Which Insurance Class to Buy for a Used Motorbike

For most second-hand motorbikes in Thailand the honest answer is the compulsory por ror bor cover that the law requires, plus a voluntary third-party policy — Class 3 — and nothing more. Comprehensive Class 1 cover is worth buying on a bike that is genuinely valuable and rarely worth it on a ฿25,000 scooter. The middle classes, 2+ and 3+, are the worst value of all on a motorbike, for a reason specific to how people fall off them.

The logic is not about being thrifty. It is that the two risks you are insuring are wildly different in size. The most your own bike can cost you is what the bike is worth — a number you can look up and, if necessary, absorb. What you might owe somebody else after hitting them has no such ceiling, and the statutory cover tops out at ฿80,000 of medical costs per injured person. Insure the risk that could ruin you, not the one you could pay for out of savings.

• Always requiredCompulsory por ror bor — no road tax renewal without it
• The usual sensible additionClass 3: third-party injury and property damage
• 2+ and 3+ on a bikeExclude the solo spill, which is the accident you are most likely to have
• Class 1Only class covering a single-vehicle accident — worth it on a valuable machine

Why the plus classes fail on a motorbike

The classes and what each covers are set out in full in Thai insurance classes 1, 2+, 3+ and 3 explained. The one feature that matters here is that 2+ and 3+ pay for damage to your own vehicle only when another vehicle is involved. No named third party, no claim.

Now think about how motorbikes actually come to grief in Thailand. Sand blown across a coastal bend. Wet paint on a road marking. Gravel where the shoulder crumbles. Diesel on a roundabout. A dog in the road at dusk. Braking too hard on a downhill hairpin on a hill road. All of those put the rider on the tarmac without another vehicle touching them, and all of them are outside a plus policy. You would be paying a premium above Class 3 for a benefit that quietly excludes the most probable claim.

Match the cover to what the bike is worth

To do this arithmetic you need a realistic value for your machine, not a hopeful one. Second-hand motorbike values by type and age are set out in what a used car or motorbike really costs in Thailand, and the same figure should be sanity-checked against the sum insured any quote proposes.

Ask what is actually on offer for a motorbike

The class ladder is the framework Thai insurers use across motor business, but what an individual insurer will write on a specific second-hand bike is narrower than the full menu, and it varies. Some will not offer comprehensive cover on an older machine at all; some quote only through a dealer; some apply a deductible that swallows most of the value of an own-damage claim on a cheap bike. Get the answers before you get attached to a class number:

• Which classes will you write on this bike, given its age?
• What sum insured are you putting on it, and what would a total loss actually pay?
• Is there a deductible on own-damage claims, and how much?
• What is the third-party property damage limit? This is the figure that matters if you go into the side of a new pickup.
• Is it a named-rider policy? If your partner ever rides the bike, find out now.
• What does the policy require of the rider? Assume a valid entitlement to ride and a helmet are conditions, and read the wording rather than guessing.

The risk you are really insuring

Thailand's road deaths fall overwhelmingly on motorcyclists: the World Health Organization put them at 83.8% of all road traffic deaths in 2021, out of an estimated 18,218 deaths that year. That is a share of deaths, not of crashes, and it is the clearest statement available of where the danger sits. On a bike, the crash that changes your life is more likely to injure a person than to dent a bonnet — yours, your passenger's, or a pedestrian's.

Compulsory cover answers part of that: up to ฿30,000 of medical costs per person paid without waiting for fault to be established, and up to ฿80,000 once liability is settled. Those ceilings are low. A voluntary policy's third-party limits are what stand between you and the rest of the bill, and they are the reason Class 3 on a cheap scooter is not a token purchase but the main event.

The thing that voids all of it

Cover of any class assumes you were legally entitled to ride the machine. Thailand issues car and motorcycle licences as separate documents, and a car licence has never authorised a motorbike. Engine size does not create an exception: there is no lighter "moped" tier — Thailand formally declared under the Vienna Convention that it treats mopeds as motorcycles. Insurers, including travel insurers, apply their own licensing test regardless of what the police at the roadside would have done about it.

That question, and not the choice between Class 3 and Class 2+, is the one that decides whether a claim is paid. It is set out in what voids your motorbike cover in Thailand, and the practical aftermath of a crash on a bike you own is in crashing a bike you own or borrowed in Thailand.

Before the policy: buy the right bike

An insurer will want the registration book, and a policy on a machine whose paperwork does not match its frame is a problem waiting to surface at claim time. Check the numbers before you check the premiums — the process is in buying a used motorbike in Thailand.

Frequently asked questions