Oh fercryinouloud. If you want to nitpick, save on premiums not paid and suggest a lottery-like payoff you’ve totally missed the point.
Basic liability insurance is a responsibility toward others. Having problems with this concept? Sure, save the cost of premiums. Invest it yourself. It’s called self insurance. Your gamble, but damned well better hope you can pay off when needed, and in full amount.
It isn’t about profit; it’s about covering unexpected losses. You want to gamble with yourself? Go for it. (shrug) Your choice and who cares? But damage someone else’s health and/or property and you’d better be very well prepared indeed.
“Honest” people–and dishonest ones, and careless ones and all variations in between–can have accidents that harm other people. If you can HONESTLY make good any damages you may do to others, no matter how inadvertantly, whoopee and good for you. Better believe there will be a battalion of icy-eyed lawyer, accountants and collection clerks looking at every damned dime you own–and totting up future earnings. Have your “honest” savings well invested in a separate fund just for this purpose.
I’m a huge fan of personal freedom. Want to gamble with your own life and belongings? Have a ball. But when you put other people at risk and make no provision for redressing that it’s another matter. Your “profit” isn’t the issue; responsiblitity is.
I had three accidents where the guy at fault paid me out of pocket rather than deal with his insurance. The agent would tell him it would kill his rates for years if he filed a claim.
What exactly is the point? You seem to think that the point is renege of payment from the uninsured. I looked over the OP again and it says nothing of the sort. The OPer seems to be asking why someone would not get insurance at the risk of getting in an accident and losing everything. My answer was that the odds are so great against it happening, that it’s not worth it to pay thousands just in case a long shot occurs. If you want to talk about people not paying debts owed, then that would have to be a different thread altogether.
Monocracy The POINT is to be able to make the other party whole if you damage them or their property. Having insurance allows one to do this. Now, if you have enough liquid assets to be able to pay for a $50,000 vehicle and possible hundreds of thousands in medical bills in the unlikely event you cause such an accident, go for it. I hate the insurance industry and hate paying premiums. I o it because it is the only way I would be able to repay someone if I caused a lot of damage. (Luckily, I never have.)
The point is responsibility to others you share the road with, not being able to cover your own ass.
I live in Alberta, and we have had mandatory insurance for as long as I can remember. The ticket you get for driving without it is $1000 or $2000 the first time, with each subsequent ticket getting steeper in price. I don’t even know anyone who drives without insurance. It is just not worth it. I believe that insurance is manditory across Canada, although the ticket prices may vary, you certainly can’t avoid it.
No, I don’t understand people who drive without it either. Insurance replaced my last vehicle when it got totalled.
For many people (I’d include myself), paying $30,000 (or whatever) in premiums over the course of many years is preferable to owing $20,000 instantaneously.
The main reason is that I could not pay for somebody else’s $20,000 automobile that I caused to be totalled. If it happened tomorrow, and I had no insurance, I’d be in serious trouble - I simply don’t have that kind of money available. I haven’t been paying insurance premiums for all that long - if I had instead invested the premium money, I still wouldn’t have enough to cover such an expense.
The chance of that happening, while not particularly high, is certainly nonzero. It’s high enough, and it would be so disastrous, that I’d be a fool not to avail myself of the insurance option - legal requirement or no.
Simple expectance calculations have diminished relevance when the range of possible outcomes stretches into the “financial ruin” category. Some outcomes are simply unacceptable, and I’ll take a reduced expected result to avoid them.
Yes, I was trying to be funny(no dwi’s either). Sorry I guess the joke fell flat. I am doing pretty good I have just one ticket on my three insurance record right now. I could however teach the defensive driving course from memory.
Well, if you saw insurance prices in California (Specifically, southern California), you would understand why a lot of people don’t have insurance, including me.
…And I don’t have a car, so that’s a complication as well…
For many years, I worked in Rhode Island, and for much of that time, the state did not mandate automobile insurance. The interesting thing w2as, once the auto insurance became mandatory, the rates went through the roof! I can’t understand this-if you carry your own insurance, and then pay extra for UNINSURED motorist coverage, it would seem to me that you have all the bases covered. i guess when insurance became mandatory, the state had to accept thousands of people into the system, who had poor driving records. But, I would think, the premiums you paid before would have reflected this.
Basically, driving a car is an extremely dangerous activity, plus, you have all of these deadbeats (the poor, the irresponsible, or those with no assets) who are out there causing accidnts.
The best thing to do is: don’t own a car! If you have to, rent one!
Okay, I know I’m gonna get reamed for this one, but…
For about four years, during my “ramen noodles” stage of poverty, I didn’t have insurance. I also didn’t have inspection, or registration on my car (I did have a license, but only 'cause I needed it for identification). I needed my car for work (and yeah, I did need it at the time, for reasons which are too numerous to go into here), so I kept driving. Like I said, I was poor- and, well, none too bright.
I never had an accident, and I never got pulled over. I was invisible. I called my rustbucket The Stealth Car.
Eventually, I started making better money, and you can bet yer ass I got all of the above fixed- and I’ve never let it lapse again.
One thing always bugged me about insurance, though; it’s required by law, and yet offered by private companies. In other words, the government is basically giving money to this industry. It always seemed to me that if the gubmint wants to make it mandatoryeveryone should be automatically covered, with the premiums being tacked onto each gallon of gas- therefore, the more you drive, the more you pay. This would stop car insurance from being a profit-producing industry. Can’t figure out how to raise premiums on bad drivers, though…
