No-Fault Comes to Israel - The Compensation for Victims of Road Accidents Law, 1975

תקציר

Upon the Compensation Law coming into force Israel will join the growing no-fault club. There is no doubt that the Law improves the plight of road accident victims considerably. We retain, however, our doubts whether the system of reform adopted by the Law is the best system which could have been adopted. The one big question which still remains open is the cost of the system. No serious estimate was made before adoption of the Law as to how much the system would cost. It is true that in some jurisdictions the introduction of no-fault has cheapened the cost of basic insurance considerably, 79 but this has been achieved only by maintaining a fairly low ceiling of maximum compensation as well as a floor of minimum damage in order to gain entitlement to compensation. As we have seen, the ceilings set by the Law are high and no floor of minimum damage is set. There is no doubt whatsoever that insurance under the Law will be far more expensive than insurance under the present system: the only question is how much more expensive it will be.