Pocket bikes are automobiles under Ontario law: FSCO arbitrator

A gas-powered, miniature motorcycle known as a “pocket bike” is a motor vehicle under Ontario law, according to the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO).Accident benefits claimant Cassondra Bouchard was injured while riding a Honda CRF 50 Mini Bike owned by Kristin Stratton, who lived on private property near Uxbridge, Ontario. Stratton used the pocket bike on his own property and the property of a friend.Bouchard and Brandon Cowie attended a party at Stratton’s house in January 2008. They decided to take two pocket bikes owned by Stratton out for a spin. Bouchard’s bike crashed into Cowie’s and Bouchard was taken to Uxbridge Cottage Hospital and subsequently transferred to St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.Bouchard made a claim for accident benefits from her insurer, Motors Insurance Corporation, but Motors denied the claim. Motors argued Bouchard was not involved in a motor vehicle accident, because a pocket bike is not a motor vehicle.Under s. 224(1) of the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule (SABS), an automobile includes “a motor vehicle required under any act to be insured under a motor vehicle policy.” The Off Road Vehicles Act of Ontario refers to vehicles not operated on a highway, propelled other than by muscular power and “on not more than three wheels.” Section 15 of the Off-Road Vehicles Act calls for off-road vehicles to be insured, except where “the vehicle is driven on land occupied by the owner of a vehicle.””It is a very narrow exclusion,” FSCO arbitrator Denise Ashby wrote. “In my view, the consequence of the owner of the pocket bike driving it at ‘my friend’s house’ was the necessity to insure it. Therefore the pocket bike is required to be insured by operation of the provisions of the Off-Road Vehicles Act….”