FAIR (Fair Association of Victims for Accident Insurance Reform) is a grassroots not-for-profit organization of Ontario’s car accident victims and their caregivers and supporters. Since 2011 FAIR has been a voice for those who have been injured in motor vehicle collisions and who have struggled with the current auto insurance claims system in Ontario.
Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what might happen if they were involved in a car accident. We think about high premiums but not about what we will get for that money. So when we get in a car accident it comes as a big surprise how complicated our insurance coverage is and that it isn’t a system you can navigate when you are not at your best physically or mentally.
Advocates For Victims
FAIR advocates for victims through the sharing of information, whether it is current court decisions, government introduced changes or even media articles. There are constant changes to coverage levels and access to that coverage so it’s a continuous flow of information and our website puts all that information out to the thousands of people who visit our website every month and through social media.
The goal is that this sharing of information makes for a better educated accident victim and one who is less isolated from others going through the same dysfunctional and punishing claims system. In 2012 we started sending out a FAIR News email to our members and over the years it’s grown into a daily email with a wide variety of articles that we hope will help our membership cope with a life-changing event when they find themselves in a broken and sometimes even fraudulent system.
Many Ontario car accident survivors would say that they’re unpleasantly surprised at how the insurer they’ve paid treated them after a car accident and shocked to find that the insurer medical community will often work hard against their recovery by putting up obstacles to treatment. The truth is that the insurance we have is one that works toward denying injuries rather than addressing them and it simply makes people sicker. We have focused on this issue of the insurer medical exams as a core problem for Ontario accident survivors when the expert reports and testimony are used to deny injuries to save insurer dollars.
Victims Are Not Alone
FAIR tries to fill that void of information about medical reports and testimony as well and we track and publish court decisions that chronicle the medical experts who harm innocent accident victims for two reasons. One is to expose the damage done by insurers to their customers in the delay/deny system they’ve created and the second is to let the accident victims know they are not alone, their injuries are real and if they need treatment they may have to find a way on their own when the insurer goes into denial.
We’ve also created a stakeholder status with Ontario’s government that gives victims a voice in consultations and discussions with various ministries and legislators. Having this status also opens the doors to individual and groups of car accident survivors to express their views to government in a more powerful way.
With the voices of over a thousand FAIR members and followers we’ve put auto insurance issues in the news with stories chronicling how innocent accident victims are being defrauded out of the coverage they’ve paid for at the hands of insurer paid doctors. Auto insurance is a legislated product and yet has little to no consumer protection so we are all looking to make this coming election a time to create the change consumers need. It is our voices as victims that will tell the story, our voices that will create the change, and our voices that will provide the support for other accident victims and create the accountability this industry is missing.
The vast majority of us will never even be in an accident but all of us take our chances on our roads and highways. And that’s why it needs to be asked —in a province where consumer goods and services are constantly getting better, why is auto insurance one of the few products that seems to perpetually get worse? Why are we paying private insurers when the taxpayers are footing more and more of the costs? It’s something the next premier, our new government — and everyone in Ontario — ought to be asking.
For more information please visit: www.fairassociation.ca
Submitted by: Rhona DesRoches, Chair of FAIR
We welcome FAIR as a member of Crash Support Network and thank them for their support.
The Crash Support Network is a unique website consisting of an online support group, a Crash Survivor Blog written by a survivor, our Sharing Our Recovery Newsletter, informative articles and a Virtual Crash Memorial. Our website is based on relationship-building and puts the needs of survivors first by creating a helpful resource for victims and survivors of motor vehicle crashes.
