You get the absolute bare minimum required by your state, it basically just covers the other driver you hit. It's pretty awful since if you are badly injured beyond what their underinsured driver's coverage is for, you're likely not going to get a lot of money. You'll definitely get everything their policy states but the remainder comes out of your own uninsured motorist coverage and health insurance. People that buy bare minimum coverage typically don't have a lot of assets so there'll be nothing to recover from them directly.
I buy bare minimum coverage because it has been my experience that you end up screwed in the event of a collision no matter what kind of insurance you have. Insurance companies are in the business of taking your money now and finding every possible excuse not to give it back later; I'd rather keep it in my own pocket.
This is part of the reason I prefer inexpensive cars: buying only what I can afford to pay for outright means there is no loan which would obligate me to carry a comprehensive insurance policy.
And then we start throwing people in prison because they were too poor to legally go get groceries or go to work.
Car-dependent city design a travesty, grossly hurting the poor. You shouldn't need to pay insurance and operate an expensive machine just to live.
And yet at the same time I see uninsured driving as a really bad and extremely selfish crime. You're risking seriously messing up someone else's life to save some small amount of money every month.
I fully agree with that. It's an extremely selfish crime in many ways and I agree there should be harsh penalties for the crime. But at the same time it's also kind of a failure of society that we've designed most places to live in the US to need a car to survive.
It's not surprising people are willing to do the bad thing when you don't really give them many other good options. We should all be better at empowering people to not have to be in such a situation where the bad option seems like best choice for them in the moment.
If the options were drive and potentially end up in jail or just take the cheap/free reliable bus to get to work, which would they take? If the options are potentially end up in jail or lose your job, which choice do you pick?
> They can walk, ride, bike, phone a friend, relative etc
Yeah they can walk in a city without sidewalks. They can bike in a city without any bike infrastructure. They can ride in a city without busses. Sure sounds effective and safe.
You're blind to reality if you think the average American city and town is actually designed to get by with people walking or biking or riding public transit.
You can't legally drive for whatever reason now. How do you get to your job in Plano? How do you go get groceries? It's a 40 minute bicycle ride each way to the closest grocer. There is no transit.
I'm not. I stated these crimes should be severely punished, and I'm all for cop.cars with ALPRs that match insurance info/expired registrations/etc to make enforcement higher. I'm probably for even more strict enforcement than you're comfortable with. This is a bad crime, and we should do more to make it not happen.
You have no answers for people in that position.
I do.
We shouldn't design our cities and towns like this.
If you find a machine you've been building tends to mangle the operators hands you don't just shrug your shoulders to the problem. You figure out the proper ways to add guards, build in lockouts, make it so people practically can't mess up their hands in normal operation as much as possible.
In the example the machine is the city design. It's the thing we can make better designs so people are less likely to put their hands (or someone else's) into the grinder part. You make it so it never even begins to make sense to drive illegally. Why risk prison time when it's a short bike ride or a reliable bus ride?
> It still doesn’t remove personal responsibility for choosing to drive illegally.
I never, ever, once even slightly suggested otherwise. I've been very consistent: it's a harsh and selfish crime that routinely ruins innocent lives which should have steep penalties and strong enforcement. I just don't like that we then don't actually address why people end up making that decision, we just act like it isn't really a problem at all, meanwhile more and more people drive illegally.
Quit burying your head in the sand to the actual solutions to this problem. You'll have far fewer people stealing food when they're no longer hungry.
This is a different argument now. While better transit /may/ reduce uninsured driving, that doesn’t make urban planning the root cause of it.
Also, stealing food because you are hungry isn’t analogous to driving uninsured or justifiable for stealing food. Quite the leap! Really? No one does that.
> While better transit /may/ reduce uninsured driving
It'll do far more to reduce the rate than just taking away drivers licenses. Ooh wow you took away some paperwork and made an illegal thing they were doing more illegal. What a solution to the problem, really finding the root cause there.
> that doesn’t make urban planning the root cause of it.
It absolutely is the root cause. If you have to drive to realistically participate in society, people will drive no matter what. It doesn't matter what punishments you levy on them, they will end up doing it. Because, to them, there is no other real option. Take the bus...but there's no bus service? Ride a bike...on roads where massive cars are blasting by at 50mph while drivers are looking at their phones? Yeah, sure, you see how long taking that "option" works for you.
