Car insurance discrimination against pensioners

Tom Cleaver in Saturday, September 28 edition of the Cyprus Mail wrote an informative and accurate account of the problems faced by pensioners with regard to car insurance.

HIs report also illuminates the disgraceful disinterest shown by our government going back some 14 years.

It goes deeper.

In Cyprus, after age 75, we are not allowed to change insurance company. Locked in, no choice.

To obtain a driving licence after age 70, the transport ministry requires a medical report from an approved doctor. Insurance companies clearly do not accept that report because they require a separate note (wait for it, quite obscurely, presumably from the same doctor) that the applicant suffers no disability with regard to “stability, vision or hearing”. Those specific words have to be used.

Of course, the ministry, insurers and doctors need to meet up and stop the nonsense but with Mr Cleaver’s article indicating that the government  does not regard this as one of its priorities, pensioners will be forced off the roads denying them much enjoyed freedoms, and, of course, into the arms of government controlled transport facilities (nice little earner) and raising infringement of freedom of rights issues. But, don’t get me started .

Gordon MacFarlaine, Larnaca