Medical care is much less expensive in many European countries (both before and after insurance), yet auto insurance coverage is usually still much higher.
Do you have a source for it being higher? My understanding is that the accident rates are lower. If the accidents/claims are lower and the health care is cheaper/covered, them I wonder what the other factor is. Maybe a lack of profit cap?
> By contrast, in Germany drivers are required to have €7.5m ($8.2m) of bodily-injury coverage, and in Britain liability is unlimited. And in those countries, going into hospital does not mean running up a life-altering bill.
Yeah, but that can't be the reason, right? If healthcare is so cheap, then claims should never be getting close to the limit unless there's a fatality (wrongful death) or permanent disability. Both of those are very rare, about half the rate as in the US and diffused by tens of thousands of drivers. So it still doesn't make sense to me that the cost would be much higher.
I could imagine that the intention is to not socialize the cost of traffic injuries via the health insurance (who would otherwise end up paying if the insurance coverage of the driver at fault is insufficient, I believe; you’re basically never billed for anything healthcare).
Additionally, the insurance will pay for any damages due to subsequently lost wages etc. of injured persons, which can quickly add up and would otherwise also be socialized to the public unemployment insurance system.
It seems like a good way to properly account for the cost of driving to me.
Your reply doesn't answer my question. Your statement about the cost of driving has no facts to support it. I would like to see those facts - or really a complete breakdown of why one is more costly than the other. The article and your explaination do allot address many factors.
Well it's not that cheap... It can be very expensive for serious accidents. You just almost never need to pay anything yourself. I'm not sure the cost for liability insurance is that much (or at all) higher in most of Europe though.
> The whole point of the article is that it's more expensive in Europe.
So a policy with a $100k coverage limit is cheaper than one which covers up to €7.5m? Not exactly unexpected regardless of country.
Would 7.5 mil insurance in the US be cheaper than the equivalent in in Europe? I doubt that but in any cases the article doesen't say anything about that..
But higher coverage doesn’t mean higher payouts. It’s cheaper and easier to offer full coverage of a rare and inexpensive event than a more common more expensive one. Or do you mean that premiums are higher?
Recent increases aren’t actually related to human medical care, body shops are just charging a lot more to fix cars these days, leading to increasing premiums. Anyways, both people and cars are expensive to fix now.
There’s not a fixed federal limit on loss ratio or profit for car insurance like there is for some types of health insurance. But they need to get approval for rate increases from state regulators for every state that they issue policies in, and some states can be extremely hard to get rate increases through, even when insurers are breaking even or losing money in those states. It’s a tragedy of the commons - each state regulator would benefit from keeping premiums low within their state, but in reality any losses need to be subsidized by higher premiums somewhere else.
Many years ago I upped my liability coverage from $15k/$30k to $100k/$300k, and I was surprised how little it increased my premium. It was a few bucks a month. A no-brainer.
In bc Canada, where insurance is probably too expensive, the normal coverage is 1million cad, with 2million being the new norm ( I have had 2 million coverage past few years).
In Quebec, the license plate cost ($230 per year) also covers all injury. This means that the private part of insurance, only covers damages to things, which is rarely millions.
This blend of private/public insurance results in super cheap rates, while keeping injury insurance in place.
Both BC (full public) and Ontario(full private) have higher rates for the same coverage. 2x as much per year.
I've heard that before but did not notice a material difference in my insurance moving between Ontario/Quebec. Is it mainly for new drivers or those otherwise more expensive to insure?
I do know that I pay almost $400/year* between my license and registration in Quebec which would be ~$0 in Ontario. As well as a lot more for gas.
* I have a "luxury" car because it cost > $50k CAD (about $38k USD) and therefore is so-defined by the province (a Volkswagen). And Montreal imposes extra fees.
Nice work. It's such a tiny incremental cost (if you're already carrying a policy) for a massive increase. You accidentally rear-end someone with a g-wagon and that $3.50/mo is really going shine.
If you wanna go higher then you'd purchase an umbrella policy. They are affordable though and pretty much a no brainier for anyone who has any sort of assets they'd like to protect.
Yeah I have $500k/$500k liability that (no collision - my car isn’t worth much) and it costs $100/mo and another $5m liability with $1m UM and that costs $25/month so I’m a little confused about the comments around liability being expensive - in my experience it’s the collision coverage that is so expensive I think the annual premium for it was going to be like ~10%-15% of the insured value of the car
And the liability premiums aren’t linear. Most claims are for the smaller amounts, not common to have multi-million dollar claims (though it does happen), so that fifth million of coverage is cheap.
The thing is, say I get sued for $100m. It’s great for my victims that I paid extra all these years for $5m in coverage, but I’m going bankrupt either way.
Indeed collision on an older vehicle often doesn’t make sense. And could result in your vehicle prematurely salvaged.
Not really - if you’re involved in a bad auto accident you are going to be sued - ending up with a large judgement against you (because your insurance only covered $300k of a $1m judgement still leaves you on the hook for $700k) is a horrible outcome, rich or poor.
You want liability protection such that your assets (whether small or large) are unlikely to be impacted by a reasonably foreseeable outcome I.e. $300k of liability covers 55% of likely outcomes vs $3m covering 85%
Agreed - I wish I had better data but it just feels like a low seven figure outcome could realistically be the outcome of many serious traffic accidents I’m solving for a 3rd standard deviation event but only having a couple hundred thousand of coverage feels like your solving for the lowest 1-2 quartile of outcomes.
Most companies that do home AND auto will offer it. The trick (not really a trick) is that the umbrella can ONLY be added after you maximize coverage on home and auto.
Check the bogleheads forum for discussions on insurance.
> the umbrella can ONLY be added after you maximize coverage on home and auto.
This isn't universally true - I have an umbrella policy with USAA. They require me to have a minimum of coverage on my home and auto to have the umbrella policy, but it's not the maximum they offer. It's a couple tiers down.
Of course, the price for the umbrella policy might depend on your home/auto coverage.
Chubb - you need to go through a broker and I should note i also have homeowners insurance that has some liability coverage which I suspect also influences the umbrella rate - just find a broker that sells Chubb/aig/natgen/travelers that cater to high net worth individuals (you don’t need to be one! I had a renters insurance policy from Chubb right out of college) But those policies tend to be more customizable - and my experience is that they’re more inclined to pay claims
I think the system (adjusters and courts) might be used to $15/$30k which may limit how often and how much they need to pay above that. If a lot of policies went up to that level, maybe the system would adapt, the payouts would increase more, and so would the premiums.
Most umbrella policies require you to carry a certain amount of homeowners and auto liability coverage, and then they add additional coverage on top of that. It's relatively cheap (hundreds of dollars per year for millions of dollars of coverage).
They're not. I've been getting many million dollar umbrella insurance every year, as well as quotes from different providers each renewal cycle, and they're consistently in the "few hundred bucks" category for a married couple. I'm also not a super attractive insurance customer, so it likely can be cheaper for others.
Definitely hundreds, mine is $372/yr for $1M/instance, atop my auto/home coverage (250/500 for the auto).
The thing about it is: your risk doesn't change because you have extra coverage. All that actuarial work is priced into your base coverage. In fact, they may even have factored in that people willing to voluntarily buy umbrella coverage are a little less risky than their model predicted.
When I originally got my umbrella policy around 10 years ago the cost was about ~$120/year for $2million in coverage. I'm currently paying $183.47/year for $2 million in coverage. Covers myself and my spouse.
I've never seen an option to choose the liability cover on insurance, I didn't know it was a thing. I just checked my policy and it is up to $20 million NZ ($12M US) per event.
How much do you pay for car insurance in the US? Mine is 1,200NZD per year, about 730USD
Some states have weird laws that affect prices, too. I once got hit while in MN, and the insurance company had to pay out for the cost of a new body panel. The shop gave me the option of a new panel, or a refurbished one off of a scrap car.
It looked identical when they were done, but I ended up getting a check cut for half the value of the new panel because the used one was so much cheaper.
As I was in college at the time, a free $800 made my day.
I could see the state requiring new parts because of unscrupulous insurance companies insisting that shitty used parts were fine: but it’s nice you had the option of taking the cash. Best of both worlds, really.
Really, in the long run all it does is make your premiums more expensive.
> insurance companies insisting that shitty used parts were fine
That's not up to the insurance company, because they aren't the ones sourcing the parts or doing the repairs. You go to a body shop that either works directly with the insurance company, or the company cuts you a check in the shops name for the quoted work.
It makes no sense whatsoever to put a brand new body panel on a car that's already lost 70-80% of the MSRP value to depreciation... IF the used parts are not damaged already, and the paint matches. Again, though, that's in the hands of the mechanic, not the insurance company.
Also you'd need to iterate everything about the insurance regulations in that location since the types of events that insurance pays out on can vary quite a bit between US states, let alone across oceans.
Some places have insurance laws that will make people say "wait, car insurance pays for that?"
Also, most of the reason US car insurance is so expensive is due to the cost of healthcare, which is paid for in other ways in many other countries.
About $1900/year, for two ICE vehicles (no liens), 300k/500k liability (per person/per incident maximums). Maxed out deductibles for Collison/Comprehensive on both. I just added a $1,000,000 umbrella policy at $500 a year though it would be nice to double the coverage there.
I use Geico and they give a breakdown of the cost per vehicle. My full size pickup is double the cost of my wife's mid-size SUV, which I cannot argue against.
When you say maxed out deductibles for collision and comprehensive, do you mean you picked the highest deductible? Or lowest deductible which would mean max coverage but also premium? I’ve always wondered about the value of collision and comprehensive, since it seems to be one of the more expensive parts of car insurance
Maximum deductible is taking on more of the risk yourself.
The first dollar in any claim is always paid, the last dollar hardly ever, so the first dollar is worth more. Maximum deductible also reduces the chance you’ll involve insurance at all. Why report a $200 fix when your deductible is $1000?
Comprehensive insurance is for when you CANNOT afford to lose the car. If it would be painful but you’d survive, you probably don’t need it.
> I’ve always wondered about the value of collision and comprehensive, since it seems to be one of the more expensive parts of car insurance
As a general rule - You should buy insurance on something when you both 1) have to have it and 2) can't afford to replace it.
Once you can afford to comfortably absorb a loss equal to the value of your car, you should consider dropping collision and comprehensive. For me that's when the car is worth less than around $5k.
Do it. Then get personal liability for your net worth on top of it. The peace of mind knowing that no one can sue you for more than you're worth is priceless.
If someone injures you, and your insurance doesn't cover it, can't you sue them? If you do and they can't afford it, can you put them into debt? Seems reasonable rather than you going into debt for medical bills?
You can sue them, and you may win, but the trouble is collecting the money. They might simply not have any money. Or they may have it, but won't make it easy for you to find it. Meanwhile, you still need to pay your medical bills.
Yes, they will owe you $x and you will still owe the hospital $x - but that's often not very useful, as they don't have any money (and you do).
You may desire to transfer the debt onto them, but the hospital will absolutely not accept that. Why would they? If a bank owed you $1 million, and they said "oh, now Jim owes you that money, not us" you would similarly refuse.
Most carriers offer Uninsured/Underinsured coverage. I think it's mandatory by some states or maybe the carrier. The idea is to make you whole regardless of the other person's coverage limit. Not sure how effective it is in practice.
In many states, uninsured coverage only applies if you can prove they are uninsured. In my case, they totaled our car, sent us to the hospital, and drove off. Thus it was no-fault for me but I had to pay my deductible. Cop: "this is pretty typical".
No effort was put into finding them, even though there are cameras at every intersection. Through my own effort I got a grainy photo from a local business, but not good enough to see the plate. Until the police actual police and there are consequences for people, things will only get worse.
A significant amount of people are judgement proof, aka they have no significant assets or income eligible to seized or garnished to pay for debts. Plus you alone bear the legal costs of obtaining a judgement to begin with.
Have fun collecting that 20% of their minimum wage paycheck for the rest of their life to pay off your injuries, car damage, and lawyer fees. Assuming they don't just get paid under the table or work as a contractor.
And if they move to another state, have fun transferring your judgement over there and trying to find their bank accounts and employer(s). It's like getting blood from a stone. It's easier and cheaper to just pay a tiny bit more in insurance premiums.
Sure. And they can get their own lawyer, and you have to pay your own lawyer, and the case will likely settle for something, and at best you'll get only the fraction of their assets minus lawyer fees that isn't subject to seizure - probably a tiny fraction of what you'd get minus the uncertainty, drama, and delays of just getting things like high under-insured motorist coverage, or long term disability insurance. I don't think once someone declares bankruptcy after you sue them into the ground that you can wring out much more.
The main reason our insurance cost so much is because there are so many claims. This is partially because our licensing is too lax, there is too much vandalism and storm loss, and the costs of the vehicles and health are is so high. Higher quality drivers will result in fewer claims and cheaper premiums.
If we had a comprehensive public transit network, then only the people who need to drive would do so. Then you could raise the licensing requirements.
More importantly however you probably want to separate out roads from streets in American towns, cities, and suburbs to reduce the number of accident prone interactions. As it is now, streets and roads are treated basically the same way and you get the abomination that are "stroads". By keeping them separate you remove all pedestrian and bike traffic from roads and you massively slow down car traffic on streets (along with removing traffic lights on streets).
"If we had a comprehensive public transit network, then only the people who need to drive would do so. Then you could raise the licensing requirements."
That's not a prerequisite for raising licensing requirements. In fact, claims tend to be highest in major cities that do have public transportation networks. So the people most likely to lose their license are more likely to have access to public transit.
Pedestrian and bike deaths are an extremely small percentage of road fatalities and injuries. If you want to make an impact on insurance cost through reduced claims, you need to take another action. Higher quality drivers through more stringent education and testing is the most comprehensive way to do that with the lowest infrastructure cost.
Note that not everyone would lose thier license. Many of the people involved in accidents today are ignorant and could be brought up to a possible level with better training.
That's not the issue. The issue is that in the regions where you do have good public transit, most of the drivers are commuting from places that don't. So until those areas have at least decent access to public transit, you risk excluding people from those areas from economic opportunities in the city.
So you still need a comprehensive public transit system. It doesn't need to be super regular or blazing fast but it needs to be viable enough that commuters can still commute if they can't get a license.
I'm not sure where you are, but most larger cities have public transit extending quite far from the city proper. Sure, the super commuters might be left out, but there's no reasonable solution for that use case.
Ultimately no impactful regulation of cars/drivers is possible because it's impossible to survive in most of the US without driving. You can take someone's license or mandate they have $10 million of insurance but at the end of the day they'll just have to drive without a license and drive without insurance because in most places there's no alternative.
The solution is to stop building out our infrastructure in ways that make cars a requirement for survival. Give people an alternative and maybe then you can start enforcing stricter automobile regulations.
As a benefit you'd reduce all the other horrible impacts cars have on our society (health, pollution, costs, anti-social behavior)
It's pretty much an unfixable problem at this point given that we also have lost the ability to do infrastructure projects with anything resembling a sane budget or time table.
It's really not. Florida for all its wrongs is actually showing this to be feasible. Decades of attempts at building rail in the state floundered and failed over and over again but Brightline is finally actually making good stable progress.
And this isn't just some new company that popped up out of nowhere. This is more or less the same group that had been attempting passenger rail in the state for the last 15 years or so. What changed is they stopped trying to sell it as a public infrastructure project and instead sold it as a purely private project that is funded by bonds which only come out at a loss to the government when the project succeeds (and the companies have to pay back with interest if it fails).
But now that Brightline has been shown to be viable, politicians in the state are bending over backwards to allocate land for routes (for example republican politicians allocated a route along I-4 from Orlando to Tampa in near record time). They are pursuing their next sets of routes in the state including the aforementioned Orlando-Tampa route, an east coast up to JAX route, and numerous local commuter rail routes from the surrounding counties into Miami.
All it takes is one good success and everyone who was otherwise staunchly against it starts moving heaven and earth to spread the boon to their constituents.
Adding a few intercity links is good, but it's far easier than restructuring metro areas to facilitate public transit and pedestrians rather than cars.
I agree but however Miami already has decent transit for the city itself. It isn't comprehensive by any means but it's enough to make leaving your car at the local train station and commuting in viable for a lot of people.
What is missing in the area however are fast, cheap intercity links (until now) and more importantly fast, reliable commuter rail. Brightline (and hopefully soon to follow Tri-rail) rolling out fast, regular commuter rail to the lower third of the Florida peninsula would mean that south Florida would have rail transit viability (and range) comparable to the NYC metro area (which is probably the best "no car" metro in the US at the moment).
I knew a kid with ADHD in high school. There were days (game days) when he would intentionally not take his medicine, yet he would still drive. He had numerous accidents. One time he stopped behind someone at a stop sign. Then he rear-ended them because he forgot they were in front of him and he got caught up in looking for a gap to pull out. He totaled 3 cars before the end of high school.
Our driver tests are a joke. Driver quality seems to be decreasing significantly in my area. To make things worse, there is a massive shortage in driving instructors for new drivers.
Prior to December, I had only see 1 wrong-way driver in my entire 20+ years of driving. Since December, I have seen 4! One of them was on the freeway going up-hill and slightly around a bend - at night - which was extremely frightening to witness as people were dodging it at the last second due to poor visibility.
I've seen this happening more now. I have two potential explainations. First, almost all of the people I've heard of doing this have turned out to be really drunk or high when they were arrested or autopsied. Second, one is more along the lines of what you're saying with poor driver quality. Some people have an over-reliance on GPS telling them where to turn and have lost the ability to navigate for themselves (or even just verify what the machine is telling them is at least safe).
> Some people have an over-reliance on GPS telling them where to turn and have lost the ability to navigate for themselves (or even just verify what the machine is telling them is at least safe).
Perhaps we ought to start attaching jail time to people who drive the wrong way due to reliance on incorrect GPS as a soft form of eugenics. Keep them in a position where they aren't in a position to find love and reproduce for a year.
Most of it is not a genetic issue. Many of the people who rely on GPS so heavily have the capability to navigate without it, but ate too lazy and inexperienced to do so.
Depends on what state you are in but probably car insurance rates are worse. In Mississippi 1 in 3 drivers are uninsured. Uninsured rate for health in that state is 1 in 6.
This article sounds more like a car insurance ad. Fear mongering at its best. Yea it’s probably only a a $10-20 increase in premiums if you are in a class of “very very low risk” drivers. But people with poor credit, high number of at fault accidents, or just living in the wrong zip code (higher accidents means higher premiums!) will result in much higher increases.
Most people here probably fall into idgaf category and can pay the increased premiums for the “peace of mind”. But if you are living at or near the federal poverty line. Paying for peace of mind is much less important.
Personally I have the maximum limits myself since the increase in 6 month premiums is only about $20.
I do wish I did not have to own a car though. No more car maintenance, car insurance, ongoing gas costs, yearly registration fees to local/state entities, tire replacement, brake replacements, …
I very much prefer to use my bike, walk, or use public transportation where possible. Much better for personal health (more active), environment, and my mental health (dealing with other drivers inattentiveness, poor driving skills, drunk mofos at night). Plus it’s nice to multitask while taking the bus or train home.
