A Toronto woman is left in the lurch and expecting her insurance premiums to shoot up after a designated driver drove her car into the ditch and damaged its exterior body.

Amy Emm, a consultant with IBI Group and a Scarborough resident, is sounding the alarm about the dangers of a lack of insurance coverage for designated driving companies across the GTA — something she found out the hard way this past holiday season.

She had been out with a client one evening, and they’d had “a few margaritas.” When it was time to go home, she said she wanted to do the responsible thing and not drive under the influence of alcohol, yet she needed her car the next morning to take her kids to a Christmas party.

Keys to Us was a name she was familiar with through friends in the Durham region, where public transit usually stops running early and many people rely on such services. When she attended a fundraising event hosted by the mayor of Pickering, organizers advised people to call this company to get them home in their own vehicles, she said.

“If you’re driving home politicians and all their staff, I figured this is probably a stand-up, legitimate company,” said Emm about why she decided to call this company on that particular December night. “If it’s good enough for the mayor of Pickering, it’s got to be good enough for me, right?”

The trip was about nine kilometres, and it cost her a flat fee of $60. The driver to whom she handed the keys to her 2016 Ford Edge was “good and chatty” the whole trip. But she turned into the driveway three or four feet too soon, and instead drove the car right into a ditch, Emm said.

“When we got stuck in the ditch, instead of reversing out to try and minimize the damage, she just like floored it and pulled the car all the way through the ditch, therefore causing damage all the way from the front to the back on the undercarriage,” she said.

“It was very jolting. I just couldn’t believe it was happening,” said Emm, noting such a thing has never happened to anybody at her driveway, where she’s lived for the past four years.

Even more surprising to her was how she says the designated driving company reacted to the incident. To Emm’s dismay, Keys To Us told her the at-fault accident would go on her own driving record and it was her own insurance that would take care of the car repairs.

An estimate from a local car repair shop shows it will cost $6,386.45, minus the $1,000 deductible, to repair the car.

Keys To Us initially agreed to pay the deductible but has since said they only pay a $500 deductible, she said.

Emm couldn’t understand how a business that’s making money from having people chauffeured around in their own cars does not have insurance coverage for its drivers. She says the crucial detail had not come up anywhere in the process of contacting and hiring their driver.

“What if she had killed somebody? That would be on my record too. It’s such a big deal,” she said, noting many people who rely on the designated driving services may not be aware of this issue.

“My husband is a general contractor and if he goes into somebody’s house and accidentally burns it down, guess what? It’s his business insurance that covers it, not their home insurance. So why should this be any different?”

Keys To Us co-owner and vice-president Myrna Lachance said it’s not the company’s fault its drivers have no insurance; there’s no such insurance policy available.

“We’ve been trying for 20 years to get that kind of insurance. We’ve tried and tried and tried,” she said. “When (clients) give the keys to our drivers, the responsibility goes back to themselves and their insurance.”

She said the company has operated in the Durham region for the past 22 years, and accidents have happened. But she said they’ve never had to deal with an issue like this, where a customer is not satisfied with their way of doing business. The company has its own mechanic who usually helps with repair estimates, but customers have to pay for the fixes, she said.

Lachance said when one of their drivers is involved in an accident, they assess the situation and usually the deductible is paid from the driver’s salary.

She also defended the decision not to pay $1,000 for Emm’s deductibles, saying “any car that I know of, the deductible is $500.”

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The lack of insurance policy for designated driving companies is not unique to Keys To Us. Others also say they can’t find anything on the market.

“Unfortunately there is no company in Canada according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada that will allow us to cover the clients’ vehicle,” said Don Hinton, founder of To Arrive Alive, a designated driving service in Pickering.

John Bordignon of Desjardins said the car owner’s insurance policy is the primary coverage option if someone else is driving the car and a collision happens.

“This would include allowing your car to be driven by a friend, relative or a driver for Keys To Us,” he said.

Crystal Jongeward, a spokesperson at TD Bank Group, confirmed that TD does not offer commercial insurance to companies offering designated driving services.

Pete Karageorgos from the Insurance Bureau of Canada said if businesses such as these wanted to get insurance, they should look for policies similar to those mechanics or garages have — which is commercial liability insurance coverage.

The challenge here in Ontario is that people buy insurance on their vehicles, not on the driver, he said.

“If you let me drive your car … if I get into a crash, your insurance policy pays for the damage to your car,” he said, noting even the at-fault incidents go onto the car owner’s record.

The onus is on customers to know ahead of time how these services are regulated in their municipalities, said Karageorgos.

Across the GTA, the city of Oshawa is the only one that has tried to license and regulate designated driving companies, establishing a bylaw on this issue in 2016 that forces these businesses to purchase licenses. But, even there, the insurance aspect for these companies has remained unresolved.

On its website, the city of Oshawa makes it clear that any claims resulting from an accident caused by a designated driver affects the customer’s insurance record.

“It is important for prospective Designated Driving Service customers to contact their insurance provider to ensure that they have appropriate coverage prior to using a Designated Driving Service,” a note on the website reads.