You edited your comment about the stealing food part, it was quite a bit more obvious about the connection the way you had it before. People in desperate positions do desperate things. If you think the only way to get to work and not spiral even deeper into poverty is to drive illegally, you're probably going to drive illegally. If you think stealing that bread is the only way you're going to be able to feed your family, you're probably going to steal that bread. Give that same person nutrition assistance, support food pantries, etc and suddenly there's choices other than stealing. Give people another way to move in society and they'll choose another way. Once again, if you think I'm trying to justify either of these activities you're massively misreading what I'm actually saying.
> Really? No one does that
Hungry people don't steal food? That's how much you're burying your head in the sand to reality? Incredible.
Yeah, even if they properly enforced this and made cheap car ownership more expensive, people always have their choices and can deal with it. If this makes car-dependent cities non-viable then ok. Probably wouldn't even do that, they'd either find the money or use motorbikes instead.
It's higher in Los Angeles. And I don't know if they have licenses. What I've heard is if they get in an accident and can't drive away, they run away on foot and report the car stolen.
And I guess they don't get pulled over because there aren't ALPRs or cops are ignoring the hits? I had my insurance lapse for 1 day and they still pulled me over a week later off a stale list, so idk.
I drove a $1000 car for a long time back in my poor days. You could get minimum liability insurance for $50/month or even less. Just whatever you needed to be able to drive legally. Thankfully I was never in any crashes but I always drove with the expectation that crashing would be financially ruinous and tried to be extra careful.
Usually, normal insurance is reasonable, or if it's not, you get liability only because the difference in cost is enough to buy another car after a few years.
Unfortunately there's a fair bit if industry built around charging people who are stretched financially more, but it's possible to avoid that.
Having more wealth if anything has had me buy less insurance. My newer car is liability only. Worst case if it blows up, I can afford a cheap replacement that I've already more than saved up for by not paying full coverage.
Also, that $4K cash for clunkers was a lot. I agree with the author, that would've totally gone into my pocket if they did it today. I still have my old car from college that's worth about $500 now, purchased for $1500, and I don't need it.
If you can afford to eat the loss, don’t insure it.
Obviously insurance companies make money on average for every policy. If they didn’t, they would go bankrupt. So on average, every time you buy insurance, you lose.
So insure only what’s required by law, or things that would throw your life off track if they vanished.
Yep. Which is also why I find vision insurance ridiculous. No it doesn't cover me going blind, it covers a pair of glasses at best, more like 25% of one.
Dental yeah, vision is just a scam. There are also "life insurance" plans that are basically tax-advantage investment/inheritance funds if you have like $50M+.
On the other hand, you likely need more liability insurance with more wealth, at least in the range where this topic of affordable transport comes up.
In an accident, your risk becomes not the cost to restore your ride, but the cost to defend yourself from vampire litigants looking to suck you dry.
Without significant assets, you can just treat bankruptcy as your answer here. With growing assets at middle-class and higher levels, that would be a pretty painful outcome for most.
I suppose, once you are fabulously wealthy, you can wisely be self-insured again, simply trusting that your wealth can defend itself in a sustainable way?
My insurance is getting to the point where I might do the same. My car is worth maybe a third of what it was new, and my monthly insurance bill is the same, it's nuts. I may go with a significantly higher deductible as a compromise.
Also be aware that even if you buy comprehensive insurance for an old car (don't do it), they won't actually cover anything useful.
If there is an accident, the insurance company will say: Your car is only worth $700 per blue book value and your deductible is $500 so here's $200 and your title is now totaled.
Buy liability only and self-insure for any damage (or just buy a new beater as needed).
You can't legally forego insurance (at least in the USA). But comprehensive insurance is silly to pay for an old car so you buy only liability so it's a lot cheaper.
I live in the west. I also have an excellent driving record and drive a small econobox.
Here's an interesting story that gave me greater understanding of how insurance is priced. Years ago, I worked at a place where I lived 5 miles away as the crow flies. However, due to geography, the only way to get between my work and my home was by car, using one of the most dangerous freeways in my state.
I got tired of the commute and moved closer to work, close enough that I didn't have to use the freeway (or even drive unless I was lazy) anymore. I reported the change of my residence to my car insurance company, and they cut my premium by a third.
They didn't say why, but I'm certain the reason was that I didn't take that freeway 10 times per week anymore.
I was genuinely shocked and it made me happier with my car insurance company. The behavior I expected is that they'd keep my premium the same and just pocket the extra profit. Of course, them doing this may earn enough loyalty and goodwill that they benefit more from being honest than from being overly greedy.
I do wonder if the same thing would have happened if I carried comprehensive rather than liability. I suspect not. They may see liability-only policies as an indicator that the customer is of limited means.