That sounds very low. Here in Denmark (where health care is a lot cheaper). The required liability coverage is around $20 million covering both treatment and compensation. Obviously the amount they pay out would normally be a lot less then in the US.
The mandatory liability insurance covers any damage done using the vehicle, independently of who is driving it.[0]
If there is no insurance for the car, I would assume that normal laws regarding liability apply. There is also punishment for driving without a license[1] or without insurance[2].
From [1], a man with no license or insurance was jailed for three months and fined 100k DKK (15k USD), but this also includes drug offences. He also cannot legally drive for 5.5 years.
From [2], the vehicle is impounded the third time you drive without a license within three years. The first offence incurs a fine of 7000 DKK (1000 USD) and the subsequent 8500 DKK (1230 USD).
From [3], if you lend your vehicle to a person that drives recklessly, the vehicle can still be impounded and sold. The owner is liable for traffic infractions, but the owner can't lose their license because of what the lender did.
Typically health insurance is first in line, but will then try to assign this to the proper insurance company based on who is covering the actual source of the damage. If it's just some health thing, then it stops with the health insurance company. But if it's a car accident (or work related, etc), the health insurance company will go after the car insurance company (or worker's comp, etc) as appropriate. This is fairly standard, but still there might be some arguing and lawyers and whatnot.
The consumer/patient/victim is last in line and doesn't need to be overly involved in these arguments between insurance companies - but it does become a big problem if none of the insurance is enough to pay the bills, and the person who caused the damages doesn't have money either. The victim gets stuck with whatever bill is left. You can sue the at-fault driver, but that's little help if they don't have money. More effective is to plead mercy and negotiate with the hospital. If you owe them $200k, that's more their problem than your, if you don't have it. And they've already gotten maybe (hopefully) $100-300k from insurance anyway, so maybe they'll forgive the rest or setup a payment plan for $50k or whatever. None of this is good! But there really is no good outcome when someone gets smashed with a car.
One reasonable remedy would be to increase the required liability coverage to $1M or more - enough to cover the amount of damage one can do in an automobile. Of course then only the people who care about these laws will have it. We'll still have an uninsured motorist problem. Now that I think about it, maybe they should make proof of car insurance required for registration. Why don't we do this already? Registration is much easier to enforce (there's a sticker on your plate in the US).
180k is a lot but also my guess is that having a trauma team work on you is quite expensive - pretty much no other time in someone’s life is someone going to be getting direct work from so many high-wage professionals.
Note that the family was on the hook for ~4k. That seems to me to be insurance working as expected.
We don't have to have this unproductive debate, because you can just switch the scenario to an accident causing death and be right back where we started in terms of demonstrating that $100k coverage lines are not enough to cover the externalities of driving.
Too many articles with a kid getting hurt or dying. As a new parent these are so much harder to read now: I feel like I can just start to understand the pain the parents went thru. In a blink your world is turned upside down and your joy is gone.
Just keep in mind that the world, including and especially car and pedestrian safety are much better now than in the past. Still hurts to read about these accidents when they happen though!
I agree that there are too many articles about relatively few incidents, but that's what people want to read about apparently, so that's what the news people give us.
Pedestrian safety has gotten significantly worse in the past few years in the USA as people keep buying larger vehicles. The USA is much less safe for pedestrians than most developed countries.
There should be much stricter regulations on drivers ability to see to the front and sides of their vehicles. I'm not quite sure what other regulations would force better engineering for pedestrian/cyclist safety. Policymakers should put more effort into discouraging people from buying vehicles that are significantly larger than they really need, and making large vehicles safe for everyone on the road, even at the expense of possibly making them more expensive, less convenient, less cool looking, or slower. After-market modifications which compromise pedestrian safety should be strictly banned from city streets.
Personally I think manufacturers should be partly liable for damage caused by their vehicles.
The natural way would be to price this into insurance premiums, using a high value for human life. It would require that the premium depend on the vehicle model and the expected damage it will do. An SUV model with bad visibility that crushes toddlers, would have a high premium. E($100M * number of crushed toddlers).
Some people need vehicles with significant size or hauling capacity: delivery trucks/vans, long-haul trucks, ambulances, fire trucks, buses, tow trucks, vehicles used by tradespeople and farmers, etc. At least some of these vehicles are inevitably going to be on streets with shops and residences. But the vehicles needed could be re-engineered to be at least several times safer for pedestrians/cyclists if it were mandated, and many of the large vehicles on the road could be made smaller and lighter without compromising their drivers' needs.
We're inevitably going to have delivery trucks, buses, fire engines, some number of pickup trucks (or comparable), etc. on city streets, so under the circumstances we should try to make them as safe as possible (whether by forcing them to be lower to the ground and have more windows in front, requiring them to add cameras, limiting their weight, giving them a slower speed limit, limiting where they can park, ...). The owners of such vehicles should also be required to pay for the external costs their choices impose on everyone else.
Instead we effectively subsidize these vehicles by giving them special tax breaks.
Vans have good visibility as well as more cargo capacity than the shiny $100K pickup trucks mostly driven in cities by non-tradespeople. The engine bays on modern pickups are unnecessarily large. It boggles the mind that there is no regulatory pressure in the US to make pickup trucks safer for pedestrians.
Occupant safety improved, but pedestrian safety peaked in 2009 and is now back to the level of 1982, with death numbers continuing to climb.
15 years ago most cars had good visibility, and pedestrians getting hit rolled over the vehicle's hood. Now people prefer vehicles with much worse visibility and hoods that hit pedestrians like a freight train instead of like a scoop.
If you're in a state that isn't regressive, teach your kids to jaywalk. It changes your view from focusing on the traffic signals to what the cars are actually doing. I don't think I go a single day without seeing a car flagrantly run a red light. There are no more rules and kids need to understand that.
At my university, the drivers are very used to stopping to let students cross, but a lot of people don't seem to look around or even lift their eyes from their phones. If I tried doing that, I'd be really nervous that I would be the one where a driver unfortunately doesn't stop in time. I really don't get those people.
I don't think GP is suggesting that you step out in front of cars and hope for the best, but rather that you cross in places other than those which have been deemed for crossing. In theory, walking a half mile to a crosswalk, waiting 30 seconds, crossing when okayed by the light, and walking a half mile back should be "safer". But just walking across the road when safe requires an understanding of how traffic works and how to judge safety.
It might be Baader-Meinhoff phenomonon, but In the past two days I've seen multiple pickup trucks hopping the curb in places that I find shocking, so I'm becoming more inclined toward taking safety into ones own hands. The system clearly isn't working.
Seconded. On bicycle, I learned the Idaho stop techniques - treating stop signs as yield signs, and treating red lights as stop signs.
The most important thing I got out of this experience is that traffic signs and lights are suggestions. A red light usually means stop, but sometimes it is safe to go. A green light usually means go, but sometimes I must stop to avoid getting T-boned or cut off.
The only absolute rules of traffic are observation and physics. I predict other road users' behaviors and avert dangers, regardless of what the traffic signs/signals say or even if they're absent. For example, I slow down or stop near blind corners, even if there is no stop sign - and there have been times when vehicles popped out. I always look left and right even when I have the right of way, even when crossing a green light, because time and time again this trust has been broken.
That’s insanely low! In Portugal the minimum required by law is 6.45 million for victims and 1.30 for property damage, per accident. A policy like this can cost as little as 250€ / year.
I assume these low limits in US insurance also affect material damages so that if you crash into an expensive car you just get a bunch of debt you need to pay off?
Despite the seemingly affordability a lot of drivers are uninsured. In California its 1 in 5 and in Mississippi its 1 in 3 drivers that are uninsured. Its likely they try and flee the scene over staying to offer to pay with money they don’t have. Hit and run drivers successfully get away 9/10 times. You might only carry liability insurance at which point you pay for your own repair.
If you claim too much on your health insurance then the company (e.g. UHC) requires you to file a report of all details related to it. If it's a car accident then they require all info about the other parties. They will sue the other parties to recover their costs.
A "fun fact" that often astonishes europeans when I tell them: in America, it's even possible (and common?) to get insurance coverage for cases where the other party doesn't have their own insurance cover.
My state (Oregon) requires insurance for motor vehicle operation. I understand the idea, but I can’t help but feel like it’s business model protection ensconced in law. The insurer isn’t obligated by law to pay for… anything. They’ll do everything they can to get out of paying for anything.
And yes, you can buy “uninsured motorist protection” from your insurer as well. Even in states where it shouldn’t be possible for there to be uninsured motorists.
Every state I've lived in requires auto insurance.
The idea makes sense -- the state recognizes that vehicle accidents will happen and preemptively deals with free loaders by requiring auto insurance, instead of just suggesting it. It falls down when the state isn't actually requiring the insurers to do their damn job.
Mandating insurance makes sense from the perspective of CYA, though I wonder if the govt could do something to enforce competition. Maybe make public actuarist data, and payout rates and information?
Regulations frequently kill competition, either explicitly on purpose, or accidentally. Insurance is otherwise a hyper-competitive business anyway. Super easy to shop rates among many companies, so they all gravitate downward to about the same level, net of small differences in coverage or services, fancy websites, etc.
And of course uninsured motorist coverage is a thing, because making something illegal doesn't mean people won't do it.
> making something illegal doesn't mean people won't do it
Isn't that the point of making something illegal? Here the system is: no insurance, no plates.
(it's also no inspection, no plates. One has to be wary of the sketchier tourists, but everyone with local plates has both insurance and a functioning vehicle)
If people engage in a risky activity where the legal system expects them to pay for damages if something goes wrong, but damage sums are so high that most people are unable to pay for these damages, it makes perfect sense to require people to have insurance if they want to engage in this risky activity.
The real crime is the state then zoning and building infrastructure in a way that forces you to engage in said activity, effectively forcing all citizens to buy insurance.
Car insurance in California has price caps. And as many of us know from econ 101, price caps lead to shortages.
The California auto insurance market basically failed in December and it is now almost impossible to get auto insurance with less than 3 weeks lead time. Most of them have closed their brick and mortar locations and do not accept online applications.
Of course, California’s solution to a shortage is to try to mandate supply.
quote from commissioner that refused to allow price increases for 4 years:
> “These alleged passive-aggressive tactics by insurance companies to slow down drivers’ access to coverage are unacceptable, dangerous, and will not be tolerated,” Lara said in a press release Thursday.
I’ve always suspected that that incentivized health insurance companies to let hospitals inflate costs. If the government forbids me from increasing my percentage of the pie and I need to increase revenue I have to increase the size of the pie.
Yes, this and vertical integration. The insurance company may have limited profit, but if the hospital doesn't, and they're both owned by the same parent company, then the prices "inside the control volume" can be whatever fiction is most convenient to report to the government.
Looked up the largest health insurer, they operate hospitals:
> Kaiser Permanente operates 39 hospitals and more than 700 medical offices, with over 300,000 personnel, including more than 87,000 physicians and nurses.
Profit caps disincentivize companies to be efficient, meaning they'll just waste resources that could be used better elsewhere in the economy. Capping price or profit does nothing to address the root cause of the problem - lack of competition. Lack of competition could be addressed by finding ways to reduce regulatory hurdles to enter the market, or by breaking up monopolies with anti-trust action.
You got laid off because they dont need you. I understand how traumatic and life destroying it can be sometimes, but long term it destroys the future of overall population, to prevent firing people who are no longer necessary.
We’d all be stuck as farmers, tailors and wood cutters, if firing people was penalised or efficiency was punished, no one would want to make their company more efficient with wood cutting machines or sewing machines, or tractors for farming, etc.
In a small timeframe it is horrible to lose a job, but the state is responsible for protecting both the future generations balanced with comfort and safety of present population.
A affordable unemployment insurance is a much better idea tbh compared to profit caps or price caps.
Good luck tho!, may you get a great job soon. May god bless you.
cost-plus has largely proved to be a busted business model. in industries where it is de rigueur, such as defense and space, traditional business models have driven efficiency improvements and new product development alongside price decreases.
The prohibition should stand. People should have a voluntary option to pay or not pay for services as they choose. Except I suppose in quite exceptional circumstances.
If a group of locals want to pool their cash and start up a local broadband service then good on them, best of luck. But taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook to help them.
USPS is an example. It's sort of a public utility that has some strange requirements, like it _must_ __offer__ service to everyone. In some places this is less profitable, and private postal / shipping firms might not even offer their own service (or pay USPS for the last leg instead).
However, because USPS exists, there is a ceiling to how much other firms can charge without differentiating their services to make it worth the difference in cost. It helps ensure the market functions with proper competition.
For any other market where distortion (dysfunctional market) is observed, the solution is not to mandate the impossible from the existing players, but to modify the market conditions where they are broken.
Say we have a Centiville, a conveniently sized community of 100 people. 90 of them want municipal broadband because they like the internet.
That 90% should be allowed to pool their resources, start a "Centiville Fibre" company, build out fibre locally and charge locals a fair rate. Then the remaining 10 don't have to be involved in something they don't want. Or they can pay market rate for it without getting a dividend, which is effectively a penalty.
No government involvement required outside maybe permitting. The people who want it pay, it probably happens faster and all is good.
> And they want their tax money to go to something actually useful for them.
They're going to have their taxes raised to pay for the installation costs. Doing it through the government doesn't mean there is more money (unless they're harvesting resources off people who think it is a bad idea / don't want it / can't afford it which is unfair).
I don’t have children but I still pay for the schools. The idea that your tax dollars should only get spent on something you use personally is laughable.
Well, yes. But that is a straw man because nobody argued that.
Taxpayers shouldn't be forced to pay for things that they don't use and don't think are good ideas. If you use it, you should pay for it. If you think it is a good idea, you should pay for it. But if people think something is a bad idea they should only have to pay for it under highly exceptional circumstances.
There is no need to force people to pay for broadband. This is a problem that a company can solve using voluntary action.
What straw man is constructed here? There are people who don’t think they should pay for schools with their taxes. There are people who literally are advocating to instead be paid to not use public schools at all.
Many people strongly disagree about the places their tax dollars go. It is maybe one of the single most common complaints people utter and this is an example of it? People are able to make decisions about where their tax dollars go but only in the abstract of collective action via legislation. It’s kind of how governments work on a fundamental level and most of politics is about where the tax dollars go.
If a strong majority of people choose to do something as a municipality, that is the system at work. Sorry to the 10% of people who think they’re getting a bad deal (and are also almost certainly wrong on an objective level unless they just don’t want internet at all).
The suggestion that instead a private enterprise should be spun up for it so they can choose to not subscribe is the antithesis of the entire point. The entire point is that the cost is already beared by the taxpayers in the first place and that it should serve them. It makes more sense to invest directly in the creation and keep it in the hands of those who bore the cost. We give billions out in corporate welfare and yet the companies who get that money are quite often the most reviled in the nation based on public polling (Telcos). It is almost like the incentives aren’t aligned.
The idea that your tax dollars should only get spent on something you use personally is laughable - I'm not arguing that.
> The entire point is that the cost is already beared by the taxpayers in the first place and that it should serve them...
Well, having the taxpayers pay for it is obviously failing. Maybe try not taking the money off people and letting them build their own broadband? If you've identified that something the government is doing isn't working, the first port of call is try privatising it. The private market is pretty good at providing things.
Getting local government to do something instead of state or federal is an improvement; but by golly you could just have the people who want something organise to have what they want without dragging the unwilling in to it. 90% vs 100% of local people paying for something doesn't really make a difference to the underlying economics.
> If a strong majority of people choose to do something as a municipality, that is the system at work. Sorry to the 10% of people who think they’re getting a bad deal (and are also almost certainly wrong on an objective level unless they just don’t want internet at all).
No that isn't the system at work, that is the system failing. Taking a system that could work with just a motivated minority organising it and changing it to a system where everyone has to vote on it at regular intervals is a recipe for failure. If a strong majority wants something, they have all the tools they need to do it themselves at their own cost. The only reason they even need a majority is to push any obstructionist permitting and whatnot out of the way.
> We give billions out in corporate welfare and yet the companies who get that money are quite often the most reviled in the nation based on public polling (Telcos).
A sensible take there is to not make paying them compulsory? I get what you're saying but I don't get how you aren't joining the dots. You start by saying that some people are going to have to pay for something they don't want. You then get to the conclusion and you've identified that people are being forced to pay for something they don't want and that is bad.
There is an easy solution to all this. Stop forcing people to fund things they think are bad ideas, then let the people who want broadband band together, set up a limited liability corporation to control the legal risk, and build themselves a broadband network. IE, get government out of the picture as much as possible. Then literally everyone gets what they want. If someone changes their mind later they aren't a shareholder and will end up having to give money to the people with more foresight.
Similarly. If someone wants to go off the grid there isn't any reason to force them on to it. Ditto water supplies if they want to try something alternative. And they shouldn't have to pay for a service they aren't connected too because that would be dumb. I'd probably advocate a law that you have to disclose being unconnected to major utilities clearly, obviously and early in the process when selling or renting a house.
I don't really see why anyone should be unhappy if Sam the Solar wants to power his own house. Good luck to him. He doesn't have to pay for my electricity and I don't have to pay for his. If it is much more cost effective for him he can come do my house too. There is literally no need to force them to pay or force them to consume a service that they don't think it a good idea.
And the closer the equilibrium can be pushed to a fully private free market the more cost effective it is likely to be.
Example: Germany’s mostly-public (Gesetzliche - more like, extremely strictly regulated) health insurance system putting a market-based cap on what private (more like, more lightly-regulated) insurance can cost and cover.
I was on the private system my first 13 years working in Germany. I was obligated (but didn’t try to fight) switch to public recently.
I'm all for government 'competition' so long as they play by the rules of the market. If government 'competition' means a money-losing (i.e. tax-supported) enterprise, then it's not competition, it's just price-setting with extra steps.
This is the lead up to them exiting the state like in Florida (and California for other types of insurance). I believe state farm and allstate have already exited california, but I may be wrong.
Three weeks delay is just the most visible thing, they are basically pulling out all the stops to try to avoid covering as many people as possible.
But even 3 weeks delay in driving a vehicle you just purchased is considerable.
Last week I switched car insurance company and coverage was offered in the literal same day, all over the phone. In comparison, three weeks seems like an eternity.
Just about everywhere in America requires you to drive to work. If you can't drive for 3 weeks, you can't work for 3 weeks. Do you see why this might be a problem
Grace and Insurance really don't belong in the same sentence. They are stingy enough to deal with as is, even when you have photo evidence of no fault in the crash.
three weeks of spotty or delayed attendance can lose one a job
most of the people with the option to remote work are working decent white-collar jobs, so add this to the long tally of policies that are designed to help but only hurt the poor
> three weeks of spotty or delayed attendance can lose one a job
Under what conditions will a person have a job that they are expected to be at, but not have car insurance to get there? I'm sure this exists (for instance for someone whose policy is revoked for DUI or accident or whatever), but in many cases I assume public transit or a three week wait to start is acceptable.
