its a MLM, just like health insurance. theres no guaranteed they will cover your cost in damages some of the time.
Protection racket.
Insurance has its place. How much it costs, how much they fight to help you when it comes time, those are the problems.
The fact that for-investor-profit insurance companies exist are the problems.
The fact it’s run for profit AND is a mandatory requirement to having a car.
If it wasn’t required the cost for those who pay in to cover uninsured accidents would be much higher. But I do agree that like many other things, if we nationalized the cost and eliminated profit we could drop the individual price. It would also help to use federal influence to provide other means than individual cars for transportation, less cars resulting in less risk on the road.
The second part is a good thing. It’s how people get paid when someone damages their property (or causes physical harm)
Everybody’s like: I’m a good driver I don’t need insurance.
But they always forget that half the drivers on the road are below average, and your insurance covers you in the event of a hit and run.
I have to wait to get hit???
I’m guessing she hasn’t figured out the concept of insurance fraud…
Need a new paint job? Get in an accident. Check engine light? Get in an accident.
I am not a
lawyerperson whose advice should be listened to on anything, ever.deleted by creator
Funny enough, if somebody offers you insurance that builds cash value, even though the sound of it does make sense you should probably run.
I’ve never heard of this. Why should I run?
The price of insurance only covers the statistically predicted amount of payoffs to all people insured plus a profit. If you’re building a cash value, then that’s priced in, with more profit priced in for them on the equity youve built. You’re better off pocketing the difference.
Right, I would assume it’s an investment vehicle with the extra margin built in. This is why insurance should only be in the largest pools with no profit interference and only the lowest administrative overhead possible.
And if you don’t pay it you can’t legally drive a car. And if you can’t drive a car, you aren’t going to be hired for a job.
I repeat, YOU ARE REQUIRED BY LAW TO GIVE A CORPORATION MONEY IN RETURN FOR NOTHING IF YOU WANT TO PARTICIPATE IN SOCIETY
Car insurance is a fucking scam.
YOU ARE REQUIRED BY LAW TO GIVE A CORPORATION MONEY IN RETURN FOR NOTHING IF
You aren’t, actually. You can obtain a Financial Responsibility Bond in lieu of insurance. An FR bond is where you deposit a certain amount of cash in an interest bearing account. If the courts determine you are responsible for damages accrued while driving, and you fail to pay those damages directly, they are taken out of your FR bond.
What fucking black magic are you dropping here so nonchalantly? I’m looking this up, and I’m going to be very upset if you’re right.
Every state has this. It’s not commonly used, but it does exist. In my state, you need to deposit $30,000 with the state treasurer. When you stop driving and no longer need it, you can withdraw it.
Look at the “bond” section of your state’s proof of financial responsibility requirements.
No it’s not, mandatory insurance of cars is there in case you do something, is it better if you get into accident and go bankrupt instead?
Agree about having to own a car but that’s a North America problem, even then there are some cities where you don’t need to own a car
You don’t have to drive, you can take the bus, ride a bike, use taxis/rideshares, etc. Plenty of people get around without a car. My area is pretty poor for carless living, yet I did it for a few years.
Car insurance is to protect others from you, and a lot of it is due to medical costs and lawsuits. Without insurance, one accident would financially ruin you and the person you hit, so it’s a good thing people are required to have it to drive on public roads.
Every time I see a comment like this, I want to beat the poster mercilessly with public transit maps for cities like Houston, Jacksonville, Phoenix, etc. until they realize what a stupid fucking suggestion that is for millions of people.
Yea sure, just walk 5 miles in 100+ degree heat to the nearest bus stop for the bus which comes every 50 minutes and will drop you off 5 miles away from your destination. So easy!
I used to bike to/from work ~10 miles, and in the summer it gets 100+ on my way home. Sometimes I would take the bus because it was too hot. I get it, it’s not convenient in many parts of the country.
However, you do have options. You can move closer to transit, move to a different city, etc. There are options if you want to make living carless a priority.
When I switched jobs, going carless was not a priority, so I ended up driving to my new job. I could have moved closer, dealt w/ a long (2+ hour each way) commute, or gotten an e-bike to make it feasible to ride the 25-ish miles to work. I made the conscious choice to drive, because it was a better fit for my family.
Victim mentality is destructive, reframing things in terms of choices you can make is healthy. That’s what I’m getting at. It’s okay if you choose to have a car, but do know that it is a choice.
Oh golly, you’re right. I forgot the option of packing up my entire life and moving cities simply so I can go carless. It’s not like I have any ties to my current location, and I definitely have the funds available to make such a move. My job is also happy to work with me on my relocation and will certainly accommodate my desire to not have a car by providing options, such as WFH or office transfers. Yep, moving sure is a perfectly reasonable option that anyone can just do without weeks/months of planning and no major impacts to their life that would be harder/more expensive than just driving a car.
