not to populate... go figure).

Next they gave me incorrect information. They tried to tell me I had to buy an extra add-on for my liability coverage to carry over when driving in the US - which is dead wrong if you actually read the policy. I got into a 40-minute argument that wound up being me vs. every single employee in the office (they all wandered over to see what was going on). In the end we all called ICBC-central together - it took two escalations to finally get someone who knew what they were talking about who could authoritatively confirm I was correct and all the agents in the office were wrong. They were all stunned; the one I was dealing with said "Wow, I've been selling that package to everybody who comes in and nearly none of them need it!"

Years later I tried to make a comprehensive claim for ~$7k worth of damage related to a freak weather event. The ICBC-central agent said "don't even bother to file a claim, it won't be covered". Some time later I was chatting with my old Ontario broker who said it was a no-brainer and would have been 100% covered under my old plan. (In retrospect I should have sent in the claim anyway and put up a fight... but I just didn't have the time - was doing lucrative consulting, and it made more financial sense to spend the time on billable hours than wasting it on that).

Over the years they've made many more mistakes and generally drive me nuts. At least compared to the two different companies I used for insurance during the years I spent in Ontario. Again anecdotally, most of my neighbours haven't any good things to say about them either.

One silver lining of the pandemic is it finally forced ICBC to put a process in place for doing renewals over a combination of phone and email. Still not as convenient as in Ontario, but at least it's an improvement.

I still fail to understand why BC thinks they need their own government-run insurance provider. This is a solved problem in the rest of the world.

[mthoms]

My experience has been the opposite. I’m generally happier here with auto insurance than I was in Ontario.

Regarding the ICBC add-on for US liability… aren’t all ICBC policies exclusively sold by independent brokers? If true then wouldn’t that have been an independent broker who was mistaken and ICBC proper cleared it up?

[rkagerer]

Yes that's true, but since then I've had the same discussion with other brokers, although they weren't as adamant. The basic terms around this seem widely misunderstood (at least from my own experience).

[cscurmudgeon]

But, does it?

> mitigation of indirect damage caused by drivers

But, private insurance covers that.

> through public services

Examples?

[cscurmudgeon]

Edit: Of course, this is downvoted. Can't question the god that is the govt.