Golf cart driving illegally on the highway without insurance is still a “motor vehicle”: Ontario arbitrator

A golf cart driving illegally along an Ontario highway without insurance is a “motor vehicle” for the purpose of determining accident benefits, an Ontario arbitrator has ruled.
Wilhelmina Margaret Buckle was seriously injured on June 14, 2003, when she fell off a golf cart that had been driving illegally on a public highway.
Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO) arbitrator Robert Kominar found the golf cart was neither licensed nor registered and, as far as the parties involved in the arbitration knew, it was uninsured.
Section 224(1) of the Insurance Act in Ontario defines an “automobile” as a “motor vehicle required under any act to be insured under a motor vehicle policy.” To collect accident benefits, a person must have been involved in an accident involving a motor vehicle.
In denying Buckle’s claim, the Motor Vehicle Accident Claims Fund (MVAC) took the position that golf carts are exempt from Ontario’s Off-Road Vehicles Act, which requires insurance for vehicles that do not operate on highways.
Since golf carts are not explicitly required to be insured in any other act governing Ontario’s highways, the insurer argued, Buckle was not involved in a motor vehicle accident (and thus not eligible for benefits).
But Kominar rejected MVAC’s argument, noting that the absence of golf carts from the Off-Road Vehicles Act did not mean they were left unregulated on the province’s public highways. He pointed to the Highway Traffic Act, which refers in its definition of a “motor vehicle” to “any other vehicle propelled or driven otherwise than by muscular power.” A golf cart would fall under this definition, he noted.
He also noted the Compulsory Automobile Insurance Act (CAIA) incorporates by reference the Highway Traffic Act’s definition of a motor vehicle. Section 2(1) of the CAIA says: “all motor vehicles shall be insured under a policy of insurance when operating on a highway.”
“Even though the legislature deemed it appropriate not to regulate the activities of certain classes of vehicles, including golf carts, when they are operating on property other than highways, it does not follow that ‘if’ those conveyances choose to venture out, illegally, onto highways, that they are also exempt from insurance requirements which other ‘motor vehicles’ would be subject to in that situation,” Kominar wrote.