People move for work all the time, and reducing the barrier to moving is one of the main perks of renting. Median job tenure is about 4 years, with a lot of people spending less time or significantly more time. You can move across town and keep your job if you like it, or you can apply to closer jobs if you prefer the area you live but want to have a more comfortable commute.
If you value a car-free lifestyle, plan for that the next time you move. ~2/3 of renters have been in their current place less than 5 years, and 1/4 have been there for less than 1 year, so most people will have plenty of opportunities to try something different. If you don’t value a car-free lifestyle, that’s fine too, just know that it’s a choice.
When I bought my house, my priorities included proximity to a bike trail so I would have the option to bike to work and close enough to a grocery store and the library to bike there as well, and I have made good use of it. My previous apartments were close to something I went to frequently (first and second were the city library and close enough to school, third was the grocery store and the freeway). There are more factors than just rent cost, and I really enjoy not having to use my car for every little trip. I could have gotten a bigger, nicer house for the same money, but I would have had a very different, very car-dependent lifestyle, and I didn’t want that. Likewise for when I rented an apartment, I could have saved a bit on rent by moving further away, but I decided that my lifestyle choice was more important.
It’s fine if you make different choices than me, just own that your lifestyle is a choice, instead of whining about transit not coming to you (general “you”, not you specifically).
I will say there are lot of areas of the country where things like biking and bussing aren’t feasible and I empathize that people don’t have that level of convenience.
I will also say that there are many areas of the country that do have bus service or could bike to work and refuse to try it.
And many people could move across town or something if a car-free lifestyle was important to them.
Having a car is a choice in many parts of the work world, and making a different choice can be uncomfortable and require effort. But it is a choice.
i’v been nearly everywhere in america, and this very obviously not true for large sections of the country…deliberately so
I’ve been in a number of places in America as well (not everywhere), generally in places that are explicitly not convenient to live carless. For example, I grew up in the suburbs of Seattle, before the nice train lines were put in, so the only option was the crappy bus line that didn’t go anywhere. My sibling still lives there, and they biked to work for a few years, despite the infrastructure there sucking for it. I live in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, just out of reach of the train system, yet I was able to bike to work for a few years. My in-laws live in the suburbs of LA, which has notoriously bad mass transit, and I’ve seen people there cycling to work.
I don’t cycle or take transit to work, but I could if I really needed to, it would just take about 1-2 hours each way to get there vs 30 min or so by car.
If you look for solutions, you’ll find them. If you look for excuses, you’ll find them. Either way, it’s a choice you’re making, whether consciously or not.
i’m not talking city suburbs, i’m talking that town in the middle of nowhere USA whose name nobody remembers, that only exists because of the local trucktop. with a 4 lane highway splitting the whole town in 2 and no pedestrian crossing on that roadway at all.
cross that on foot/bike and you risk your life
Eh, I have a different sibling in an area like that. They live right off the highway about 10 miles from town, the highway has no sidewalk, and road speeds are typical highway speeds (about 60 mph). Yet they ride into town all the time. It’s not as small as the type of town you’re referring to (my sibling’s city has several thousand people, and the larger town has 20-30k people), but it’s about the same setup.
Yes, car-free living isn’t practical in many areas, but it’s practical in a lot more areas than most people give credit for. And it’s possible to move if that truly is the lifestyle you want.
Again, my point is that you’ll find whatever you’re trying to find, be that solutions or excuses.
Idk what country you are in, or where you live, but you are absolutely not required to drive a car to participate in society. A car is a luxury item, a privilege. Car companies have been brainwashing the public for a hundred years with pro-car propoganda so it may seem necessary but it definitely isn’t.
Trains, trams, busses, taxis, bikes, walking. These are all options available to pretty much everyone. No insurance required.
Now that I think of it, at least where I live the level of insurance you actually need to legally drive is included in your registration.
So maybe what you’re saying true for you and whatever area you live in, but it’s definitely not universally true
There are many cities in the US where it absolutely is required to have a car. Where trains, trams, busses, taxies, bikes, and walking are actually NOT available or feasible because the city does not have the infrastructure in place for them. Your comment comes across as incredibly privileged and ignorant of the reality many people face. And you can say, out of sheer ignorance, something like “well the people living there should change that!”. Sure. The single mom just trying to get her kids to school before getting herself to work everyday is going to get right on that.
Didn’t realise you were in the US. My apologies, and condolences. You guys have probably been hit the hardest with car dependency. Tbh I can’t even imagine what that’s like.
I think my comment stands for most of the developed world, but yeah, probably not the US
I mean, you could hold a few hundred thousand in a surety bond instead, but who can actually do that?
People who got paid a fair wage before wealth inequality spiraled lol
no they didnt
Go learn about the change of proprtional wealth since the 1970s that coencides with the creation of the super rich class.
Wealth inequality did not used to be this bad.