Which company please? [edit: Sorry should have specified: California. Anyone has an auto insurance company working quickly - or at all- in California currently?]
In most of the US, just about all of the large national direct-sales insurers operates sales 24/7 and will write you a policy in 20 minutes at 3am if you want: State Farm, GEICO, Progressive, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, Nationwide, Farmers, Travelers, etc.
Yes sorry, should have specified, in California? California is having this problem currently. I am also used to California auto insurance working fine and quickly but that's not the case currently.
Lol it's usually literally 5 minutes for me to buy a new car insurance. What's this weeks of lead time? This is not some physical good you need to manufacture and ship!
Most (all?) dealers in California offer some kind of 24/48 hour insurance for you to legally drive home. The prices are sort of ridiculous when compared to normal car insurance ($50-$100 for a couple days of coverage IIRC), but thats just a function of the risk profile and the fixed underwriting costs of a short policy.
New Hampshire is the only state in the US that does not require liability insurance. If you drive through NH, make sure you have uninsured coverage. (and it is a good idea anywhere)
Yea but if the costs of accident exceed that bond you still have to cover it if your at fault.
Plus most medical expenses quickly will exceed those bond values these days. Maybe decades ago if you had a lot money to just set aside getting no interest on it it may have made sense.
However the costs of medical and even cars today make it quite a risky proposition
Laws haven’t kept up with rising costs, so the amount of coverage you are required to have in most states won’t cover the average accident, let alone catastrophic ones. Same with the amount you have to bond for.
I looked into it as I prefer to self-insure for any non-catastrophic risk.
It makes absolutely no sense for me to post a bond for such a small amount when I can get ~10x the coverage, plus all the claims handling, for $1200/yr for two cars and two drivers.
It would make sense if I was a business who had hundreds of cars or some other weird corner case perhaps, but regular people who could afford to post a bond have a better option in the insurance market.
Even if hospital costs aren't covered the average US car price in 2024 is close to $50k and a totaled car is definitely covered. Lord help you if you hit a Hummer EV or a Cyberbeast.
Yeah the minimum coverage is no longer enough. But that’s always been a problem if you hit a Bentley or exotic. People who drive 100k cars should really have to cover that extra repair cost with their own insurance but that’s not how most state laws work.
Not just California. In Arizona, I was looking to shop around insurance recently and couldn’t even get a quote from my home insurer (who also recently raised my rates, mind you).
Definitely agree, and I also firmly believe that each property should get exactly one FEMA bailout ever. If you live in Florida and your house gets destroyed by a hurricane, FEMA should pay you for it. If you choose to rebuild on that exact same spot, and your house gets destroyed by a hurricane, you should get exactly bupkis.
This should carry with the property address - the next person who buys it should have to sign a form acknowledging that they aren't going to get a FEMA bailout if it gets destroyed.
Lots of Florida Republicans out there who complain about welfare but rely on some of the biggest welfare checks that get written to repair their homes because of the absolutely foreseeable results of their choices.
On the downside, when the next disaster hit and FEMA didn't cover it, it would look like FEMA doesn't want to cover low income housing, which isn't a good look.
But there does need to be some mechanism to convince people to abandon homes and towns that are not appropriate given environmental conditions. And it needs to be done carefully so it's not like kick all the poor people out, do some civil engineering that never happened while it was a poor community, then sell the land to developers who make a huge profit.
That is basically what governments are for, collective actions that make land more valuable: roads, schools, police, fire departments, and civil engineering projects.
I could be mistaken on this, as I don't live in an area where such things are common, but my understanding is the issue is that if your house is destroyed by say, a hurricane, no insurance provider (or fema) gives you a bag of cash and says "move", reimbursement is predicated on rebuilding the structure where it stood.
Insurance makes you whole, not the property. You are perfectly welcome to pocket the cash. Although if you have a mortgage, you do have an additional obligation to maintain the value of their collateral or pay off the loan.
If you have replacement cost coverage (as opposed to actual cash value (=depreciated value) you typically have to use it to reconstruct the home if you want the full amount. This is typical.
"We will pay no more than the actual cash value of the damage until actual repair or replacement is complete." [0]
Not all coastal areas have the same strict building code. Homes not built with concrete exteriors and hurricane tie down anchors have a strong risk of being demolished in strong hurricanes. South Florida revamped their building codes after Hurricane Andrew wiped many of the homes and infrastructure in the 90s. However, not all coastal houses in northern Florida or on the gulf are built with concrete or on stilt foundations.
A secondary threat is prolonged flooding which can submerge entire homes with salt water for weeks at a time. That's very costly and not preventable with existing homes in flood zones.
This I never understood. Other countries didn't need building codes mandating such things - people always built houses that were intended to stand for many decades and that are suited to their local environment[1].
It defies comprehension that despite being somewhat poorer and enjoying milder weather, Europeans built their houses from brick and mortar while the US insists on erecting cheap cardboard boxes that even if they're not blown away or flooded, will probably rot away within the lifetime of their owner.
I did not use the word "wood" once. I don't think houses with walls you can kick holes in qualify as wood houses. They're closer to cardboard than wood.
Anyways, the point isn't the materials - the point is that the houses are fundamentally unsuited to the environment they are in.
Are you just constantly kicking your walls or something? I don't get why it's such a big issue. I've only accidentally made a hole in a wall once and it was about an hour fix.
Drywall walls have never been a problem for me, in fact they're pretty nice. It's really easy to modify the walls. Need to do a new Ethernet run? Want another power run? Feel like moving a lightswitch? Install new access points on the ceiling or change up light fixtures? Easy to drop down the void and cut a new box. Want to redesign the layout of a room? Often not a problem, easy to change.
Meanwhile a concrete wall is a massive pain to modify. You get the runs you get. Good luck redoing a layout. Say goodbye to having good wireless coverage.
Even in places with lots of hurricanes the odds of the house "blowing away and falling over" are pretty slim. I speak as a person who grew up in a place that gets a lot of hurricanes. The biggest impact is usually flooding and roof damage.And now, once again, as someone living in a highly tornado-probe area, it's mostly roofing damage. The odds the tornado will destroy your house is still incredibly slim.
So do you spend significantly more for construction for a failure that's still extremely unlikely? Y'all are acting like every time there's a thunderstorm all the houses just blow down. You're entirely disconnected from reality of the actual risks versus massive increase in costs.
Very few houses are a total loss in the average hurricane. Indeed during most hurricanes there’s just lots of minor damage that you might see during a particularly bad thunderstorm, and people even continue to go to work.
Major hurricanes are a different story. But even then total loss is relatively rare except for storm surges unless you’re in the path of the eyewall.
There is no construction that can withstand storm surge, which is the biggest and most destructive hurricane impact. Even if the structure is intact, everything has to be ripped out of it. Most of them do survive winds short of tornadoes, though roof damage is very typical for major hurricanes and tree falls can cause problems.
We’re talking about the wind blowing up to 30ft of saltwater _miles_ inland. Given the comparative rarity of a major hurricane in any given geographical location and the oddities that determine the storm surge and where it comes in, the damage usually is worst in places it’s never flooded before - because places where it has are indeed required to build higher.
The US used to build using brick and mortar. It was abandoned because it was unsafe, most of those buildings were destroyed by environmental hazards that Europe does not have. Consequently, most housing in the US for the last century or more primarily uses wood, which does survive the hazards endemic to the US.
In most of the US, only wood or steel frame construction is safe. Wood houses last centuries.
Wood is used primarily where wood is plentiful. Northern Europe uses wood to build, especially Finland. Japan uses wood to build, although they import from Canada these days. Australia also uses lots of wood.
Wood holds up better in earth quakes and tornadoes than brick, but you could probably build safe buildings with bricks in the USA, they would just cost more and require similar or more maintenance.
The earthquake retrofits for brick buildings seem to essentially install a structural steel frame to which the brick is fastened. At which point it is not really a brick structure but a steel one. New “brick” construction is almost entirely brick facades over a steel/wood frame.
While steel-reinforced masonry can be made safe, it isn’t obvious to me that actual brick-and-mortar can be.
The design problem is more complex than you are portraying. I don’t need my house to last for 200 years if it comes at the cost of not being able to modify it (walls, windows, openings, floor plan) as infrastructure needs change.
Do you notice the awkward protruding wall plug, seemingly used by the lamp, on the photo you linked? It doesn’t have to be that way - I have put a receptacle or switch in to the perfect spot as a one day project many times, and we have reworked wall layout in several places.
And, the photo looks like it has single pane windows with snow outside? They might not have had functional multi pane windows when the home was built?
Needs and technical capabilities change, and a design that is less committed to mass walls has important flexibility.
> And, the photo looks like it has single pane windows with snow outside? They might not have had functional multi pane windows when the home was built?
That's water outside. After a storm. That's a waterproof house in a coastal area of Germany that tends to flood during storms.
Needless to say those windows are designed with another problem than just insulation in mind. I can't tell you whether they're multi pane. All I know is that they open towards the outside rather than the inside for obvious reasons.
This is what building to code should address. If a house is built to a specific hurricane code, and is destroyed due to other reasons (a hypercane, for instance), then let insurance cover this and mandate rebuilding to an even higher standard.
: Dozens of modest homes along the Big Bend coast were heavily damaged in the floodwaters, but interspersed among the debris were residences left relatively unscathed, all because they were built elevated on stilts.
If a house is destroyed by any form of reasonably common widespread disaster it becomes illegal to build anything on that lot that would likewise be destroyed. You can rebuild after the hurricane, you must build a house that will stand up to a hurricane. (Yes, it can be done.)
I wouldn't apply this to flukes--your town does a Tunguska there's no reason to require asteroid-safe houses.
I would also make an exception for things which by their nature must be in the line of fire--such things must never be permanent habitation and can't have community-rate insurance against whatever happened to them.
A business can rebuild it's beach cabanas but would have to go to Lloyd's if they wanted insurance.
for long standing communities, ideally the government would offer voluntary buyouts if they can’t find someone willing to cover the insurance premium.
they already do the same in flooding zones.
but yes, people who live in fire-prone areas may take a loss. encouraging people to anticipate these losses is part of a functioning market. if they can live somewhere risky without financial risk, we only encourage future people to do the same.
If you recursively got everyone in dangerous areas to move, no one would live in California. If you live in a population center in California, the only reason why you aren't prone to wildfires is because of the people living around you that are.
It's a scenario where everyone paying the same actually makes sense. Your insurance is that others are accepting the risk of losing all their personal belongings or even their lives - even if insurance will cover them financially.
Its quite unfortunate because it would be a great opportunity to accurate price the risk to encourage better building standards and fireproofing. In reality we don't need people to move to greatly reduce the risk.
In many wildfire events homes burn because brush/scrub burns all the way up to the house and catches the siding on fire, or because embers land on the roof or enter soffits and start a fire that way. These things are really easily improved. Insurance could require fireproof siding, no bushes/plants right up against the house, fire screens on roof/soffit vents, and fireproof roofing. Those changes alone would decrease the number of houses that burn in a fire.
Obviously there are some areas where the landscape, wind patterns, and nature of trees means if it burns it will rage and everything's gonna go up no matter what you do. But that isn't everywhere.
What I don't know right now: how much does CA law allow insurers to price this kind of risk? Is it a matter of law not allowing them to send accurate price signals? I can believe this is the case. I also don't know if CA law allows them to only sell in certain areas... there's no practical wildfire risk to the Bay Area for example so why stop writing policies there?
Or are insurers going into knee-jerk mode or even using this as an opportunity to goose profits (knowing that wildfires wax and wane)? I can also believe this is happening.
Like I said: it is unfortunate that CA law, insurance companies, or both are not using this as an opportunity to improve fire survivability in rural areas.
Much of the Bay Area is urban and suburban, with very little chance of a wildfire ever threatening those homes. Why stop writing policies in those areas?
I live in one of the "any other states" (Washington) without a car quite comfortably. A lot of us can't or don't drive. It's nice to not have to put up with car insurance companies.
As a car lite person, this comment is condescending. As much as I'd love if it were the case, efficient public transit is not a thing in most parts of the country. A car is a necessity. California needs to greatly expand transit or figure something out quick.
What a weird take. If you do live in WA, you’re well aware of just how rural WA is. You full well know public transportation isn’t a viable option. You should also know that Seattle’s public transportation isn’t something to write home about. And you’re fully aware that commutes of >30 minutes are not uncommon, in part die to how unaffordable the greater Puget Sound if.
A car is a basic necessity of life for the vast majority of Washingtonians. Congratulations on being the vast, vast minority.
> You full well know public transportation isn’t a viable option.
I do not know this. I have over a thousand taps of my ORCA card in 2023. My wife has more. We have been as far north as Bellingham and as far south as Portland on transit. We attended the wedding of a friend's kid in Yakima by riding transit to Issaquah and taking Greyhound from there.
I don't appreciate being told that my actual, lived experience "isn't viable", especially when I know several other people who do it just the same as me. Not all of us can or want to drive. This is even more true as people get older.
> And you’re fully aware that commutes of >30 minutes are not uncommon, in part die to how unaffordable the greater Puget Sound
According to AAA, the annual cost of owning a car is $12,000. We don't spend that money, so we can afford to live closer-in where transit is better. I am not here to judge people who choose to move far away but I haven't done it and I won't. But even if I did, I could just move to where I already have acquaintances in Lynnwood or Redmond or Renton or Burien and take the bus just the same as I do today.
> I do not know this. I have over a thousand taps of my ORCA card in 2023.
You're in the vast minority who can take the Sounder, etc. Your scenario does not reflect the reality for the vast majority of Washingtonians.
> I don't appreciate being told that my actual, lived experience "isn't viable"
Yet, it isn't viable for the vast majority of Washingtonians.
> We don't spend that money, so we can afford to live closer-in where transit is better.
Congrats on being wealthy enough to live in a place where ORCA has any value. Most Washingtonians do not.
You do, in fact, live in a transportation bubble. You need to acknowledge that your transportation bubble is not viable for the vast majority of Washingtonians, so your premise that being car-free is do-able in Washington simply is not a reality for millions of Washingtonians.
This is exactly the same blinders we see on r/seattle. Those who call for elimination of cars are privileged enough to live in Seattle and don't seem to recognize other's do not live in Seattle (or commute to Seattle from where most public transportation is not effective, viable, or possible).
But WA has 7.7M people of whom 3.9M live in Snohomish, King, or Pierce counties.
I agree a majority needs cars, but it’s hardly overwhelming — and worth remembering that half of people live in a narrow, urban bubble. A lot of WA’s political strife is caused by this.
Building your life around transit means making choices. Building your life around a car means making choices too. If the quoted TCO of owning a car at $12,000/year is accurate, moving some of that spending to housing could make transit friendly housing more viable.
I don't think this poster was calling for removal of cars or whatever, just pointing out that it's possible to build your life without them. For at least some people.
There's certainly tradeoffs. Where I live, I could do many things with transit, but hours of operation are very limited, and direct routes are very limited. Sometimes, I can take transit to the airport and it makes sense, but on my most recent trip, getting to the airport would have been very stressful as the ferry canceled most of the morning runs on short notice and AFAIK, there's no reasonable alternative route without a private car. On the way home, there's no transit on my side of the ferry on a Sunday, and even if there was, it ends hours before I get there. If I needed to build my life around transit, I'd need to fly only during limited hours and not have any scheduling mishaps, spend nights in hotels a ferry away from my home, or move to a more transit accessible home.
At the same time, I don't complain that NYC doesn't accomadate my life built around cars. I choose a life built around cars, and so I avoid built up urban areas whenever possible. I hate paying for parking, so going into the city needs a good reason, and I would never want to live there.
Some people, when you say “you know it’s possible to get by without a car”, take it as a personal affront. No amount of evidence is sufficient. Any evidence provided is disregarded as “sure maybe for you but real people can’t possibly live in such a weird way”.
The person you’re responding to is one of those people. Don’t waste your time.
> Those who call for elimination of cars are privileged enough to live in Seattle and don't seem to recognize other's do not live in Seattle (or commute to Seattle from where most public transportation is not effective, viable, or possible).
I believe you fail to recognize that a lot of people who don't drive don't live in Seattle. Whether or not someone drives is not always by their choice. I have friends who are physically incapable of driving, yet because drivers tend to outvote and outweigh non-drivers politically, those friends are denied the transit service they would really like to have. And even when it is by choice, nothing says that Yakima or Spokane or Port Angeles can't have transit; most of them do!
I live in Seattle. My wife and I were born here and we will hopefully die and be buried here. It is our home. I have lived through decades of transit that would make a New Yorker howl in peril. It was not so long ago that our idea of a frequent bus route was every half hour, and the light rail (that began running after both of my children were born) stopped in downtown and at 11pm.
Seattle residents aren't a monolithic bloc but, generally, our push for fewer cars is because cars, and especially those cars driven in from places that do have quality transit to reach the city, cause a lot of problems for people outside of those cars. I really, really want to make it to retirement without being run over by someone driving into town who's late for a sporting event.
> Yet, it isn't viable for the vast majority of Washingtonians.
Not driving can be viable! It is viable, if not as convenient, in places you wouldn't think and might even consider are "too rural" or "too spread out." The fact remains, there are a lot of us in Washington who don't drive and, bluntly, I don't appreciate us being insulted or accused of having an excess of privilege or living in a bubble.
There may well come a day when you are not physically able to drive and I wish very much for you to have a robust transit and sidewalk and low-speed city setup that enables you to have independence and access throughout all of your days.
What an incredibly weird take that makes a lot of assumptions. For reference, I live in Seattle now, no car.
Prior to Seattle, I also lived in Texas and Virginia. Also no car. I moved to VA being unable to afford a car or insurance.
In many situations it is doable. But it requires restructuring how you life and where you live. I spend more on rent, but make up for that by not paying for gas, insurance or the many other small fees that add up. People get trapped into this idea that they need a car that they never consider the costs it has.
Most WA residents live along the I-5 corridor in cities or surrounding suburbs, not in the rural parts. GP specifically lives in Seattle city limits, like about 10% of WA residents.
Usually telling someone to 'just move' is pretty rude. People have reasons to stay in the places they're at. Public transit is not viable in California at all. It's impossible. As someone who did 'just move' (and to the PNW, where transit is shockingly better), I recognize that this is certainly not a viable option for most people.
Yes. So it feels. In particular the 1989 earthquake and the years that followed were put to good use removing freeways in the SF Bay Area (and not replacing them - nobody complains that the Embarcadero shorefront freeway should be removed but it's fair to object to the lack of substitution) - And abandoning the idea of elevated and double-decker freeways instead of doubling-up wherever else it could be. Highway 85 completed shortly after that (but was in the works long before that). By contrast, it feels Los Angeles continued on an optimistic path, when the Bay Area turned back (and for example fought new housing as much as possible). This is also the time San Francisco turned against visitors and businesses - working to discourage people from visiting as much as possible. And then turned on its own inhabitants.
