Court Opinion

ID: 9641480
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:32:55.457131+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:37.762558
License: Public Domain

PALMORE, Justice
(dissenting).
The purpose of the exclusion quoted in the majority opinion is to make it clear that the policy does not cover the insured for any purpose when he is occupying or is struck by a vehicle which he owns but has not seen fit to include in his insurance policy. As I understand it, there is no reason Mr. Vanover could not have insured the tractor, and if he was going to run it on the highway he certainly should have done so. That the word “automobile” as used throughout the policy intended to include a farm tractor is made obvious by the fact that farm tractors while not on the public roads are specifically excluded from the definition of an automobile in the uninsured motorist clause. Only if tractors were otherwise to be considered as automobiles could there be any reason or necessity for a provision that for certain purposes and under certain conditions they will not be so considered. It is my opinion that the policy did not cover Mr. Vanover while he was operating his uninsured tractor. On that particular question Meridian Mutual Insurance Co. v. Siddons, Ky., 451 S.W.2d 831 (1970) is not in point. It did not involve an exclusion.
To illustrate the anomaly, if the majority opinion is correct, and the Collins vehicle had been another tractor instead of a passenger car, under the policy the Collins tractor would have been an “automobile” and the Vanover tractor would not.
*521I find myself in disagreement also with the decision that a witness may be permitted to estimate the speed of an automobile from the physical facts observed thereafter. The dynamics of an automobile collision being what they are, unless a person has had extensive training and experience in the actual staging of experimental accidents under a variety of conditions I do not believe his approximations of speed could possibly be sufficiently credible for acceptance in a court of law.