Homeowner’s insurance is worse, almost as bad as health insurance. Try getting them to pay out, and if they do, watch your rates go up, or your policy get cancelled. If you have a mortgage, you must have homeowner’s insurance. State Farm cancelled me out of the blue after 25 years without a single claim.
I suspect they all conspire to cancel policies, knowing that we need to go somewhere, so State Farm cancels a customer, and they go to Allstate at a much higher rate, and Allstate cancels a different customer, and they go to State Farm at a much higher rate. This forces the customer to go through a new approval process, and sign a new contract that is probably worse for them than they had before, in addition to being a higher rate.
Oh my God, you probably don’t want to get me started on that. Here it is literally (in the original meaning of the word) a scam. Companies incorporate, take in premiums, pay themselves big bonuses, then say they are not financially flush enough to cover claims, go bankrupt and THE SAME PEOPLE come back and do it again. It is a racket designed to extract money, they don’t even reliably pay claims, thankfully I don’t have personal experience with having to use them, but have read enough industry news.
I have paid enough in home insurance to buy a house. We pay for the last 40 years a rate that would imply each house in Florida is completely wiped out every 40 years but my old house is 100 this year, our current house is 85. What the state charges probably is close to the actual risk, and if we just put EVERYONE onto that plan and ran it as a nonprofit it would work better.
It really does need to be investigated. I believe they use LexisNexis to share data.
You say “try getting them to pay out” and follow up saying you never filed a claim? I’ve gotten my home insurance to pay out twice, once for a beer that fried a laptop (my fault, but I had coverage for it) and again when a lightning strike took out part of my solar array and some indoor electronics. They’ve also promptly paid in situations where I wasn’t a customer but the beneficiary of a claim and bent over backwards to make sure I was taken care of.
Maybe the problem is using an insurance company that farts out millions of dollars a quarter marketing Gecko, Jan, Jake, Mayhem, or Emu instead of investing that in claims. Though, I’ll give a shout-out to my homegirl Jan back when I was in a different situation and a snowplow took a chunk out of my car. Progressive took care of me then while the city took their sweet time making good on the claim against them.
I have never had a claim my entire life. I’m pretty sure that I’ve paid more in car insurance than for the fucking car itself. But I’m happy to socialize the cost of some SUV lunatic that does millions in damage while looking at the phone.
Just don’t own a car?
Not always possible /shrug
That sounds like a much bigger problem than mandatory insurance.
If it were a socialist systemic thing, and we rephrased it to, we all contribute a little each year and it goes into a pot for anyone who needs their car fixed, who contributes? (but then you gotta erase the evil corporation that rakes in billions and pays ceos unimaginable money)
I’m sure I’ve become more conservative since being active on Lemmy. Shit like this is why.
Haha, I know the feeling. You aren’t going right, everything else is moving left. That’s just the progression of politics.
The “leftists” here are some of the most conservative people I’ve ever interacted with.
Mmmm, insurance company boot.
This post combines two of lemmites favourite past times.
Car hating and being clueless to how things actually work.
Car hating
True, but this is about insurance. It’s only incidental that it’s car insurance but this applies to home and health insurance too.
clueless to how things actually work
Are we really clueless or rather idealistic? Because OOP is talking about how she would expect things to work in a fair world, which is a common sentiment. Everyone in the comments here is either trying to explain why this doesn’t work or expressing how it could work.
I find it quite ironic to criticize us for allegedly not knowing how things work while simultaneously failing to grasp how the community works when the comments are right there, and also not staying accurate to the content of the post. Double whammy.
So, how does the community work?
Read the comments to find out.
It’s not car hating, at all. It’s a car owner who explains why the world owes him money.
Before Lemmy, I would have pegged this as typically US conservative: Self-centered morons who refuse to learn things and instead make up conspiracy fantasies about how they are robbed. It’s basically how you get the Trump tariffs.
I never understood why it’s legally mandatory to pay a private company just for the privilege to drive a metal death box (death metal box?) on poorly maintained yet tax payer-funded roads or get punished with debt if I don’t?
Not sure if this is the case in the US but car insurance is supposed to cover the damages you cause when you destroy something with your car. Nobody cares if you can pay for the damage on your own car, but if you crash into my house or my car you better be able to pay the damages! That’s why it is mandatory. To protect others from your actions.
This already exists, and they are called unit linked insurance plans. Basically the insurance company provides you some units in an investment/trust fund, in addition to the policy benefit, for your premiums (obviously higher to compensate).
They are actually much scammier, because the insurance company administers the unit fund as well, and the fees are often much higher than if you just buy the policy and an exchange traded trust/fund separately. They were formulated by insurance companies basically for the sole purpose of bamboozling people who echo this meme. Back in the day, door to door insurance salespeople would say “even if you never claim, you still get a payout!”.
Unit-linked insurance plan - Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit-linked_insurance_plan