I'm impressed--no sarcasm. Would you mind giving us a glimpse of your day-to-day?Except in Seattle near downtown it seems like there would be tons of challenges.
I'm in a suburbia (not rural), but we have more of a trail system than a lot of other places in the United States. There really isn't much I can't do on a bicycle, and when I absolutely need to transport something myself, which happens maybe once every couple of years, I've rented a truck for a few hours. My e-bike does most of the heavy lifting when my total travel distance is over 15 miles and I need to transport stuff.
I get up, check the weather, throw on clothes for whatever's happening, jump on the e-bike, buzz half a mile down to a gravel trail that runs north-south through my city, and go do what I need to do. I use panniers mounted on a rear rack to hold stuff. For groceries I tend to go to Trader Joe's which is in a shopping area off the trail about a mile and a half from my house. Hardware stuff I get from a family-owned place that's 7 miles away, 5 miles of which is on trails. Electronics is from a store that's sort of like Radio Shack on steroids that's about a mile from the trail system, but that's more like 10 miles each way. I don't need to go there often. Work is 10 miles away, 9 miles of which is on a trail. I park in a bike cage, and there is a locker room with showers.
E-bikes certainly make it more accessible and I would highly recommend one if you are trying to drive less. Myself and many of my friends commute primarily by bicycle and get around fine on regular bikes, but our city is small and commutes are less than 5 miles.
I just bought a perfectly usable Class 2 e-bike with a rack for $1,100. I have several regular meat-powered bicycles too. Which one I take depends on how I feel. Sometimes I'm just not up for pedaling my way through a 20 mile round-trip errand and will put on my lithium legs.
It is pretty straightforward. My wife and I live in a condominium unit just east of the University District. We take the bus or walk everywhere. I'm sad the Safeway has closed, but we have easy bus access to groceries at QFC, the massive Magnuson Park, the smaller Matthews Beach park, and a short hop to the train.
I am fortunate to be able to work from home most days. I work for a medical group and we have doctor's offices across the city and King County. I can reach all but one by a one or two bus trip when I need to go, which is rare. We have friends who have moved up to Everett and it's a two bus trip to go all of the way from Magnuson Park to downtown Everett.
The only "hard" trip is to go see one of our kids who has since moved to Tacoma. We try to time it when the Sounder is running (a few mid-day trips would be great) or take Cascades if we feel like splurging.
I'd say maybe a third of people I know don't have cars. In America. That's not a "basic necessity of life", especially when we're talking about well-developed regions like the west coast.
Even in large cities in California, it really depends on how much time you want to or can afford to waste on public transit.
Specific cases do work - or at least work better than the car-owning alternatives, for example major transit directions for short-ish distances in San Francisco. If your life revolves around a few of these, you are doing pretty well without a car ... and you still can't escape from that area without one. A significant additional "sweet spot" zone is where car usage has been made - deliberately and assiduously - unbearable. The choice is then about a lesser aggravation, rather then desirable service. And so we get the quality of life we deserve, and that's not great.
Nobody is arguing that YOU should own a car. If you are happy without one that's great and carry on. But that's rather specific situation.
fwiw Californian cities have some of the worst public transit of major metros that I have seen
like the Muni is cute and all but it’s a joke compared to the east coast systems i grew up with (wmata, mbta, nyc mta) many of which are in smaller cities.
Cause labor is cheaper in Nevada, people drive cheaper cars and there are less cars in Nevada on the road in general, so you are less likely to get into an accident. These are just the top reasons off the top of my head.
Geico will not give you a quote instantly and let you buy instantly.
you say you last bought coverage 18 months ago. i said the market failed in december. i encourage you to try to buy coverage now and see. i was also surprised since i expected the previous situation of instant insurance to still be in place.
not sure why i am being downvoted, i encourage anyone to try for themselves
Yes. I tried to get car insurance in July in California and barely succeeded — I had to walk in to an AAA branch and they quoted me 2-3 times the Geico price.
Geico will quote a price but forces a 15 days waiting period. Then they’ll send you snail mail and ask you to send in a picture of your car within two days, by snail mail. This is the car you don’t have insurance on, so it’s probably still at the dealer’s or at the seller’s house! I think they’re not allowed to actually refuse to sell insurance but they’ll do everything they can to make it annoying enough that you go away. State Farm and the others are all equally bad.
I eventually was able to get well priced insurance same day through “toggle” which is a Farmers subsidiary, even though Farmers is no longer offering online applications and has 14 days waiting. AAA also was available but like you quoted me 3x the price.
I mean, the insurance agent told me it was universal for all new customers of progressive in California. You are the only person on this thread who has said they had a different experience.
I am curious what makes it different, as I have no record and drive fewer than 2k miles a year.
I concur, bought insurance for a new car early January and got it instantly using esurance.com (Allstate) by just entering my VIN. Yes, I am in SF/Bay Area.
interesting. i forget if it was allstate or state farm but one of them refused to do online and also refused to do fewer than 14 days out - this was like two days ago.
To be clear: I already had my old car insured with them for several years, so I just removed the old car and added the new car. I am also 50+ with no negative record and a garage in a single family home.
As for those refunds, Californians are still waiting for about $3.5 billion of the $5.5 billion that Consumer Watchdog estimates policyholders are owed for pandemic-era overcharges.
The matter still hasn’t been fully resolved, say the state’s insurance officials, who argue that rate hike decisions aren’t interfering with unfulfilled rebates.
“These are separate processes,” said Michael Soller
TBF, that’s overcharged in a very insurance-specific sense, not a mustache-twirling fraud sense. Effectively they didn’t adjust prices fast enough to the actual changes in risk, which on the whole seems like something best dealt with ex post, not ex ante.
> Effectively they didn’t adjust prices fast enough to the actual changes in risk, which on the whole seems like something best dealt with ex post, not ex ante.
If the insurers could have it their way, they wouldn't have to adjust at all (for overcharging), while avoiding undercharging ahead of time. Oversight is necessary to counter misaligned incentives.
Right, this is a reasonable compromise between stability/profitability of risk-buyers and fair pricing for risk-sellers. Prices are unconstrained at transaction, but outsized profits can be clawed back.
How would they adjust prices for policies already sold and used, in the event the price for those policies was too low? Issuing refunds after the fact works in a way that issuing bills does not.
It is, it is just an adjustment in the cost of business (either positive or negative depending on whether it's coming from the business or the customer).
This has become a significant political issue in most states, and auto insurance is regulated at the state level. Many insurance commissioners are elected positions, and if not they are closely tied to the governor. No one wants premiums to go up during inflation, so there is government pressure like never before.
What happened is that with the shutdowns, profits went from 2-3% to 20-30%. Some of that money was given back to consumers, but most went into an absolutely insane soft market where every carrier paid more than they ever had to acquire any driver they could.
This led to a lot of carriers having drivers on their books that they really didn't know how to price correctly. Everyone realized at roughly the same time that they had screwed up more than usual - and that was when drivers got back on the roads. Suddenly frequency and severity of accidents were up to historic levels because everyone forgot how to drive and is driving ANGRY.
So there's a double whammy, it's drivers they haven't insured before on the one hand and the drivers they do know how to price changing their behavior en-masse. So we've gone from once-in-a-lifetime industry profits to massive losses. For the first time, when the carriers tell the government the price is unsustainable they actually mean it. Hence the California shut downs - carriers are TRULY taking a loss on most policies they write and are trying to shut down new customer operations as much as legally possible. You'll notice a surprising lack of auto insurance ads on tv compared to 3-4 years ago.
Progressive's underwriters are so far ahead of everybody that they got a lot of their price changes submitted before everyone (the other carriers and the government) figured out what was going on. You can see that in many states where the prices are public, in an incomprehensible data format. So they have been one of the only carriers still getting new customers.
It's basically been a state-by-state showdown now between state insurance commissioners and carriers, and the commissioners are starting to give in. Premiums were up almost 20% last year nation-wide and it's only going up.
As a Brit the fact this position exists AND is elected is bonkers to me. It seems like the US talks about a free market but has done everything possible to add voting and red tape all over the place.
That is when you realize "free market" means "our buddies at the top can charge whatever they want, and you may not compete". Same with healthcare, telecom, financial services...
state mandated insurance shouldn't be legal unless either the states or the insurance companies themselves carry the entire risk.
Car Insurance in the US has turned into a tax on the poor.
I don't mind the idea of insurance, but I do mind the idea of insurance companies trying to lessen their risk by getting the state to mandate everyone needs to pay for it. If someone is paying insurance and the other driver doesn't carry insurance and doesn't have the money to sue for it, that's the risk of doing business as an insurance company.
It's regulatory capture, plain and simple.
And lets not even get started on police enforcing it and writing tickets or impounding vehicles of people who don't have insurance. Who doesn't carry insurance? Those who cannot afford to. The state is literally causing harm here.
Whether the other car has insurance or not is irrelevant to you. Your car insurance is going to pay or not pay based upon their internal policies.
What the other car having insurance does is give someone for _your_ insurance company to sue to recoup their money. Most individuals aren't going to be worth sue-ing, but other insurance companies will be. And most major insurance companies are going to have in-place agreements so that litigation isn't actually necessary (because it's more expensive).
The other vehicle being covered by insurance is absolutely _no_ guarantee that _your_ insurance won't decide to declare the vehicle a total loss. I myself drive a 2004 corolla that's had a salvage title since the mid-2000's due to someone hitting me. I chose to "buy" the salvage title from them and that vehicle has been 100% solid. They scrapped it because they didn't want to fix the body damage.
The insurance have had their cake and are eating it too. They're not required to cover you, but you're required to be covered.
I experienced once a minor car accident where another driver did some damage to my car (well, and his). There where no courts involved. Just one insurance company retrieving a bill (not mine because it was not my fault as the other driver and me agreed on (and used a form to confirm that) and paying the bill.
And my point is less about _who_ paid, but more about that _anybody_ pays. If two people without insurance hit each other, who's going to pay the bills?
if two uninsured people hit each other then they sue each other, they come up with an agreement on money exchange, or they both go about their business and pretend it didn't happen.
at least in the US, the only difference between two uninsured people hitting each other and one or both having insurance is the party doing the suing changes.
of course, injuries complicate matters but it's all roughly the same. Someone has to pay, which likely means litigation without a gentlemans agreement.
But if someone doesn't have insurance what's the chances that you suing that person is going to actually recoop your money? right, probably not going to happen. That makes it a business risk for insurance companies that end up having to fix their customers car but not being able to recoop that money. So they convinced law makers to require insurance so the chances of that happening are far less.
^ to better explain what I was trying to say before.
People will pay for uninsured motorist protection and _under_ insured motorist protection. under insured typically means an injury happened but the other persons insurance policy doesn't cover injury (liability) or the medical bills exceed what they do cover.
Think about that racket. They insure you but don't want to insure you without being able to fully recoop their money so they charge YOU to cover the case where the other drivers insurance won't cover it all.
it's a frickin' racket. If it's required by law it needs to be covered by the state or the insurance companies themselves need to be required to cover it. Anything else and it causes undue harm to everyone, most especially those who cannot afford insurance in the first place.
I live in California and my latest insurance quote was $7k for the year for a family of four, with no accidents or tickets. If this is cheap I'd hate to know what expensive is.
I have two cars, an outback and a golf. Yes we do have two teenage drivers which of course is expensive, but they've had no accidents or tickets. We drive maybe 20K miles per year all together.
It's very similar to the dumpster fire that is PG&E electrical rates.
PG&E is a private company, but the CPUC has strict controls over it's operations. You can read the CPUC meeting minutes for yourself. Things like "PG&E would like to replace the chain link fence surrounding substation X at a cost of $150,000 - DENIED".
CPUC is a commission whose members are selected by the governor. They are the defacto decisionmakers. Yet Gavin Newsom will give quotes to the media on how "PG&E will need to be punished for it's mismanagement".
My only theory is that keeping PG&E private provides a convenient scapegoat for the utter mismanagement by CPUC.
Do they list the reason why they were denied? Something like: Utility attempted to charge $150k to replace $5,000 worth of fence with 10 hours of labor?
For example, PG&E wanted to replace gas service lines made "with Aldyl-A plastic that were installed before 1985" due to the risk of line failure.
The CPUCs decision was "PG&E’s request to replace unidentified services is denied. Moreover, the Commission does not find that PG&E has supported rounding up the number of services to be replaced by 73 per year."
It's a byzantine system of regulations that dive into the minutia of running a utility. Not to mention a lot of these decisions are by administrative judges since the regulations are written into law.
You chaps in the US have no bloody idea how lucky you are. In the UK, everyone's car insurance are increasing by 50% to 100% for ICE cars. EVs premiums are even worse.
I think personally greed has a lot to do with it and the fact the UK Govt don't care about the people.
Also, car design requirements for safety usually leave the car as totaled from almost any accident. It’s basically always cheaper to total out a car, but of course that still isn’t a cheap thing to do.
The UK motor insurance market is one of the most competitive in the world. Aggregators have created a situation where every insurer is looking for the slightest competitive advantage to drive themselves up the comparison table.
I don't have the most up to date figures but in 2022, combined ratio was forecast to be 115% for motor insurance - this means for every £1 in premium, £1.15 was paid out in claims and expenses. There is some income from investments but it's minimal compared to the pre 2008 situation.
Consequentially several insurers have exited the personal lines market as they cannot make money from it - RSA for example. 2022 is forecast to be the worst year for insurers since 2010.
The market does suffer from a cycle of 'hard' and 'soft' markets and there will be an overcorrection in the short term - over a few years, we'll see insurers seeing an opportunity to undercut the market and gain market share and premiums increases will ease.
TLDR - whilst it is painful to see premiums rising so quickly, it is not an industry that is awash with profits.
That's quite an eye opener, thanks. I hadn't also thought about the recent conveyor belt of pretty nasty storms, that definitely would have an knock on effect on insurance. I think it is in the insurers' own interest that the Govt should implement NetZero measures asap to reduce the impact of these storms.
West coast of the US here. Mine more than doubled this year and shopping around has been an eye-opening exercise in the sense that it seems to be an across-the-board increase, not just my insurance company. I've been driving for over two decades and have a spotless driving record, so it's really painful to see such a dramatic increase in a short amount of time.
The article explains that insurance /coverage/ in the US tends to be inadequate, which has nothing to do with the pricing of insurance. My first reaction to the title was surprise that insurance companies would be willing to price the risk too cheaply
According to the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (apcia), a trade association, last year insurers paid out $1.08 in claims for every $1 in premiums they took in.
The business of insurance sometimes has good (profitable) years and sometimes has bad (losing) years. That’s why insurers work so hard to invest and spread their risk over multiple years. I got a dividend from State Farm during the pandemic because they had an unusually profitable year, and they re-distributed some of their profits to policyholders.
Another aspect is that insurance companies can make money on the float, and this can potentially let them be profitable while paying out more in claims than they take in (or at least netting out to paying out what they take in). That’s assuming that they can effectively invest the premiums.
Buffett successfully applied this strategy with geico.
I wanted to fault them for this too, but it's an inescapable result. Liability premium costs always moves in lockstep with the rate of coverage, as it has to by probability laws for an insurance company to be viable.
Whatever you say. For years after I purchased a new car, my car insurance was basically half of my car payment. I haven't had an accident, which was a minor fender bender at a light, in over 15 years. My rates were so ridiculous that I thought it would be better just to buy another car and lower the insurance to the minimum required.
And when you need the insurance, even when you are not at fault, they immediately raise your rates. What were you even paying them for before if they just raise your rates to repay themselves?
The point of the article seems to be that the minimum coverage rates people are required to get don't come close to paying the medical bills of car accident victims. It's not a consumer argument, it's an argument about externalities.
> For years after I purchased a new car, my car insurance was basically half of my car payment
Different cars have very different insurance rates, it’s a big part of the TCO. If you aren’t rich enough not to care, insurance rates need to be considered early on in any car purchase decision. I don’t even know how much my car insurance costs because it’s too small to matter because I have a basic paid-off car that’s cheap to insure.
Insurance rates were actually the deciding factor for me not buying a Tesla 3 a few years ago (before the carriers seemed to figure out coverage and risk for them a bit better). The insurance was going to be stupidly high, making the TCO with a decent loan (around 2% at the time) to be like $1k/month. I was like, I do not need to spent $1k/month on a car, so I bought a used Porsche for cash instead and pay almost nothing for insurance in comparison.
The key is what’s being insured and what is driving the costs.
If you go from junker with just liability to new car with comprehensive, liability, and gap, you’re greatly increasing what is insured and how much it costs.
Usually it is all broken down in the quote or bill.
If you can afford the fancy car, you may not need coverage on your personal vehicle. Once again the purpose of insurance is to cover something unlikely that would be a significant burden.
Did you shop around? Ask the agent whether there may be discounts you could be eligible for that you haven't taken advantage of? If you've been accident free, your risk profile does diminish.
It's meaningless to compare it against your car payment. You can customize your loan so much that it gives no insight at all. You can change the down payment, change the duration, etc. These parameters can easily result in 10x variation in your car payment.
How can 1 out of 8 driver be uninsured in that country? Aren't the cars supposed to be registered? The state isn't checking that registered cars are also insured?
You technically can't drive a car off a lot without proving you have insurance coverage (at least in every state I've lived in), and, when you re-register your car every year, you'll again need to prove insurance coverage; failure to re-register deprives you of a sticker you'll need to keep from being pulled over. So in that sense, the system coheres.
But insurance coverage can fluctuate over the course of a year, because unlike with health insurance, there's no annual enrollment period; people switch insurers, or miss bills, or sign up ruthlessly for a month of insurance to get past the state bureaucracy and then just never pay again.
There's the SR-22 system, which is a court order to maintain insurance at minimum levels, which you get for getting repeatedly pulled over without insurance (or, perhaps, for getting pulled over without proof of insurance and then not proving you did get coverage afterwards). But that's not a fix, because you can only enforce it at police traffic stops.
>failure to re-register deprives you of a sticker you'll need to keep from being pulled over
My car is insured and registered, but it has been the better part of ten years since I actually bothered to put a new sticker on the plate. Maybe there are places where cops try to more actively police expired plates, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a thing around here.
> failure to re-register deprives you of a sticker you'll need to keep from being pulled over. So in that sense, the system coheres.
anecdata, but in my town of 60k people, any one drive I do I couldn't even count on my hands the number of expired temp tags (I've seen over a year old), and expired registration.
It really _feels_ like people don't get pulled over for that anymore.
My state (WA) doesn't check for insurance at registration, as far as I know. I renew in December so it's pretty recent and I can't remember ever doing that. Also, realpolitik: my city's police simply don't do traffic enforcement since 2020 (Seattle). You could probably go a long time with expired registration here as long as you didn't leave city limits.
Anecdotal, but since I started cycling I’ve noticed an absurd amount of cars have license plate tabs that have been expired for years. There’s even a Porsche Taycan in my apartment that’s been driving without plates for over a year.
It doesn’t seem like registration is enforced in any meaningful way.
