Press Release

ACC figures drop the Minister in it . Again.

On November 17th the BIKEOI made it clear to ACC Minister Nick Smith that New Zealand motorcyclists would not submit to being forced off the roads.

The Minister's response has been to state that motorcycle ACC claims have massively increased between 1998 and 2008. Up from 871 in 1998 to 5044 in 2008

"These increases cannot be explained away by the increase in motorcycle numbers." says Mr Smith. Unfortunately the figures Mr Smith has been provided with are wrong. Mr Smith has fallen into the classic trap of failing to compare like with like.

ACC categorises claims into two types . 'Medical only' claims (where the expense is only for medical treatment by a GP , or perhaps a "You're OK" by an ambulance officer); and 'entitlement claims' (which are the ones that are expensive) .The 5044 claims Mr Smith refers to are all claims received by ACC for motorcyclists, both medical only and entitlement.

The problem is that the claims in 1998 do not include the vast majority of the medical only claims. They are only the entitlement claims .

This happened because back in the 1990s ACC had a separate Medical Claims section, which ran it's own computer system. Entitlement claims were handled by a different section and processed on a different computer system. Usually, only entitlement claims were loaded into that system. In the late 1990s the Medical Claims section was closed down. From early 2000s on medical claims and entitlement claims were entered on the same computer system. The data from the old system is no longer available

So the 871 claims the Minister refers to are only entitlement claims . The 5044 claims are both. Naturally , the two don't agree.

To compare like with like, we must look at entitlement claims only

Mr Smith also says that the fact that there are twice as many motorcycles on the road now as in 2003 is irrelevant. Other things being equal , more road users will mean more accidents. Cars have more accidents than motorcycles. That's because there are more of them . Mr Smith says that's irrelevant.We say that's just silly.

When we do a valid comparison we see there has been NO increase in claims per 10000 motorcycles.

We've also validated that against MoT figures for injury crashes , which align with entitlement claims, as one would expect .
The MoT figures tell the same story. No increase in crash rates in the last 10 years.

Sorry Mr Smith. ACC have put you wrong. Again.

ENDS

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