Insurer, auto manufacturer both refusing to cover Saskatchewan driver's repairs

December 7th, 2016  |  Auto

It's been 11 months since Barb MacNaughton crashed into a ditch just off of a Saskatchewan highway. During that time she has recovered from the whiplash and concussion she incurred and has gone through a summer of physiotherapy. She has not, however, been able to determine how her car repair costs will be covered.

When MacNaughton's 2005 Toyota Sequoia crashed, her airbags deployed quickly. While the vehicle's exterior remained in relatively good condition, technicians estimated that it had sustained approximately $9,000 worth of internal damages. MacNaughton and her husband initially wrote off the damages to Saskatchewan Government Insurance (SGI), the public provincial organization who runs a compulsory auto insurance program called the Saskatchewan Auto Fund.

After assessing the situation though, SGI deemed itself to be not responsible for the damages, calling them "the result of a mechanical breakdown." SGI argued that Toyota should pay for repairs since the internal indemnities would have been caused by malfunctioning airbags.

The MacNaughton's took their case to Toyota, only to be given essentially the same final answer: 'We're not covering this.' Toyota insists that the airbags performed as they should have under the circumstances. Many tests were run retroactively on the vehicle but none revealed anything that could definitively overturn the notion that the standards for deployment weren't met.