It used to be, but there's a pandemic of the blue flu going around. Cops have been quiet quitting for 4 years because they want to be able to murder with impunity again.
Many states (like PA) have abandoned licence tags to save a few pennies. Unless you're a cop, it's impossible to know if any vehicle's registration is up-to-date.
And most cops no longer track this stuff visually either. It's my impression that most patrol cars today have autonomous cameras installed that check every license plate in their field of view for expired registrations and outstanding warrants.
Many police cameras likely do facial recognition too. (Numerous states subscribe generously to commercial services that sell face recog with no independent certification of accuracy, which is famously terrible, like a 90% error rate.)
They make you add a new sticker to the license plate with an expiration date and new color or other visual marker. This is to make it obvious whether taxes have been paid. But now they just have automatic license plate readers for that, (and can also log vehicle locations and look for warrants, etc). It isn't or wasn't enough because these systems are archaic and poorly designed (as I once found out after being pulled over at gunpoint for a DMV mistake).
> Many states (like PA) have abandoned licence tags to save a few pennies.
Or dropped the requirement for front plates. The best part about front plates is that they can drop off and remain at the scene of the accident (or embed themselves in the bumper) during a hit-and-run.
In Texas, if you don't get in an accident, cops will rarely spot that your registration is out of date and definitely won't check if you have insurance. If you do get in an accident and are lacking a driver's license and/or insurance and/or current registration, they'll take the report, maybe issue a citation and usually just let you leave if the car can drive.
Some states do communicate with the insurance companies. However, sometimes the insurance companies fail to notify the state (or the state fails to record it) and we get to have a friendly police interaction and sort the whole thing out in court.
I imagine past some threshold, even if the cops do know that someone isn't insured it's just not worth running a whole anti-uninsured-driver campaign.
My experience has been completely different. State Farm jacked up my price by 40% over the last two years, even though I had to incidents. When I called and asked they said it’s due to inflation. Insurance increase along with groceries has been one of the permanent inflationary increases in my expenses since Covid. I’m sure a lot of people are in the same boat.
Always buy the underinsured/uninsured motorist coverage. My daughter was hit by a car, the main payout was from my insurance, and not from the person who hit her.
Liability is everything, the cost of the car is nothing. Get the umbrella policy on your house. Buy liability insurance when you rent a car.
It's not just the medical bills- it's also the legal damages.
> Always buy the underinsured/uninsured motorist coverage.
Agreed. I'm a personal finance nerd, and it felt like an epiphany when I discovered this a few years ago, because it's rarely discussed but seems so important. I max out our UM/UIM coverage now.
Side note: My wife is a stay-at-home mom and I've long wished for a disability insurance product that would cover the economic value that she provides, i.e. cover the cost of daycare / after-school care if she couldn't care for the kids. As far as I can tell, there's no such product for people who aren't wage earners. The closest thing I've found is UM/UIM coverage, since the most likely cause of disability is a car crash. Presumably it would pay for at least some of the other things beyond medical bills.
> Buy liability insurance when you rent a car.
Why do you say this instead of just relying on the liability coverage under your regular auto insurance?
Getting the umbrella is good, because during the process they review the rest of your insurance (at least they did for me).
>stay at home mom
I'm in the same situation, it sure would be nice. We do both have life insurance at least.
>Why do you say this instead of just relying on the liability coverage under your regular auto insurance?
To be careful. If you don't buy it, make absolutely sure that your own auto insurance covers it. [also people who don't own a car won't have auto insurance..]
>Side note: My wife is a stay-at-home mom and I've long wished for a disability insurance product that would cover the economic value that she provides, i.e. cover the cost of daycare / after-school care if she couldn't care for the kids. As far as I can tell, there's no such product for people who aren't wage earners.
AD&D (accidental death and disability) is the closest you’ll come. It’s most commonly offered by workplaces I believe, and is not expensive. On the flip side the situations it pays out are pretty narrow.
The only other alternative I know of is life insurance but of course that covers death, not disability.
Like the employer offers coverage that extends to a non-employee spouse, like family health insurance?
I remember finding one product sold to individuals including stay-at-home parents a few years ago by Bright Peak Financial. Now I can't even get their website to load to see any details, so maybe it doesn't even exist anymore, but the coverage limits were pitifully low. Like it would cover only fraction of our childcare costs, and only for a time measured in months.
We definitely have term life coverage on her that will run until our youngest kid is a teenager.
> AD&D (accidental death and disability) is the closest you’ll come. It’s most commonly offered by workplaces I believe, and is not expensive. On the flip side the situations it pays out are pretty narrow.
This is the problem. Those policies usually cover “unable to work at all” which is extremely narrow (some won’t pay out if you can do any job anywhere, even if you were a doctor lawyer 10 programmer CEO before).
You can find a policy to cover stay at home spouses, but they’re often somewhat custom, expensive, and only pay out until children are X age. Long-term care can also be added, even more.
>>My wife is a stay-at-home mom and I've long wished for a disability insurance product that would cover the economic value that she provides, i.e. cover the cost of daycare / after-school care if she couldn't care for the kids.
There is absolutely disability insurance for homemakers and non income spouses in the USA. I've written that exact policy both individual and for employers / employees.
If you get a loan on a vehicle also get GAP insurance. It's stupid cheap, $10-20/mo. I had a car stolen and totaled that I owed $26k on. USAA, who were absolutely horrible to deal with after 20+ years of using them, was only willing to give me the "Local cash market value" - this means they open up craigslist and look for the cheapest private party car of your model. This is not hyperbole.
They gave me $15k. I went from a beautiful 2008 Lexus IS350 to a $2500 2001 Honda CRV because I had no money to buy a car with other than the cash I had left over in my bank through bo fault of mine. It was actually even worse with lot fees after the police found the car and impounded it, etc. But that's another story.
GAP covers that, and car thefts are up at a massive scale now. I get GAP on every car and if the dealer has some anti-theft option I get that too. I bought a car last week and I think it was $900 and if the car is ever stolen or wheels stolen over 5 years I get something like $5k cash. I'm also going to put a DroneMobile system in it.
Don't get a car stolen. Garage it if you can. I used to have that "USAA will cover me! hehe! no worries if it's stolen!" naivete until it happened.
I seriously can't explain how rude they were to me. Had a fraud investigator come to my house and grill me in the most despicably rude way possible. They acted like I tried to get it stolen or something to get out of the car payment. "I've had this car since it was new, never missed a payment, and I I'm still employed making $YZ money. Why would I try to get out of my payment by .. hiding my car? Leaving it open to steal?" I'm not kidding. It got stolen when I walked into a Walgreens to buy a frozen pizza.
Gap insurance covers a tightly-bounded amount of loss (it will never pay out more than the remainder of your loan), which is why it's so cheap. That's also why it's a great target for self-insurance - you know exactly how much you need to have to cover the worst-case loss. If you have the cash, you are almost certainly better off skipping this one.
I work in insurance. Local cash value is normal. It’s not a Craigslist lookup, it uses industry standard published tables and is the same across all companies. People are frequently shocked that they are underwater on their cars so much, but it’s worth what it’s worth, car insurance has no reason to cover loans. As you found out, GAP is insurance on the loan itself, most lenders will strongly encourage GAP coverage or even mandate it.
There was absolutely no way I could walk into anything but the most decrepit used car dealer and walk out with a car anywhere near what I previously owned for what they gave me, completely unrelated to whether or not I had a loan. The KBB was around 20k dealer. They gave me the crumb not fully loaded non F-sport (a $5k package) private party low end. $15k was shockingly low. Mine had like, 15k miles and the 15k range had over 100k. Their criteria seemed to be "Lexus I of some sort, cheapest." I don't think the IS250 was even normally that low.
Maybe it's what they all do, but it sucks. And it's not what a lot of people expect.
We had our i3 totalled a few years ago. Insurance company guy was transparent and said he'd gone to our version of Craigslist here in Norway, found i3's of same age and similar milage, and took the average.
As such I could definitely buy a replacement with the payout.
While I'd much rather be without the experience, I was almost pleasantly surprised by the insurance company.
That’s what progressive did when our older car was totaled by hail.
It wasn’t just Craigslist but it was some similar ones available- and averaged. They’d go buy one for us, or give us the cash, or (what we did) is give us back the car and most of the cash.
You may have been able to push for a better settlement if you saw their comps and noticed they were not actually comparable, but at the end of the day, no insurance company will give you more than local market value. If you're underwater on the loan and the value doesn't cover it, that's om you. I never buy GAP; if you need to buy GAP, you should be buying less car.
Yeah I really had no idea what powers/options I had in the situation. The way they treated me made me seriously want to somehow get them to recover a LOT of money I had to spend (around $4-6k in impound lot fees they wouldn't pay). They pretty much went out of their way to make me feel like I should be grateful they helped at all.
I was maybe 23 and definitely didn't have money for legal help. I hate how I let myself get treated.
Don’t beat yourself up over it. But also, post the learnings not just the mistake without the context only for both of them to come out later after people point them out.
FWIW our car (2014 RAV4 EV) was totaled in California in 2018, and the insurance payout pretty much exactly covered replacing it with a near-identical new model (actually a bit lower mileage!) from a local used car dealer. I think we actually came out a few hundred dollars ahead.
We were insured with Travelers.
I’ve wondered since then if that’s how it usually works out, or if we were a lucky fluke.
Travelers does well with that. I switched after I was in a not at fault accident (other side was a commercial vehicle, fully insured, 100% admitted liability) and got screwed over by my own insurer (low ball offer on the value, stalling on giving me access to the comps until the night before the offer expired, reneging on rental coverage, threatening to not cover something with PIP...)
I have two "new" cars (2019 and 2021 model years) that I've had since they were less than a year old, and have new car replacement on both.
Travelers is relatively unique in that their new car replacement is up to 5 years, not 1 as most are (some go to 2 or 3). NCR also integrates gap coverage.
If my 2021 RS 5 gets totaled two years from now, I get a check for 110% of the MSRP for a 2026 RS 5.
You may have done some, but you can negotiate with the insurance company and either seek legal help or file a protest with the department of insurance if they are not in good faith servicing your claim.
It seems like the industry has some pretty strong incentives to standardize on the lowest possible values in those tables.
Further, what does “worth” mean if you can’t take the amount of money you were given and easily purchase a car of the same make, model, year, and condition?
Particularly when you add on them keeping your car and parting it out or whatever. I got screwed on that pretty hard... they "forgot" to document all the options and packages (my car was intact, generally, but totaled due to airbag deployments). Even tires (look, I am realistic, I don't expect that to account for much)... I'd just put new performance tires ($1,700) on them 400 miles prior (yay for the odometer reading on the receipt) and they weren't affected by the accident, but the adjuster looked at a scale of "New / Like New / Excellent / Good / Fair / Poor" and described them as in "Fair" condition. When I balked at that they upped the offer by $60, $15 a tire. If it wasn't for all the drama associated with it, I'd have bought the car back and parted it myself.
I had a two year old Audi A4 totaled. I expected that I'd get about $24K for it (this was a couple of years ago). My insurer offered $19K. I asked to look at the comps, and sure enough, most of the comps were between $22K and $27K. Except one, from a shitty little dealer 150 miles away for $12,999. There was obviously something up, salvage title, or some other issue. But they shrugged. "Doesn't say so on the offer, so it's a valid comp".
My two cars now have new car replacement coverage for 5 years that also wraps in gap coverage.
It absolutely is a local craigslist lookup— I followed up with one of the dealerships USAA called (6 hours away from where we live, with all of four cars in their "lot") to clarify how their valuation was provided. They explained that Vanessa (the USAA agent) simply asked how much they would sell a VW TDI for if they were a VW dealership. The high-school aged secretary said she didn't really know, so agreed that whatever value Vanessa offered sounded reasonable. This was the value they were willing to pay when their drunk client smashed through my parked car in the middle of the night in his BMW on the way back from the opera. "Industry Standard published tables" must just be the title on the top of the sticky note from her calling around.
The whole thing was an absolutely miserable experience completely stacked against any sort of reasonable resolution, and USAA was caught in so many lies it still irritates me years later. I'm sad that this is so clearly a continual process for people day to day.
Lol, wild. Mine was also a drunk lady slamming into my parked car. I had absolutely nothing to do with the theft and accident at all. And I was treated that way. I was actually out drinking for my birthday and my car was parked (downtown where I lived) next to a bar my friend worked at and he called me.
I also had a terrible experience with USAA. I don't know what happened to them, but it is a rotten company now. I switched to Country Financial recently as I can at least talk to a person without a nightmare phone tree there.
A bit of a tangent but this is one of the biggest reasons I don't buy new cars. The depreciation in the first few years is astonishing. You are immediately underwater and will be until you've paid off at least half the loan balance (this is not the same as paying half the payments).
My previous car was new, but only because we were buying a minivan and there were significant new safety features just introduced. But totally agree that buying used makes sense if there's not a significant difference in functionality.
There are brands (and probably is market dependent too) where this isn’t always true. Where I live, a 3 year old Toyota or Honda costs 10-15% less than a new one. In that case, it doesn’t really make sense to buy a used one if you can afford it.
Still, I also buy cars used. But I go ~10 year old, from a reputable low maintenance brand and model.
Being expensive is not so much an issue as it is buying a car that will depreciate faster than it can be paid for, because that's how people get in over their heads.
It's not just expensive cars, people are putting tiny down payments on cheap new cars financed for long terms and they're under water for years.
Not everyone buys a car to sell their car though. Some of us buy vehicles to keep, collect, race, trade, etc. I could not care LESS what the value of my 2 sports cars is in 15 years unless it soars to the moon for some reason and I become a millionaire.
Unless you’re going to put 40% down, you’ll have a day when the loan balance exceeds the value of the car.
My last car loan was at 0% (meaning the only cost of financing was the insurance company profit on the collision policy that I had to take because of the loan). No way am I putting down 40% on a 0% loan.
I could have charged the car on my credit card for the points and paid it off 45 days later; it’s not a matter of being able to afford it.
I have a 3% loan on one of my $25k cars I race because my money makes 8-10% in the markets and having $25k sitting in them vs giving to a leinholder dropped me 3-4% yoy on it (3% loan), but it still isn't 0, or negative it's in the +4-8% range. I also take tons of 0% loans year through year. You can utilize debt and credit to your gain it becomes more of a "Ok I will pay you $30k in 3 months instead of right now because my money sitting here makes more than you charge me to borrow or less than the money makes sitting in my account paying you 3%." You know, those 4.5%+ SAVINGS accounts right now?? I make TWICE that in the market.
It's not smarter to bypass Apples 0% interest financing on a $3500 macbook or VR headset than drop the $3500 that will now make %0 interest for you immediately.
Some of you (all of us?) were taught some moral/ethical line about not incurring debt by our ignorant boomer parents who follow the "don't ever be in debt!!!" mantra, which is literally impossible nowadays. And they are INSANELY in debt. Almost every boomer home owner has a reverse mortgage!! Your boomer parents were rich at $50k. We are not. My boomer parents had a $150k 3500sq ft house. I have a $3100/mo 1300sq ft townhouse. Living good on that $.79 Clinton gas.
Learn financing.
I pay my boomer parents rent now because they royally fucked up their finances. Do not listen to boomers for financial advice. And I mean the bobbleheads on TV as well. I guarantee a LOT of you will be paying your parents rents soon. My moms 71. They were stupid beyond belief with their money. Just remember all the trash they bought in the 1990s, 454 cubic liter 2500 HD suburbans? Hummers? Massive houses?
Go torch your Kiyosaki books and everything else and throw that $1500 Camry you've driven for 35 years in the trash and spend the whopping $20k on a modern car that can survive a collision and enjoy your life. Who gives a fuck if you're rich at 75 when you can't do anything, that new cars compound interest isn't saving your retirement or not.
If you want no replacement, replacement value, or loan value it's pretty clear that those or separate coverage and options. It sounds like you just got the wrong level of coverage and blame USAA for that more than anything. TBF, if you used them for the loan, I'd kind of question the proper insurance not being suggested at purchase time, but if not... it's kind of on you.
FWIW, I have USAA and had the almost exact same thing happen to me in 2020 - car stolen and totaled. They paid me a really fair deal on the cash back for the 2yo crosstrek.
It probably helped that it was a cut and dry case - the thief took the keys from inside my house and I called the cops seconds after I saw him drive away with it.
As someone with two kids, can I ask, does health insurance not work in this situation? I ask partly because at the moment we own no cars. If health insurance doesn’t cover it I’m wondering how we should insure.
So she was a pedestrian when she was hit (she's OK, but messed up two years of her life). This makes me wonder if it's worth owning some crappy car even if you never drive it, just for the privilege of having auto insurance...
Anyway, yes health covers it but they are first in the line getting reimbursed, even before the lawyer- which I think sucks, I mean what am I paying them for?
The reimbursement right that the insurance company has is called subrogation. The basic idea is that whoever was at fault shouldn't be better off because the injured party had insurance; otherwise it would be rational for individuals to not have insurance as long as most other people do have insurance. Subrogation means someone will still sue you into the ground even if the person you hurt was made whole by insurance. There can be many links in the insurance chain before you get to the person who actually caused the problem, and in your case it sounds like UMC was the final link.
At least, this is the stated public policy reason for subrogation. You are right that your health insurer got reimbursed even though they promised to cover your loved ones, and that feels weird.
Your insurance will cover your children even if they are not listed in the insurance contract. Being redundant to be clear: if a random driver hits a pedestrian child, parent's auto insurance will cover the costs even if they are not involved in the accident. The insurance company may chose to not pursue legal action even if they pay for the costs. The injured party can still do.
Agreement. My wife was in a crash with an uninsured (and, as it turns out, unlicensed and with outstanding warrants) driver. Everyone was uninjured, thankfully. Our car was a total loss.
The only monetary payout we got was our uninsured motorist coverage. (Seeing the lady who hit her get arrested at the scene and taken to jail was nice. Our insurance company pursuing her in court was also nice, too, though having not been thru the experience before we were taken aback when my wife unexpectedly received a summons to testify.)
I max'ed out our uninsured driver coverage after that.
A decade ago, I was "judgment proof" after a decade of drug dealing and general degeneracy... the person I was then allowed me to be the phenomenal asshole we are all capable of channeling: fuck you, I got nothing! "Blood from a stone."
Life is so much simpler, yet more satisfying, now that I've lived long enough to secure away a few assets. God willing, we'll all live long enough to not be the pieces of shit our youth/ignorance once allowed.
----
I read the other day that 20% of male Millenials are currently uninsured.
Know your state laws. Uninsured often only applies if you can prove they are uninsured. Uninsured people will hit and run, so if you don't catch their plate, you are out of luck. Make sure you have a dash cam. And if you do catch them, good luck getting any compensation from someone with no insurance. You will likely have to sue them just to collect 10 dollars from them for a couple months before they disappear. Best case scenario, they go to jail.
That scenario doesn't happen; you can't get money from someone who has no money.
(Theoretically, you might be able to get money back if it's a rich person who loves the thrill of driving without insurance or something. Theoretically, you could also find a winning lottery ticket on the sidewalk after the crash.)
