Badinter law (road accident compensation)
A 1985 law that guarantees non-driver victims of a road accident near-automatic compensation for bodily injury, and requires the insurer to make an offer within strict deadlines.
The July 5, 1985 law on improving the situation of road accident victims, known as the Badinter law, created an autonomous compensation regime, detached from fault-based liability. Any victim of an accident involving a land motor vehicle is entitled to compensation from that vehicle's insurer. Non-driver victims, pedestrians, cyclists, passengers, are compensated for bodily injury unless they committed an inexcusable fault that was the sole cause of the accident, and even this exception does not apply to persons under sixteen, over seventy or seriously disabled. The fault of a driver-victim may, however, reduce or exclude its compensation. The law also imposes a procedure: the insurer must make a compensation offer within eight months of the accident, on pain of interest at twice the legal rate. For motor insurance, it turned liability into a quasi-strict regime centered on bodily injury, whose cost now depends on changes in compensation schedules and case law on heads of damage far more than on the assessment of fault.
Textbook case: a fifteen-year-old cyclist crosses without looking and is hit by a car. Even though his fault caused the accident, his age rules out any reduction: the driver's insurer must fully compensate his bodily injury and make its offer within eight months.
Follow the research
One letter a week. First, the week's underwriting note, when one is published: a dated, argued decision, signed by Paul Bernardski. Then what the observatory published on cyber risk, political risk and insurance. No account, no tracking.
No spam, one-click unsubscribe, no data ever sold.