To the editor:
Here is one more huge reason that our vehicle insurance rates are as high as they are.

Recently my son, who is a new driver, was involved in a very minor fender bender while exiting a parking stall at a local retail center. As he was exiting the parking stall a mother and young daughter who were walking approached his view. He stopped to allow them to pass but they waved him out. As he continued to exit the parking stall he bumped, and I mean bumped, a vehicle which had now pulled up behind him and stopped. The driver of the vehicle, an older women, exited her vehicle screaming and carrying on at my son.

There was very minor damage to the left rear quarter panel of her 1996 Beretta and absolutely no damage whatsoever to my son's car. As my son and I were expecting this to be somewhat small in terms of cost repair, I felt I would contact the woman, have her get three quotes from local body shops and my son would cover the cost of the repair. I contacted the woman and suggested this to her. She stated that she would prefer that she get quotes for the repair but that my son should give the cash to her instead of him paying for the repair at the body shop. When this happened, I smelled a rat and felt it safer to go through ICBC. When I contacted ICBC they stated that they would have the woman's vehicle repaired and a bill for her repairs would be submitted to my son and he could decide which avenue would be most cost effective for him. He could either put the claim through his insurance and suffer huge premium increases or pay out the cost of the repair.

When my son received the bill we were astonished that the bill for repairs came to $1554.00. In my mind the vehicle itself and the condition it was in was not worth that amount of money. I inquired to ICBC as to why the vehicle was not written off and they expressed that "it was a very labor extensive repair to try and match the paint". However it was still cheaper for my son to pay out this cost rather than put it through his insurance. He informed ICBC that this was his intention and they gave him a time line for the bill to be paid.

Unfortunately that's not where this fiasco ends. About one month later my son received a call from ICBC stating that he must bring his vehicle in for examination and he must be interviewed about the accident as this woman had now submitted an accident related injury claim to ICBC. We could not believe what we were hearing. There was no way on this earth that even a 100-year-old woman could have been injured in such a minor, low impact incident. This woman was obviously attempting to bilk the system.

I went with my son to ICBC. He completed the interview and his vehicle was inspected. ICBC concluded that there was no damage at all to my son's vehicle from the accident. I asked the ICBC representative that if this woman's injury claim is denied can she be charged with fraud? Her answer was "no". I asked, "then what is to stop every single person who is involved in such a minor incident from submitting an injury claim". Her reply to me was, "every single person does." She also informed us that my son could be on the hook for possible physiotherapy and pain medication costs. It is because of such fraudulent claims that ICBC had to put together an investigation team to review such injury claim submissions before just paying out tens of thousands of dollars as they did in the past. Our premiums surely went up to cover the cost of such a team.

In the end this woman's claim for her supposed injury was denied. ICBC found in their investigation that it was not possible for her to have suffered an injury from this extremely minor incident. Of course we were elated to hear this but how much did that investigation cost to carry out?

In my mind that woman and everyone like her should be charged with fraud. If ICBC were to bring charges against people such as this woman for making such ludicrous claims maybe people would think twice before attempting to take advantage of and rip off the system which continues to put all our insurance rates through the roof.

Dave Leimert