Why is uninsured a separate category from insured driver insurance? The insurance company should just pay out regardless of the characteristics of the other driver. What if they are wearing a funny hat instead of a serious hat?! Seems like a scam by the insurance companies to pad their premiums.
It's because each coverage covers specific causes of losses. The pricing of the coverage needs to be justified by actuaries. It's a very competitive market, so they can't just "pad their premiums"; another company will undercut the price.
I can buy coverage to repair my vehicle if it’s damaged in a collision where I’m at fault (“collision insurance”). I can buy coverage to repair my vehicle if I’m not at fault and the other driver is under-insured (“under-insured coverage”). Same for another driver at fault who is un-insured.
Those are different risks and not everyone wants coverage for all of them.
>Why is uninsured a separate category from insured driver insurance?
Because if another driver hits you and that driver was insured to cover all the damages they caused then their policy would cover you and you'd never have to make a claim on your own policy.
There's a lot of different types of insurance you can buy:
Liability - this is mandatory. Covers damages paid to other people caused by you.
Everything else is, typically optional.
Collision - Covers damages to your car paid to you caused by you.
Comprehensive - Covers "act of God" situations paid to you like tree falling on you car, hail damage.
Uninsured/underinsured coverage - Covers damages paid to you caused by other people who weren't carrying enough insurance to fully cover the loss.
My car got hit-and-run'd while parked in a hotel parking lot, and there was no evidence of who did it. I filed a claim with State Farm and the repair process was super smooth. I paid my deductible and they gave me a rental, and that was that. It's the only claim I've ever filed, so I don't really have anything to compare it to.
Insurance can or can't be easy depending on 50000 circumstances. What you just described is worst possible situation for many people.
- a 1200 dollar deductible on a car worth 4 grand is a life ruin-er for some people.
-if insurance decides to total your vehicle and you have to dispute the value, absolute nightmare.
Personal story,
I am 7 months in awaiting my court date for an uninsured dude that totaled my buddys car I was driving. It's my buddys extra car, no UIM or comprehensive coverage. I paid 7 grand to fix it out of pocket, because his insurance would have totaled it and charged him deductable. car is valued around 4k or so, despite being the cleanest 0 legacy on the planet. all new paint, mechanic owned. Other motorist hasn't paid a dime and is ignoring all court orders.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 373 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
>Are paywalls ok?
>It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ju_10NkGY
>Being a pirate is alright to be
>Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
> By contrast, in Germany drivers are required to have €7.5m ($8.2m) of bodily-injury coverage, and in Britain liability is unlimited. And in those countries, going into hospital does not mean running up a life-altering bill.
Additionally, the insurance will pay for any damages due to subsequently lost wages etc. of injured persons, which can quickly add up and would otherwise also be socialized to the public unemployment insurance system.
It seems like a good way to properly account for the cost of driving to me.
Well it's not that cheap... It can be very expensive for serious accidents. You just almost never need to pay anything yourself. I'm not sure the cost for liability insurance is that much (or at all) higher in most of Europe though.
The whole point of the article is that it's more expensive in Europe.
So a policy with a $100k coverage limit is cheaper than one which covers up to €7.5m? Not exactly unexpected regardless of country.
Would 7.5 mil insurance in the US be cheaper than the equivalent in in Europe? I doubt that but in any cases the article doesen't say anything about that..
I’m starting to wonder if it’s time to go higher.
This blend of private/public insurance results in super cheap rates, while keeping injury insurance in place.
Both BC (full public) and Ontario(full private) have higher rates for the same coverage. 2x as much per year.
I do know that I pay almost $400/year* between my license and registration in Quebec which would be ~$0 in Ontario. As well as a lot more for gas.
* I have a "luxury" car because it cost > $50k CAD (about $38k USD) and therefore is so-defined by the province (a Volkswagen). And Montreal imposes extra fees.
But the insurance fees were 1/2 the price when I moved here. I don't know if that has changed a lot?
That was the highest choice I had through my provider’s app. I might give them a call and see what else I can get.
I have a two million dollar umbrella policy.
The thing is, say I get sued for $100m. It’s great for my victims that I paid extra all these years for $5m in coverage, but I’m going bankrupt either way.
Indeed collision on an older vehicle often doesn’t make sense. And could result in your vehicle prematurely salvaged.
If you have many millions you need much different insurance than normal plebeians.
You want liability protection such that your assets (whether small or large) are unlikely to be impacted by a reasonably foreseeable outcome I.e. $300k of liability covers 55% of likely outcomes vs $3m covering 85%
Check the bogleheads forum for discussions on insurance.
This isn't universally true - I have an umbrella policy with USAA. They require me to have a minimum of coverage on my home and auto to have the umbrella policy, but it's not the maximum they offer. It's a couple tiers down.
Of course, the price for the umbrella policy might depend on your home/auto coverage.
Does anyone know how to get higher limits?
Most umbrella policies require you to carry a certain amount of homeowners and auto liability coverage, and then they add additional coverage on top of that. It's relatively cheap (hundreds of dollars per year for millions of dollars of coverage).
It also scaled fairly linearly.
The thing about it is: your risk doesn't change because you have extra coverage. All that actuarial work is priced into your base coverage. In fact, they may even have factored in that people willing to voluntarily buy umbrella coverage are a little less risky than their model predicted.
When I originally got my umbrella policy around 10 years ago the cost was about ~$120/year for $2million in coverage. I'm currently paying $183.47/year for $2 million in coverage. Covers myself and my spouse.
How much do you pay for car insurance in the US? Mine is 1,200NZD per year, about 730USD
I pay ~$50 per month for 5k miles per year for $500k liability coverage and uninsured/underinsured coverage.
But I also have a few million in umbrella coverage, so not sure if it’s even comparable.
It looked identical when they were done, but I ended up getting a check cut for half the value of the new panel because the used one was so much cheaper.
As I was in college at the time, a free $800 made my day.
> insurance companies insisting that shitty used parts were fine
That's not up to the insurance company, because they aren't the ones sourcing the parts or doing the repairs. You go to a body shop that either works directly with the insurance company, or the company cuts you a check in the shops name for the quoted work.
It makes no sense whatsoever to put a brand new body panel on a car that's already lost 70-80% of the MSRP value to depreciation... IF the used parts are not damaged already, and the paint matches. Again, though, that's in the hands of the mechanic, not the insurance company.
Some places have insurance laws that will make people say "wait, car insurance pays for that?"
Also, most of the reason US car insurance is so expensive is due to the cost of healthcare, which is paid for in other ways in many other countries.
I use Geico and they give a breakdown of the cost per vehicle. My full size pickup is double the cost of my wife's mid-size SUV, which I cannot argue against.
The first dollar in any claim is always paid, the last dollar hardly ever, so the first dollar is worth more. Maximum deductible also reduces the chance you’ll involve insurance at all. Why report a $200 fix when your deductible is $1000?
Comprehensive insurance is for when you CANNOT afford to lose the car. If it would be painful but you’d survive, you probably don’t need it.
As a general rule - You should buy insurance on something when you both 1) have to have it and 2) can't afford to replace it.
Once you can afford to comfortably absorb a loss equal to the value of your car, you should consider dropping collision and comprehensive. For me that's when the car is worth less than around $5k.
You may desire to transfer the debt onto them, but the hospital will absolutely not accept that. Why would they? If a bank owed you $1 million, and they said "oh, now Jim owes you that money, not us" you would similarly refuse.
https://www.allstate.com/resources/car-insurance/uninsured-m...
No effort was put into finding them, even though there are cameras at every intersection. Through my own effort I got a grainy photo from a local business, but not good enough to see the plate. Until the police actual police and there are consequences for people, things will only get worse.
And if they move to another state, have fun transferring your judgement over there and trying to find their bank accounts and employer(s). It's like getting blood from a stone. It's easier and cheaper to just pay a tiny bit more in insurance premiums.
Once you have any sort of reasonable income you should strongly consider buying significantly more insurance than the legal minimums.
“Your pay is still going up too fast”
“Why you should never retire”
I tend to take their pronouncements with a massive grain of salt and a massiver eye roll.
My point is that the headline quoted is not a bad summary of an influential point of view.
More importantly however you probably want to separate out roads from streets in American towns, cities, and suburbs to reduce the number of accident prone interactions. As it is now, streets and roads are treated basically the same way and you get the abomination that are "stroads". By keeping them separate you remove all pedestrian and bike traffic from roads and you massively slow down car traffic on streets (along with removing traffic lights on streets).
That's not a prerequisite for raising licensing requirements. In fact, claims tend to be highest in major cities that do have public transportation networks. So the people most likely to lose their license are more likely to have access to public transit.
Pedestrian and bike deaths are an extremely small percentage of road fatalities and injuries. If you want to make an impact on insurance cost through reduced claims, you need to take another action. Higher quality drivers through more stringent education and testing is the most comprehensive way to do that with the lowest infrastructure cost.
Note that not everyone would lose thier license. Many of the people involved in accidents today are ignorant and could be brought up to a possible level with better training.
So you still need a comprehensive public transit system. It doesn't need to be super regular or blazing fast but it needs to be viable enough that commuters can still commute if they can't get a license.
Ultimately no impactful regulation of cars/drivers is possible because it's impossible to survive in most of the US without driving. You can take someone's license or mandate they have $10 million of insurance but at the end of the day they'll just have to drive without a license and drive without insurance because in most places there's no alternative.
The solution is to stop building out our infrastructure in ways that make cars a requirement for survival. Give people an alternative and maybe then you can start enforcing stricter automobile regulations.
As a benefit you'd reduce all the other horrible impacts cars have on our society (health, pollution, costs, anti-social behavior)
And this isn't just some new company that popped up out of nowhere. This is more or less the same group that had been attempting passenger rail in the state for the last 15 years or so. What changed is they stopped trying to sell it as a public infrastructure project and instead sold it as a purely private project that is funded by bonds which only come out at a loss to the government when the project succeeds (and the companies have to pay back with interest if it fails).
But now that Brightline has been shown to be viable, politicians in the state are bending over backwards to allocate land for routes (for example republican politicians allocated a route along I-4 from Orlando to Tampa in near record time). They are pursuing their next sets of routes in the state including the aforementioned Orlando-Tampa route, an east coast up to JAX route, and numerous local commuter rail routes from the surrounding counties into Miami.
All it takes is one good success and everyone who was otherwise staunchly against it starts moving heaven and earth to spread the boon to their constituents.
What is missing in the area however are fast, cheap intercity links (until now) and more importantly fast, reliable commuter rail. Brightline (and hopefully soon to follow Tri-rail) rolling out fast, regular commuter rail to the lower third of the Florida peninsula would mean that south Florida would have rail transit viability (and range) comparable to the NYC metro area (which is probably the best "no car" metro in the US at the moment).
So I am basically subsidizing alcoholics and stuff because they can’t price that into the premium in California.
Prior to December, I had only see 1 wrong-way driver in my entire 20+ years of driving. Since December, I have seen 4! One of them was on the freeway going up-hill and slightly around a bend - at night - which was extremely frightening to witness as people were dodging it at the last second due to poor visibility.
Perhaps we ought to start attaching jail time to people who drive the wrong way due to reliance on incorrect GPS as a soft form of eugenics. Keep them in a position where they aren't in a position to find love and reproduce for a year.
Your health insurance will seek reimbursement from the at-fault party's auto insurance. Which may be your insurance.
Most people here probably fall into idgaf category and can pay the increased premiums for the “peace of mind”. But if you are living at or near the federal poverty line. Paying for peace of mind is much less important.
Personally I have the maximum limits myself since the increase in 6 month premiums is only about $20.
I do wish I did not have to own a car though. No more car maintenance, car insurance, ongoing gas costs, yearly registration fees to local/state entities, tire replacement, brake replacements, …
I very much prefer to use my bike, walk, or use public transportation where possible. Much better for personal health (more active), environment, and my mental health (dealing with other drivers inattentiveness, poor driving skills, drunk mofos at night). Plus it’s nice to multitask while taking the bus or train home.
Sure, but it's pretty important from the perspective of the people you might seriously injure and their families.
If there is no insurance for the car, I would assume that normal laws regarding liability apply. There is also punishment for driving without a license[1] or without insurance[2].
From [1], a man with no license or insurance was jailed for three months and fined 100k DKK (15k USD), but this also includes drug offences. He also cannot legally drive for 5.5 years.
From [2], the vehicle is impounded the third time you drive without a license within three years. The first offence incurs a fine of 7000 DKK (1000 USD) and the subsequent 8500 DKK (1230 USD).
From [3], if you lend your vehicle to a person that drives recklessly, the vehicle can still be impounded and sold. The owner is liable for traffic infractions, but the owner can't lose their license because of what the lender did.
[0]: https://www.if.dk/globalassets/dk/files/privat/ipid/ipid-bil... [1]: https://viborg-folkeblad.dk/viborg/koersel-i-biler-uden-plad... [2]: https://sikkertrafik.dk/rad-og-viden/bil/korekort/boder/ [3]: https://fdm.dk/alt-om-biler/bilen-hverdagen/bilforsikring/na...
The consumer/patient/victim is last in line and doesn't need to be overly involved in these arguments between insurance companies - but it does become a big problem if none of the insurance is enough to pay the bills, and the person who caused the damages doesn't have money either. The victim gets stuck with whatever bill is left. You can sue the at-fault driver, but that's little help if they don't have money. More effective is to plead mercy and negotiate with the hospital. If you owe them $200k, that's more their problem than your, if you don't have it. And they've already gotten maybe (hopefully) $100-300k from insurance anyway, so maybe they'll forgive the rest or setup a payment plan for $50k or whatever. None of this is good! But there really is no good outcome when someone gets smashed with a car.
One reasonable remedy would be to increase the required liability coverage to $1M or more - enough to cover the amount of damage one can do in an automobile. Of course then only the people who care about these laws will have it. We'll still have an uninsured motorist problem. Now that I think about it, maybe they should make proof of car insurance required for registration. Why don't we do this already? Registration is much easier to enforce (there's a sticker on your plate in the US).
Note that the family was on the hook for ~4k. That seems to me to be insurance working as expected.
I agree that there are too many articles about relatively few incidents, but that's what people want to read about apparently, so that's what the news people give us.
There should be much stricter regulations on drivers ability to see to the front and sides of their vehicles. I'm not quite sure what other regulations would force better engineering for pedestrian/cyclist safety. Policymakers should put more effort into discouraging people from buying vehicles that are significantly larger than they really need, and making large vehicles safe for everyone on the road, even at the expense of possibly making them more expensive, less convenient, less cool looking, or slower. After-market modifications which compromise pedestrian safety should be strictly banned from city streets.
Personally I think manufacturers should be partly liable for damage caused by their vehicles.
Instead we effectively subsidize these vehicles by giving them special tax breaks.
15 years ago most cars had good visibility, and pedestrians getting hit rolled over the vehicle's hood. Now people prefer vehicles with much worse visibility and hoods that hit pedestrians like a freight train instead of like a scoop.
It might be Baader-Meinhoff phenomonon, but In the past two days I've seen multiple pickup trucks hopping the curb in places that I find shocking, so I'm becoming more inclined toward taking safety into ones own hands. The system clearly isn't working.
The most important thing I got out of this experience is that traffic signs and lights are suggestions. A red light usually means stop, but sometimes it is safe to go. A green light usually means go, but sometimes I must stop to avoid getting T-boned or cut off.
The only absolute rules of traffic are observation and physics. I predict other road users' behaviors and avert dangers, regardless of what the traffic signs/signals say or even if they're absent. For example, I slow down or stop near blind corners, even if there is no stop sign - and there have been times when vehicles popped out. I always look left and right even when I have the right of way, even when crossing a green light, because time and time again this trust has been broken.
I assume these low limits in US insurance also affect material damages so that if you crash into an expensive car you just get a bunch of debt you need to pay off?
And yes, you can buy “uninsured motorist protection” from your insurer as well. Even in states where it shouldn’t be possible for there to be uninsured motorists.
The idea makes sense -- the state recognizes that vehicle accidents will happen and preemptively deals with free loaders by requiring auto insurance, instead of just suggesting it. It falls down when the state isn't actually requiring the insurers to do their damn job.
And of course uninsured motorist coverage is a thing, because making something illegal doesn't mean people won't do it.
Isn't that the point of making something illegal? Here the system is: no insurance, no plates.
(it's also no inspection, no plates. One has to be wary of the sketchier tourists, but everyone with local plates has both insurance and a functioning vehicle)
The real crime is the state then zoning and building infrastructure in a way that forces you to engage in said activity, effectively forcing all citizens to buy insurance.
(no insurance, no plates)
The California auto insurance market basically failed in December and it is now almost impossible to get auto insurance with less than 3 weeks lead time. Most of them have closed their brick and mortar locations and do not accept online applications.
Of course, California’s solution to a shortage is to try to mandate supply.
quote from commissioner that refused to allow price increases for 4 years:
> “These alleged passive-aggressive tactics by insurance companies to slow down drivers’ access to coverage are unacceptable, dangerous, and will not be tolerated,” Lara said in a press release Thursday.
But if it were, it would encourage serving the smallest possible cohort and doing no more business
> Kaiser Permanente operates 39 hospitals and more than 700 medical offices, with over 300,000 personnel, including more than 87,000 physicians and nurses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Permanente
The second largest also owns Optum with 60k doctors:
> Optum Care is a family of 60,000 doctors in 2,000 locations nationwide. We work together to help 20+ million people live healthier lives.
https://www.optum.com/en/about-us/optum-care.html
So I'd ask you back, how many insurance companies aren't under the same parent org as hospitals? The 2 largest are, wouldn't surprise me if most are.
Considering I was just laid off for the sake of "efficiency" that is perfectly fine by me.
We’d all be stuck as farmers, tailors and wood cutters, if firing people was penalised or efficiency was punished, no one would want to make their company more efficient with wood cutting machines or sewing machines, or tractors for farming, etc.
In a small timeframe it is horrible to lose a job, but the state is responsible for protecting both the future generations balanced with comfort and safety of present population.
A affordable unemployment insurance is a much better idea tbh compared to profit caps or price caps.
Good luck tho!, may you get a great job soon. May god bless you.
Proper competition would limit market malfunction.
If a group of locals want to pool their cash and start up a local broadband service then good on them, best of luck. But taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook to help them.
However, because USPS exists, there is a ceiling to how much other firms can charge without differentiating their services to make it worth the difference in cost. It helps ensure the market functions with proper competition.
For any other market where distortion (dysfunctional market) is observed, the solution is not to mandate the impossible from the existing players, but to modify the market conditions where they are broken.
Aren't said locals literally tax payers? And they want their tax money to go to something actually useful for them.
That 90% should be allowed to pool their resources, start a "Centiville Fibre" company, build out fibre locally and charge locals a fair rate. Then the remaining 10 don't have to be involved in something they don't want. Or they can pay market rate for it without getting a dividend, which is effectively a penalty.
