THE Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) ordered the Land Transportation Office (LTO) to study the proposal to include drivers of all motor vehicles in the third party liability (TPL) insurance without additional fees.
LTO 7 Director Arnel Tancinco said the proposal will be of the same model applied to public utility vehicles (PUVs) where victims of vehicular accidents (whether passengers or pedestrians hit by vehicles) are covered by TPL to pay for hospitalization and death benefits.
Tancinco said that in the registration of motorcycles, the tariff for TPL, as set by the Insurance Commission (IC), is P150, which does not cover the driver.
“We want to include the driver in the insurance, but at no additional cost,” Tancinco said.
For 2014, Tancinco said there were 162,998 registered vehicles in Cebu and 680,933 in Region 7. From January to April 2015, there were 60,179 registered vehicles in Cebu and 258,505 in Central Visayas.
The LTO before required owners of vehicles to include the driver in the insurance under TPL, plus P50 in additional insurance premium. But this was stopped when somebody criticized it as an additional burden, Tancinco said.
The modes of insurance now are “TPL,” which pays benefits to third parties (passengers and other people who are victims of vehicular accidents); “comprehensive” insurance, which pays for all the damages to persons and properties involved in an accident; and “own-damage,” which pays benefits to owners involved in an accident through their own fault.
Tancinco said comprehensive and own-damage insurances are too costly so that they are studying if drivers can be included in the TPL without additional cost.