Bicycle insurance attracts demand in Japan

September 23, 2017

TOKYO- Horrified by a series of court rulings ordering huge damages payments related to accidents caused by bicycles, bicyclists in Japan are rushing to buy exclusively designed liability insurance policies.

Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance Inc. has concluded 400,000 new contracts for bicycle insurance products since the start of the current fiscal year in April, exceeding the total contracts of some 300,000 signed in the previous year.

The number of new bicycle insurance contracts grew 30 percent year on year at Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co. in fiscal 2016 and rose 20 percent at Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co. in the same year.

Those brisk growth figures also reflect local governments' promotion of the insurance, people familiar with the matter said.

A ruling by Kobe District Court in July 2013 over a bicycle accident case threw cold water on bicyclists in the country.

In the case, an elementary school fifth-grade boy on a bicycle crashed into a woman, leaving her unconscious. The court ordered the mother of the boy to pay some 95 million yen in compensation.

Bicyclists also shuddered at Tokyo District Court's 47-million-yen damages payment order to a rider who hit and killed a woman on a pedestrian crossing.

In the wake of those rulings, the Hyogo prefectural government in October 2015 set the first ordinance in the country to oblige all users of bicycles in the western prefecture to get bicycle insurance coverage. Jiji Press