No government involvement required outside maybe permitting. The people who want it pay, it probably happens faster and all is good.
> And they want their tax money to go to something actually useful for them.
They're going to have their taxes raised to pay for the installation costs. Doing it through the government doesn't mean there is more money (unless they're harvesting resources off people who think it is a bad idea / don't want it / can't afford it which is unfair).
Taxpayers shouldn't be forced to pay for things that they don't use and don't think are good ideas. If you use it, you should pay for it. If you think it is a good idea, you should pay for it. But if people think something is a bad idea they should only have to pay for it under highly exceptional circumstances.
There is no need to force people to pay for broadband. This is a problem that a company can solve using voluntary action.
Many people strongly disagree about the places their tax dollars go. It is maybe one of the single most common complaints people utter and this is an example of it? People are able to make decisions about where their tax dollars go but only in the abstract of collective action via legislation. It’s kind of how governments work on a fundamental level and most of politics is about where the tax dollars go.
If a strong majority of people choose to do something as a municipality, that is the system at work. Sorry to the 10% of people who think they’re getting a bad deal (and are also almost certainly wrong on an objective level unless they just don’t want internet at all).
The suggestion that instead a private enterprise should be spun up for it so they can choose to not subscribe is the antithesis of the entire point. The entire point is that the cost is already beared by the taxpayers in the first place and that it should serve them. It makes more sense to invest directly in the creation and keep it in the hands of those who bore the cost. We give billions out in corporate welfare and yet the companies who get that money are quite often the most reviled in the nation based on public polling (Telcos). It is almost like the incentives aren’t aligned.
The idea that your tax dollars should only get spent on something you use personally is laughable - I'm not arguing that.
> The entire point is that the cost is already beared by the taxpayers in the first place and that it should serve them...
Well, having the taxpayers pay for it is obviously failing. Maybe try not taking the money off people and letting them build their own broadband? If you've identified that something the government is doing isn't working, the first port of call is try privatising it. The private market is pretty good at providing things.
Getting local government to do something instead of state or federal is an improvement; but by golly you could just have the people who want something organise to have what they want without dragging the unwilling in to it. 90% vs 100% of local people paying for something doesn't really make a difference to the underlying economics.
> If a strong majority of people choose to do something as a municipality, that is the system at work. Sorry to the 10% of people who think they’re getting a bad deal (and are also almost certainly wrong on an objective level unless they just don’t want internet at all).
No that isn't the system at work, that is the system failing. Taking a system that could work with just a motivated minority organising it and changing it to a system where everyone has to vote on it at regular intervals is a recipe for failure. If a strong majority wants something, they have all the tools they need to do it themselves at their own cost. The only reason they even need a majority is to push any obstructionist permitting and whatnot out of the way.
> We give billions out in corporate welfare and yet the companies who get that money are quite often the most reviled in the nation based on public polling (Telcos).
A sensible take there is to not make paying them compulsory? I get what you're saying but I don't get how you aren't joining the dots. You start by saying that some people are going to have to pay for something they don't want. You then get to the conclusion and you've identified that people are being forced to pay for something they don't want and that is bad.
There is an easy solution to all this. Stop forcing people to fund things they think are bad ideas, then let the people who want broadband band together, set up a limited liability corporation to control the legal risk, and build themselves a broadband network. IE, get government out of the picture as much as possible. Then literally everyone gets what they want. If someone changes their mind later they aren't a shareholder and will end up having to give money to the people with more foresight.
I don't really see why anyone should be unhappy if Sam the Solar wants to power his own house. Good luck to him. He doesn't have to pay for my electricity and I don't have to pay for his. If it is much more cost effective for him he can come do my house too. There is literally no need to force them to pay or force them to consume a service that they don't think it a good idea.
And the closer the equilibrium can be pushed to a fully private free market the more cost effective it is likely to be.
I was on the private system my first 13 years working in Germany. I was obligated (but didn’t try to fight) switch to public recently.
The change has overall been positive.
Three weeks delay is just the most visible thing, they are basically pulling out all the stops to try to avoid covering as many people as possible.
But even 3 weeks delay in driving a vehicle you just purchased is considerable.
most of the people with the option to remote work are working decent white-collar jobs, so add this to the long tally of policies that are designed to help but only hurt the poor
Under what conditions will a person have a job that they are expected to be at, but not have car insurance to get there? I'm sure this exists (for instance for someone whose policy is revoked for DUI or accident or whatever), but in many cases I assume public transit or a three week wait to start is acceptable.
Plus most medical expenses quickly will exceed those bond values these days. Maybe decades ago if you had a lot money to just set aside getting no interest on it it may have made sense.
However the costs of medical and even cars today make it quite a risky proposition
It makes absolutely no sense for me to post a bond for such a small amount when I can get ~10x the coverage, plus all the claims handling, for $1200/yr for two cars and two drivers.
It would make sense if I was a business who had hundreds of cars or some other weird corner case perhaps, but regular people who could afford to post a bond have a better option in the insurance market.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/insurance/minimum-car-ins...
People should have to pay the full cost of the risk of living in these dangerous areas so the price system encourages them to move.
This should carry with the property address - the next person who buys it should have to sign a form acknowledging that they aren't going to get a FEMA bailout if it gets destroyed.
Lots of Florida Republicans out there who complain about welfare but rely on some of the biggest welfare checks that get written to repair their homes because of the absolutely foreseeable results of their choices.
If they can’t build on it, who would buy it? Urban farmers?
In any case, your plan would destroy the land value, and the corresponding property tax revenue.
Sounds like the market effectively discovered the true value of the property with all externalities priced in. I don’t see a problem here?
On the downside, when the next disaster hit and FEMA didn't cover it, it would look like FEMA doesn't want to cover low income housing, which isn't a good look.
But there does need to be some mechanism to convince people to abandon homes and towns that are not appropriate given environmental conditions. And it needs to be done carefully so it's not like kick all the poor people out, do some civil engineering that never happened while it was a poor community, then sell the land to developers who make a huge profit.
"We will pay no more than the actual cash value of the damage until actual repair or replacement is complete." [0]
[0] https://www.iii.org/sites/default/files/docs/pdf/HO3_sample....
A secondary threat is prolonged flooding which can submerge entire homes with salt water for weeks at a time. That's very costly and not preventable with existing homes in flood zones.
It defies comprehension that despite being somewhat poorer and enjoying milder weather, Europeans built their houses from brick and mortar while the US insists on erecting cheap cardboard boxes that even if they're not blown away or flooded, will probably rot away within the lifetime of their owner.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/Y678tV7.png
Anyways, the point isn't the materials - the point is that the houses are fundamentally unsuited to the environment they are in.
Drywall walls have never been a problem for me, in fact they're pretty nice. It's really easy to modify the walls. Need to do a new Ethernet run? Want another power run? Feel like moving a lightswitch? Install new access points on the ceiling or change up light fixtures? Easy to drop down the void and cut a new box. Want to redesign the layout of a room? Often not a problem, easy to change.
Meanwhile a concrete wall is a massive pain to modify. You get the runs you get. Good luck redoing a layout. Say goodbye to having good wireless coverage.
We were talking about houses blowing away and falling over but sure.
So do you spend significantly more for construction for a failure that's still extremely unlikely? Y'all are acting like every time there's a thunderstorm all the houses just blow down. You're entirely disconnected from reality of the actual risks versus massive increase in costs.
Major hurricanes are a different story. But even then total loss is relatively rare except for storm surges unless you’re in the path of the eyewall.
There is no construction that can withstand storm surge, which is the biggest and most destructive hurricane impact. Even if the structure is intact, everything has to be ripped out of it. Most of them do survive winds short of tornadoes, though roof damage is very typical for major hurricanes and tree falls can cause problems.
We’re talking about the wind blowing up to 30ft of saltwater _miles_ inland. Given the comparative rarity of a major hurricane in any given geographical location and the oddities that determine the storm surge and where it comes in, the damage usually is worst in places it’s never flooded before - because places where it has are indeed required to build higher.
In most of the US, only wood or steel frame construction is safe. Wood houses last centuries.
Wood holds up better in earth quakes and tornadoes than brick, but you could probably build safe buildings with bricks in the USA, they would just cost more and require similar or more maintenance.
While steel-reinforced masonry can be made safe, it isn’t obvious to me that actual brick-and-mortar can be.
America has lots of wood and lots of gypsum, and that's what we build our houses with.
Do you notice the awkward protruding wall plug, seemingly used by the lamp, on the photo you linked? It doesn’t have to be that way - I have put a receptacle or switch in to the perfect spot as a one day project many times, and we have reworked wall layout in several places.
And, the photo looks like it has single pane windows with snow outside? They might not have had functional multi pane windows when the home was built?
Needs and technical capabilities change, and a design that is less committed to mass walls has important flexibility.
That's water outside. After a storm. That's a waterproof house in a coastal area of Germany that tends to flood during storms.
Needless to say those windows are designed with another problem than just insulation in mind. I can't tell you whether they're multi pane. All I know is that they open towards the outside rather than the inside for obvious reasons.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hurricane-idalias-destr...
: Dozens of modest homes along the Big Bend coast were heavily damaged in the floodwaters, but interspersed among the debris were residences left relatively unscathed, all because they were built elevated on stilts.
If a house is destroyed by any form of reasonably common widespread disaster it becomes illegal to build anything on that lot that would likewise be destroyed. You can rebuild after the hurricane, you must build a house that will stand up to a hurricane. (Yes, it can be done.)
I wouldn't apply this to flukes--your town does a Tunguska there's no reason to require asteroid-safe houses.
I would also make an exception for things which by their nature must be in the line of fire--such things must never be permanent habitation and can't have community-rate insurance against whatever happened to them.
A business can rebuild it's beach cabanas but would have to go to Lloyd's if they wanted insurance.
they already do the same in flooding zones.
but yes, people who live in fire-prone areas may take a loss. encouraging people to anticipate these losses is part of a functioning market. if they can live somewhere risky without financial risk, we only encourage future people to do the same.
If you recursively got everyone in dangerous areas to move, no one would live in California. If you live in a population center in California, the only reason why you aren't prone to wildfires is because of the people living around you that are.
It's a scenario where everyone paying the same actually makes sense. Your insurance is that others are accepting the risk of losing all their personal belongings or even their lives - even if insurance will cover them financially.
It's not the same as hurricanes or earthquakes.
In many wildfire events homes burn because brush/scrub burns all the way up to the house and catches the siding on fire, or because embers land on the roof or enter soffits and start a fire that way. These things are really easily improved. Insurance could require fireproof siding, no bushes/plants right up against the house, fire screens on roof/soffit vents, and fireproof roofing. Those changes alone would decrease the number of houses that burn in a fire.
Obviously there are some areas where the landscape, wind patterns, and nature of trees means if it burns it will rage and everything's gonna go up no matter what you do. But that isn't everywhere.
What I don't know right now: how much does CA law allow insurers to price this kind of risk? Is it a matter of law not allowing them to send accurate price signals? I can believe this is the case. I also don't know if CA law allows them to only sell in certain areas... there's no practical wildfire risk to the Bay Area for example so why stop writing policies there?
Or are insurers going into knee-jerk mode or even using this as an opportunity to goose profits (knowing that wildfires wax and wane)? I can also believe this is happening.
Like I said: it is unfortunate that CA law, insurance companies, or both are not using this as an opportunity to improve fire survivability in rural areas.
There is practical wildfire risk in the Bay Area. You should drive down 280 some time.
To me, it is more condescending to insist that a car is a basic life necessity. It demeans those of us who live without one.
A car is a basic necessity of life for the vast majority of Washingtonians. Congratulations on being the vast, vast minority.
I do not know this. I have over a thousand taps of my ORCA card in 2023. My wife has more. We have been as far north as Bellingham and as far south as Portland on transit. We attended the wedding of a friend's kid in Yakima by riding transit to Issaquah and taking Greyhound from there.
I don't appreciate being told that my actual, lived experience "isn't viable", especially when I know several other people who do it just the same as me. Not all of us can or want to drive. This is even more true as people get older.
> And you’re fully aware that commutes of >30 minutes are not uncommon, in part die to how unaffordable the greater Puget Sound
According to AAA, the annual cost of owning a car is $12,000. We don't spend that money, so we can afford to live closer-in where transit is better. I am not here to judge people who choose to move far away but I haven't done it and I won't. But even if I did, I could just move to where I already have acquaintances in Lynnwood or Redmond or Renton or Burien and take the bus just the same as I do today.
You're in the vast minority who can take the Sounder, etc. Your scenario does not reflect the reality for the vast majority of Washingtonians.
> I don't appreciate being told that my actual, lived experience "isn't viable"
Yet, it isn't viable for the vast majority of Washingtonians.
> We don't spend that money, so we can afford to live closer-in where transit is better.
Congrats on being wealthy enough to live in a place where ORCA has any value. Most Washingtonians do not.
You do, in fact, live in a transportation bubble. You need to acknowledge that your transportation bubble is not viable for the vast majority of Washingtonians, so your premise that being car-free is do-able in Washington simply is not a reality for millions of Washingtonians.
This is exactly the same blinders we see on r/seattle. Those who call for elimination of cars are privileged enough to live in Seattle and don't seem to recognize other's do not live in Seattle (or commute to Seattle from where most public transportation is not effective, viable, or possible).
But WA has 7.7M people of whom 3.9M live in Snohomish, King, or Pierce counties.
I agree a majority needs cars, but it’s hardly overwhelming — and worth remembering that half of people live in a narrow, urban bubble. A lot of WA’s political strife is caused by this.
I don't think this poster was calling for removal of cars or whatever, just pointing out that it's possible to build your life without them. For at least some people.
There's certainly tradeoffs. Where I live, I could do many things with transit, but hours of operation are very limited, and direct routes are very limited. Sometimes, I can take transit to the airport and it makes sense, but on my most recent trip, getting to the airport would have been very stressful as the ferry canceled most of the morning runs on short notice and AFAIK, there's no reasonable alternative route without a private car. On the way home, there's no transit on my side of the ferry on a Sunday, and even if there was, it ends hours before I get there. If I needed to build my life around transit, I'd need to fly only during limited hours and not have any scheduling mishaps, spend nights in hotels a ferry away from my home, or move to a more transit accessible home.
At the same time, I don't complain that NYC doesn't accomadate my life built around cars. I choose a life built around cars, and so I avoid built up urban areas whenever possible. I hate paying for parking, so going into the city needs a good reason, and I would never want to live there.
The person you’re responding to is one of those people. Don’t waste your time.
While you can certainly spend as much as you like (sky is the limit here), there is no need to spend such amount if you don't want to.
My TCO for my primary driver in 2023 was $2419 when accounting for every expense.
I believe you fail to recognize that a lot of people who don't drive don't live in Seattle. Whether or not someone drives is not always by their choice. I have friends who are physically incapable of driving, yet because drivers tend to outvote and outweigh non-drivers politically, those friends are denied the transit service they would really like to have. And even when it is by choice, nothing says that Yakima or Spokane or Port Angeles can't have transit; most of them do!
I live in Seattle. My wife and I were born here and we will hopefully die and be buried here. It is our home. I have lived through decades of transit that would make a New Yorker howl in peril. It was not so long ago that our idea of a frequent bus route was every half hour, and the light rail (that began running after both of my children were born) stopped in downtown and at 11pm.
Seattle residents aren't a monolithic bloc but, generally, our push for fewer cars is because cars, and especially those cars driven in from places that do have quality transit to reach the city, cause a lot of problems for people outside of those cars. I really, really want to make it to retirement without being run over by someone driving into town who's late for a sporting event.
> Yet, it isn't viable for the vast majority of Washingtonians.
Not driving can be viable! It is viable, if not as convenient, in places you wouldn't think and might even consider are "too rural" or "too spread out." The fact remains, there are a lot of us in Washington who don't drive and, bluntly, I don't appreciate us being insulted or accused of having an excess of privilege or living in a bubble.
There may well come a day when you are not physically able to drive and I wish very much for you to have a robust transit and sidewalk and low-speed city setup that enables you to have independence and access throughout all of your days.
Prior to Seattle, I also lived in Texas and Virginia. Also no car. I moved to VA being unable to afford a car or insurance.
In many situations it is doable. But it requires restructuring how you life and where you live. I spend more on rent, but make up for that by not paying for gas, insurance or the many other small fees that add up. People get trapped into this idea that they need a car that they never consider the costs it has.
Most WA residents live along the I-5 corridor in cities or surrounding suburbs, not in the rural parts. GP specifically lives in Seattle city limits, like about 10% of WA residents.
Also, GP is not trying to eliminate cars.
I get up, check the weather, throw on clothes for whatever's happening, jump on the e-bike, buzz half a mile down to a gravel trail that runs north-south through my city, and go do what I need to do. I use panniers mounted on a rear rack to hold stuff. For groceries I tend to go to Trader Joe's which is in a shopping area off the trail about a mile and a half from my house. Hardware stuff I get from a family-owned place that's 7 miles away, 5 miles of which is on trails. Electronics is from a store that's sort of like Radio Shack on steroids that's about a mile from the trail system, but that's more like 10 miles each way. I don't need to go there often. Work is 10 miles away, 9 miles of which is on a trail. I park in a bike cage, and there is a locker room with showers.
I am fortunate to be able to work from home most days. I work for a medical group and we have doctor's offices across the city and King County. I can reach all but one by a one or two bus trip when I need to go, which is rare. We have friends who have moved up to Everett and it's a two bus trip to go all of the way from Magnuson Park to downtown Everett.
The only "hard" trip is to go see one of our kids who has since moved to Tacoma. We try to time it when the Sounder is running (a few mid-day trips would be great) or take Cascades if we feel like splurging.
All west coast states are largely rural where public transportation is ineffective and cars are a basic necessity of life.
Specific cases do work - or at least work better than the car-owning alternatives, for example major transit directions for short-ish distances in San Francisco. If your life revolves around a few of these, you are doing pretty well without a car ... and you still can't escape from that area without one. A significant additional "sweet spot" zone is where car usage has been made - deliberately and assiduously - unbearable. The choice is then about a lesser aggravation, rather then desirable service. And so we get the quality of life we deserve, and that's not great.
Nobody is arguing that YOU should own a car. If you are happy without one that's great and carry on. But that's rather specific situation.
like the Muni is cute and all but it’s a joke compared to the east coast systems i grew up with (wmata, mbta, nyc mta) many of which are in smaller cities.
My Nevada insurance costs half of what I paid in California.
I'm in California and have been buying insurance like this for 20 years. Last time was 18 months ago. Basically instant.
you say you last bought coverage 18 months ago. i said the market failed in december. i encourage you to try to buy coverage now and see. i was also surprised since i expected the previous situation of instant insurance to still be in place.
not sure why i am being downvoted, i encourage anyone to try for themselves
Geico will quote a price but forces a 15 days waiting period. Then they’ll send you snail mail and ask you to send in a picture of your car within two days, by snail mail. This is the car you don’t have insurance on, so it’s probably still at the dealer’s or at the seller’s house! I think they’re not allowed to actually refuse to sell insurance but they’ll do everything they can to make it annoying enough that you go away. State Farm and the others are all equally bad.
