Can Eby stop ICBC’s financial bleeding?

Listening to Attorney General David Eby describe it, bringing in caps on court awards paid to people who suffer “minor injuries” in auto collisions is actually a good thing for car-crash victims.

That’s because Eby is not only bringing in a $5,500 cap on the amount of money paid to compensate a victim for “pain and suffering” from an injury.

At the same time, Eby is also increasing the amount of money spent on health-and-recovery benefits so victims can heal from their injuries.

So let’s say you get rear-ended in an accident. You don’t suffer any broken bones, but you end up with a chronically sore neck.

Whiplash! The classic soft-tissue injury loved by ambulance-chasing lawyers, and one of the main “minor injuries” the government is targeting.

Under the massive ICBC changes introduced by Eby on Monday, a whiplash victim could still sue for damages, but the victim could only collect a maximum of $5,500 for pain and suffering.

That’s where the government hopes to save a tonne of money and stop the financial bleeding at ICBC. No more six- or even seven-figure financial settlements paid out to victims.

To help sell this change to the public, Eby is simultaneously proposing to increase the amounts available for recovery services such as physiotherapy and massage therapy.

“These are benefits that haven’t increased in 25 years,” Eby said, adding the government wants to help “injured drivers, passengers, cyclists and pedestrians frozen in time for a quarter century.”

This is a clever political tactic designed to help the government win over the public and avoid a repeat of a famous NDP policy disaster from the 1990s.

Back then, the NDP government of the day promised a system of no-fault auto insurance that would have drastically curtailed the right of accident victims to sue for damages.

The idea provoked an angry backlash, and not just from the personal-injury lawyers. British Columbia’s disabled community also rallied against the changes, which were seen as an attack on victims.

The lawyers are fighting back again this time, of course, with an ad campaign again playing the victim card.

“Being injured on the road can change your life forever,” says the ad campaign attacking the settlement caps.

“This may not just fail to reduce our insurance rates, it may cost us our ability to be treated as individuals, and to seek out medical, health care and justice advocates to help navigate the daunting process of an injury claim.”

This time, though, the lawyers do not seem to have rallied the fullvoiced support of major B.C. disability groups.

And by still allowing minor-injury victims to recover at least $5,500 for pain and suffering, the government has avoided the “no-fault” label that flopped in the 1990s.

Call it “no-fault lite.” Unless the lawyers can whip up enough public opposition to it, Eby might succeed where the NDP earlier failed.