BUS REGULATIONS.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18723, 21 June 1926, Page 8

BUS REGULATIONS.

THE INSURANCE CLAUSES. j "We Bimply do not know where we stand over the insurance chases of the buß regulations," remarked the manager of one of the suburban bus companies to a Wellington reporter oh Saturday, "and as far as I know none.'of the Wellington owners have so. far complied with the requlrementß. i The insurance requirements were altogether too heavy, he continued, and seemingly the Government had drawn them up in a hurry, without pausing to consider what premiums would have to be paid by buß owners. Though, according to the scale agreed upon by the underwriters, the passenger scale for a 20-passenger bus would amount to £44 per annum, bus and other risks had to be added to that, bringing the total up to something like i £75 per bus. What the corresponding figures were in Australia he could not say, but he did know that the cost of cover was considerably lower in England. Carrying Their Own Insurance. "Seeing that the Government had hurried into this 'aspect-'-of onr businesses* without giving consideration as to its likely effect on us and without taking into account what was formerly regarded as a safe and satisfactory businesslike cover,'then it is up to the Government to make arrangments to deal with the business itself," he continued." "Failing that, 1 see a possible way out in the formation of a -specialised concern, by which the bus proprietors of the whole Dominion' might' form a mutual insurance company. v We will have to pay our premiums in advance in any case, and under proper organisation a sufficient snm could be obtained to be deposited with the Government as a guarantee fund, as would no doubt be required. "The underwriters have agreed to certain and all, and we can expect no relief from one office as against another. -If the Government will not modify its insurance clauses or provide a means whereby the cover insisted upon will be less expensive, the mutual insurance scheme seems the only way out."