I am curious what makes it different, as I have no record and drive fewer than 2k miles a year.
The matter still hasn’t been fully resolved, say the state’s insurance officials, who argue that rate hike decisions aren’t interfering with unfulfilled rebates.
“These are separate processes,” said Michael Soller
Don't forget fraud isn't covered in econ 101.
If the insurers could have it their way, they wouldn't have to adjust at all (for overcharging), while avoiding undercharging ahead of time. Oversight is necessary to counter misaligned incentives.
The point is no part of this is _fraud_.
What happened is that with the shutdowns, profits went from 2-3% to 20-30%. Some of that money was given back to consumers, but most went into an absolutely insane soft market where every carrier paid more than they ever had to acquire any driver they could.
This led to a lot of carriers having drivers on their books that they really didn't know how to price correctly. Everyone realized at roughly the same time that they had screwed up more than usual - and that was when drivers got back on the roads. Suddenly frequency and severity of accidents were up to historic levels because everyone forgot how to drive and is driving ANGRY.
So there's a double whammy, it's drivers they haven't insured before on the one hand and the drivers they do know how to price changing their behavior en-masse. So we've gone from once-in-a-lifetime industry profits to massive losses. For the first time, when the carriers tell the government the price is unsustainable they actually mean it. Hence the California shut downs - carriers are TRULY taking a loss on most policies they write and are trying to shut down new customer operations as much as legally possible. You'll notice a surprising lack of auto insurance ads on tv compared to 3-4 years ago.
Progressive's underwriters are so far ahead of everybody that they got a lot of their price changes submitted before everyone (the other carriers and the government) figured out what was going on. You can see that in many states where the prices are public, in an incomprehensible data format. So they have been one of the only carriers still getting new customers.
It's basically been a state-by-state showdown now between state insurance commissioners and carriers, and the commissioners are starting to give in. Premiums were up almost 20% last year nation-wide and it's only going up.
As a Brit the fact this position exists AND is elected is bonkers to me. It seems like the US talks about a free market but has done everything possible to add voting and red tape all over the place.
Car Insurance in the US has turned into a tax on the poor.
I don't mind the idea of insurance, but I do mind the idea of insurance companies trying to lessen their risk by getting the state to mandate everyone needs to pay for it. If someone is paying insurance and the other driver doesn't carry insurance and doesn't have the money to sue for it, that's the risk of doing business as an insurance company.
It's regulatory capture, plain and simple.
And lets not even get started on police enforcing it and writing tickets or impounding vehicles of people who don't have insurance. Who doesn't carry insurance? Those who cannot afford to. The state is literally causing harm here.
While there may be downsides, I'm happy to know that if a car hits me or my car, there is an insurance who pays (and it goes not to my insurer).
What the other car having insurance does is give someone for _your_ insurance company to sue to recoup their money. Most individuals aren't going to be worth sue-ing, but other insurance companies will be. And most major insurance companies are going to have in-place agreements so that litigation isn't actually necessary (because it's more expensive).
The other vehicle being covered by insurance is absolutely _no_ guarantee that _your_ insurance won't decide to declare the vehicle a total loss. I myself drive a 2004 corolla that's had a salvage title since the mid-2000's due to someone hitting me. I chose to "buy" the salvage title from them and that vehicle has been 100% solid. They scrapped it because they didn't want to fix the body damage.
The insurance have had their cake and are eating it too. They're not required to cover you, but you're required to be covered.
I experienced once a minor car accident where another driver did some damage to my car (well, and his). There where no courts involved. Just one insurance company retrieving a bill (not mine because it was not my fault as the other driver and me agreed on (and used a form to confirm that) and paying the bill.
And my point is less about _who_ paid, but more about that _anybody_ pays. If two people without insurance hit each other, who's going to pay the bills?
if two uninsured people hit each other then they sue each other, they come up with an agreement on money exchange, or they both go about their business and pretend it didn't happen.
at least in the US, the only difference between two uninsured people hitting each other and one or both having insurance is the party doing the suing changes.
of course, injuries complicate matters but it's all roughly the same. Someone has to pay, which likely means litigation without a gentlemans agreement.
But if someone doesn't have insurance what's the chances that you suing that person is going to actually recoop your money? right, probably not going to happen. That makes it a business risk for insurance companies that end up having to fix their customers car but not being able to recoop that money. So they convinced law makers to require insurance so the chances of that happening are far less.
^ to better explain what I was trying to say before.
People will pay for uninsured motorist protection and _under_ insured motorist protection. under insured typically means an injury happened but the other persons insurance policy doesn't cover injury (liability) or the medical bills exceed what they do cover.
Think about that racket. They insure you but don't want to insure you without being able to fully recoop their money so they charge YOU to cover the case where the other drivers insurance won't cover it all.
it's a frickin' racket. If it's required by law it needs to be covered by the state or the insurance companies themselves need to be required to cover it. Anything else and it causes undue harm to everyone, most especially those who cannot afford insurance in the first place.
PG&E is a private company, but the CPUC has strict controls over it's operations. You can read the CPUC meeting minutes for yourself. Things like "PG&E would like to replace the chain link fence surrounding substation X at a cost of $150,000 - DENIED".
CPUC is a commission whose members are selected by the governor. They are the defacto decisionmakers. Yet Gavin Newsom will give quotes to the media on how "PG&E will need to be punished for it's mismanagement".
My only theory is that keeping PG&E private provides a convenient scapegoat for the utter mismanagement by CPUC.
The reason it's denied is because more spending on infrastructure means higher rates. CPUC is trying to control rates.
For anyone interested you can read about the 2024 rate decision here: https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M520/K...
For example, PG&E wanted to replace gas service lines made "with Aldyl-A plastic that were installed before 1985" due to the risk of line failure.
The CPUCs decision was "PG&E’s request to replace unidentified services is denied. Moreover, the Commission does not find that PG&E has supported rounding up the number of services to be replaced by 73 per year."
It's a byzantine system of regulations that dive into the minutia of running a utility. Not to mention a lot of these decisions are by administrative judges since the regulations are written into law.
My guess is the reason premiums are going up is people are driving worse and repair costs are going up.
I don't have the most up to date figures but in 2022, combined ratio was forecast to be 115% for motor insurance - this means for every £1 in premium, £1.15 was paid out in claims and expenses. There is some income from investments but it's minimal compared to the pre 2008 situation.
Consequentially several insurers have exited the personal lines market as they cannot make money from it - RSA for example. 2022 is forecast to be the worst year for insurers since 2010.
The market does suffer from a cycle of 'hard' and 'soft' markets and there will be an overcorrection in the short term - over a few years, we'll see insurers seeing an opportunity to undercut the market and gain market share and premiums increases will ease.
TLDR - whilst it is painful to see premiums rising so quickly, it is not an industry that is awash with profits.
Some of the monthly prices mentioned in the US are similar to an annual price in the UK, and a lot more is covered on a UK policy.
Buffett successfully applied this strategy with geico.
It was due to the lockdown where essentially no one drove for several months and then there was reduced driving for a year is so.
The refunds were also not done willingly, they were done due to DOIs demanding it and peer pressure.
And when you need the insurance, even when you are not at fault, they immediately raise your rates. What were you even paying them for before if they just raise your rates to repay themselves?
Different cars have very different insurance rates, it’s a big part of the TCO. If you aren’t rich enough not to care, insurance rates need to be considered early on in any car purchase decision. I don’t even know how much my car insurance costs because it’s too small to matter because I have a basic paid-off car that’s cheap to insure.
If you go from junker with just liability to new car with comprehensive, liability, and gap, you’re greatly increasing what is insured and how much it costs.
Usually it is all broken down in the quote or bill.
But insurance coverage can fluctuate over the course of a year, because unlike with health insurance, there's no annual enrollment period; people switch insurers, or miss bills, or sign up ruthlessly for a month of insurance to get past the state bureaucracy and then just never pay again.
There's the SR-22 system, which is a court order to maintain insurance at minimum levels, which you get for getting repeatedly pulled over without insurance (or, perhaps, for getting pulled over without proof of insurance and then not proving you did get coverage afterwards). But that's not a fix, because you can only enforce it at police traffic stops.
My car is insured and registered, but it has been the better part of ten years since I actually bothered to put a new sticker on the plate. Maybe there are places where cops try to more actively police expired plates, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a thing around here.
anecdata, but in my town of 60k people, any one drive I do I couldn't even count on my hands the number of expired temp tags (I've seen over a year old), and expired registration.
It really _feels_ like people don't get pulled over for that anymore.
the poor or un-insurable go without and just hope they aren't caught
It doesn’t seem like registration is enforced in any meaningful way.
And most cops no longer track this stuff visually either. It's my impression that most patrol cars today have autonomous cameras installed that check every license plate in their field of view for expired registrations and outstanding warrants.
Many police cameras likely do facial recognition too. (Numerous states subscribe generously to commercial services that sell face recog with no independent certification of accuracy, which is famously terrible, like a 90% error rate.)
Or dropped the requirement for front plates. The best part about front plates is that they can drop off and remain at the scene of the accident (or embed themselves in the bumper) during a hit-and-run.
I imagine past some threshold, even if the cops do know that someone isn't insured it's just not worth running a whole anti-uninsured-driver campaign.
Liability is everything, the cost of the car is nothing. Get the umbrella policy on your house. Buy liability insurance when you rent a car.
It's not just the medical bills- it's also the legal damages.
Agreed. I'm a personal finance nerd, and it felt like an epiphany when I discovered this a few years ago, because it's rarely discussed but seems so important. I max out our UM/UIM coverage now.
Side note: My wife is a stay-at-home mom and I've long wished for a disability insurance product that would cover the economic value that she provides, i.e. cover the cost of daycare / after-school care if she couldn't care for the kids. As far as I can tell, there's no such product for people who aren't wage earners. The closest thing I've found is UM/UIM coverage, since the most likely cause of disability is a car crash. Presumably it would pay for at least some of the other things beyond medical bills.
> Buy liability insurance when you rent a car.
Why do you say this instead of just relying on the liability coverage under your regular auto insurance?
>stay at home mom
I'm in the same situation, it sure would be nice. We do both have life insurance at least.
>Why do you say this instead of just relying on the liability coverage under your regular auto insurance?
To be careful. If you don't buy it, make absolutely sure that your own auto insurance covers it. [also people who don't own a car won't have auto insurance..]
AD&D (accidental death and disability) is the closest you’ll come. It’s most commonly offered by workplaces I believe, and is not expensive. On the flip side the situations it pays out are pretty narrow.
The only other alternative I know of is life insurance but of course that covers death, not disability.
Like the employer offers coverage that extends to a non-employee spouse, like family health insurance?
I remember finding one product sold to individuals including stay-at-home parents a few years ago by Bright Peak Financial. Now I can't even get their website to load to see any details, so maybe it doesn't even exist anymore, but the coverage limits were pitifully low. Like it would cover only fraction of our childcare costs, and only for a time measured in months.
We definitely have term life coverage on her that will run until our youngest kid is a teenager.
Yes. I believe it’s typically offered for just you, you+spouse, or you+family - like health insurance. Lots of info on Google.
This is the problem. Those policies usually cover “unable to work at all” which is extremely narrow (some won’t pay out if you can do any job anywhere, even if you were a doctor lawyer 10 programmer CEO before).
You can find a policy to cover stay at home spouses, but they’re often somewhat custom, expensive, and only pay out until children are X age. Long-term care can also be added, even more.
There is absolutely disability insurance for homemakers and non income spouses in the USA. I've written that exact policy both individual and for employers / employees.
They gave me $15k. I went from a beautiful 2008 Lexus IS350 to a $2500 2001 Honda CRV because I had no money to buy a car with other than the cash I had left over in my bank through bo fault of mine. It was actually even worse with lot fees after the police found the car and impounded it, etc. But that's another story.
GAP covers that, and car thefts are up at a massive scale now. I get GAP on every car and if the dealer has some anti-theft option I get that too. I bought a car last week and I think it was $900 and if the car is ever stolen or wheels stolen over 5 years I get something like $5k cash. I'm also going to put a DroneMobile system in it.
Don't get a car stolen. Garage it if you can. I used to have that "USAA will cover me! hehe! no worries if it's stolen!" naivete until it happened.
I seriously can't explain how rude they were to me. Had a fraud investigator come to my house and grill me in the most despicably rude way possible. They acted like I tried to get it stolen or something to get out of the car payment. "I've had this car since it was new, never missed a payment, and I I'm still employed making $YZ money. Why would I try to get out of my payment by .. hiding my car? Leaving it open to steal?" I'm not kidding. It got stolen when I walked into a Walgreens to buy a frozen pizza.
Maybe it's what they all do, but it sucks. And it's not what a lot of people expect.
As such I could definitely buy a replacement with the payout.
While I'd much rather be without the experience, I was almost pleasantly surprised by the insurance company.
I was maybe 23 and definitely didn't have money for legal help. I hate how I let myself get treated.
We were insured with Travelers.
I’ve wondered since then if that’s how it usually works out, or if we were a lucky fluke.
I have two "new" cars (2019 and 2021 model years) that I've had since they were less than a year old, and have new car replacement on both.
Travelers is relatively unique in that their new car replacement is up to 5 years, not 1 as most are (some go to 2 or 3). NCR also integrates gap coverage.
If my 2021 RS 5 gets totaled two years from now, I get a check for 110% of the MSRP for a 2026 RS 5.
Further, what does “worth” mean if you can’t take the amount of money you were given and easily purchase a car of the same make, model, year, and condition?
My two cars now have new car replacement coverage for 5 years that also wraps in gap coverage.
The whole thing was an absolutely miserable experience completely stacked against any sort of reasonable resolution, and USAA was caught in so many lies it still irritates me years later. I'm sad that this is so clearly a continual process for people day to day.
Still, I also buy cars used. But I go ~10 year old, from a reputable low maintenance brand and model.
But I agree. A lot of these problems are solved by not buying such expensive cars.
It's not just expensive cars, people are putting tiny down payments on cheap new cars financed for long terms and they're under water for years.
This isn't /r/frugal fwiw.
I’m talking about the people buying cars for transportation who are in a financial situation for which GAP insurance might be a concern.
My last car loan was at 0% (meaning the only cost of financing was the insurance company profit on the collision policy that I had to take because of the loan). No way am I putting down 40% on a 0% loan.
I could have charged the car on my credit card for the points and paid it off 45 days later; it’s not a matter of being able to afford it.
It's not smarter to bypass Apples 0% interest financing on a $3500 macbook or VR headset than drop the $3500 that will now make %0 interest for you immediately.
Some of you (all of us?) were taught some moral/ethical line about not incurring debt by our ignorant boomer parents who follow the "don't ever be in debt!!!" mantra, which is literally impossible nowadays. And they are INSANELY in debt. Almost every boomer home owner has a reverse mortgage!! Your boomer parents were rich at $50k. We are not. My boomer parents had a $150k 3500sq ft house. I have a $3100/mo 1300sq ft townhouse. Living good on that $.79 Clinton gas.
Learn financing.
I pay my boomer parents rent now because they royally fucked up their finances. Do not listen to boomers for financial advice. And I mean the bobbleheads on TV as well. I guarantee a LOT of you will be paying your parents rents soon. My moms 71. They were stupid beyond belief with their money. Just remember all the trash they bought in the 1990s, 454 cubic liter 2500 HD suburbans? Hummers? Massive houses?
Go torch your Kiyosaki books and everything else and throw that $1500 Camry you've driven for 35 years in the trash and spend the whopping $20k on a modern car that can survive a collision and enjoy your life. Who gives a fuck if you're rich at 75 when you can't do anything, that new cars compound interest isn't saving your retirement or not.
It probably helped that it was a cut and dry case - the thief took the keys from inside my house and I called the cops seconds after I saw him drive away with it.
As someone with two kids, can I ask, does health insurance not work in this situation? I ask partly because at the moment we own no cars. If health insurance doesn’t cover it I’m wondering how we should insure.
Anyway, yes health covers it but they are first in the line getting reimbursed, even before the lawyer- which I think sucks, I mean what am I paying them for?
Sorry about the incident. Do you mean the health-insurance company tries to get reimbursed? From who? the auto-insurance of the other driver?
The reimbursement right that the insurance company has is called subrogation. The basic idea is that whoever was at fault shouldn't be better off because the injured party had insurance; otherwise it would be rational for individuals to not have insurance as long as most other people do have insurance. Subrogation means someone will still sue you into the ground even if the person you hurt was made whole by insurance. There can be many links in the insurance chain before you get to the person who actually caused the problem, and in your case it sounds like UMC was the final link.
At least, this is the stated public policy reason for subrogation. You are right that your health insurer got reimbursed even though they promised to cover your loved ones, and that feels weird.
The only monetary payout we got was our uninsured motorist coverage. (Seeing the lady who hit her get arrested at the scene and taken to jail was nice. Our insurance company pursuing her in court was also nice, too, though having not been thru the experience before we were taken aback when my wife unexpectedly received a summons to testify.)
I max'ed out our uninsured driver coverage after that.
They own nothing and are happy. Or in jail.
It’s called being judgement proof and basically lets you ignore civil penalties.
Life is so much simpler, yet more satisfying, now that I've lived long enough to secure away a few assets. God willing, we'll all live long enough to not be the pieces of shit our youth/ignorance once allowed.
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I read the other day that 20% of male Millenials are currently uninsured.
Why wish for people to be imprisoned?
Hit and run can be a grave crime. You might be leaving someone for dead.
(Theoretically, you might be able to get money back if it's a rich person who loves the thrill of driving without insurance or something. Theoretically, you could also find a winning lottery ticket on the sidewalk after the crash.)
Because they're the disposable element of the population who does hit-and-run accidents.
Those are different risks and not everyone wants coverage for all of them.
Because if another driver hits you and that driver was insured to cover all the damages they caused then their policy would cover you and you'd never have to make a claim on your own policy.
There's a lot of different types of insurance you can buy:
Liability - this is mandatory. Covers damages paid to other people caused by you.
Everything else is, typically optional.
Collision - Covers damages to your car paid to you caused by you.
Comprehensive - Covers "act of God" situations paid to you like tree falling on you car, hail damage.
Uninsured/underinsured coverage - Covers damages paid to you caused by other people who weren't carrying enough insurance to fully cover the loss.
- a 1200 dollar deductible on a car worth 4 grand is a life ruin-er for some people.
-if insurance decides to total your vehicle and you have to dispute the value, absolute nightmare.
Personal story,
I am 7 months in awaiting my court date for an uninsured dude that totaled my buddys car I was driving. It's my buddys extra car, no UIM or comprehensive coverage. I paid 7 grand to fix it out of pocket, because his insurance would have totaled it and charged him deductable. car is valued around 4k or so, despite being the cleanest 0 legacy on the planet. all new paint, mechanic owned. Other motorist hasn't paid a dime and is ignoring all court orders.
Insurance has done fu** all for all of this.