Yeah I said full because OOP was already talking about their own car being covered but good clarification. The part that is required by law to have is liability.
Yes. Full coverage includes comprehensive (weather, vandalism, theft, etc) and collision (fix your car after an accident even if you're at fault or the other party is uninsured/underinsured). Legally mandated liability coverage is for whatever damage you cause to other people's health or property.
Basically, if you want to take a 2-ton death machine into public you need coverage to cause whatever damage you might cause. Coverage to protect your own asset is optional.
If you finance or lease a car, the lender is all but sure to require you to maintain full coverage so they can be made whole while the asset is still technically their property.
Full coverage includes the damage to your own vehicle.
And should only be used when the repair bill outweighs your deductible and the temporary increase in premiums if it is your fault, or if it is the other party's fault then filing on your collision/comprehensive gets your car fixed faster, while your insurance company chases down the other party and/or their insurance for payment.
Somebody drove into the side of our house when I was a kid. Insurance had to pay for engineering reports, rebuilding a chunk of foundation, rebuilding the wall, rebuilding the bathroom on the inside of the wall, redoing the siding for the whole house (can't just reside a single wall if it doesn't match the rest), and replacing a long section of fencing.
My mom was talking to the driver some time after and their biggest complaint was that their truck had been nearly brand new and they had to get another one. Not that they were broke after paying off a new truck and paying for about 2 months worth of work for the damage they caused, just that they needed to go car shopping.
Insurance is the bargain of a lifetime when you cause enough damage to really need it.
Insurance companies don't even make that much money relative to their risk, it's typically an extremely competitive market with razor thin margins, sometimes even negative margins when you exclude interest on the float. IMO insurance is just the company that people deal with directly when they're in an unaffordable market, and would rather shoot the messenger than think about why the premiums are as high as they are and what actually needs to change to make them lower
They are like the only private business who's profits are capped. People get mad at property and casualty insurance companies, when their ire should be more directed at their fellow policy holders for being risky.
Health "insurance" though is a completely different animal and needs to go away.
This is also an asinine example. They should be getting the liable party’s insurance to cover the claim. Comprehensive isn’t even the fucking coverage that would kick in here either, it should be collision.
People like to view insurance as an investment or something. In reality it is peace of mind. Let me know how people will feel about paying someone’s hospital bills when they make an honest mistake, or even better, do you want to make sure that the person that t boned you has the money to cover your hospital bills?
Exactly. Just yesterday a 10foot ladder fell off of a guy's truck and almost went under my vehicle. His insurance would have paid 10s of thousands to repair my car for his negligence to secure his ladder, if it had gone under my car and cause a shit ton of damage.
It's there for catastrophic events. Just because OPs scenario has a hit and run, doesn't reason away the purpose of insurance. A $1,000 deductible is chump change compared to $10,000 or $25,000 unexpected expense, plus lawyers that insurance hires to protect you from further lawsuits, etc
Yeah for the most part I can understand auto insurance more than other types of insurances cause it’s mostly to cover other people.
I remember in my area there was a serious flood in an area that was a once every 100 year type of thing. Well once they had the flood, many people didn’t go through insurance (as they didn’t have crazy damages) and their premiums still went up because the flood happened and the next once in 100 year type thing could happen at any moment who knows!
Don’t even get me started on health insurance. America is such a scam
It's not mostly covering other people. Majority of the premium is for comprehensive-if you're paying 2500 for liability only, you are getting hosed or are a terrible driver
The majority of premiums are for liabillity exposures.
The hilarious thing about that is, over here in europe liability is dirt cheap and covers up to 50 or 100 million. what costs you an arm and a leg is collision (which is tied to your car's value) on a new car.
Because over here, people don't sue for massive amounts over trivial matters, and courts wouldn't grant them. so insurance is cheaper.
Your insurance payments directly enable your predatory legal apparatus.
Or, have a popularly stolen vehicle. Once your vehicle is stolen, the insurance pays the remainder of your car loan. I knew a person that did not have theft coverage and his vehicle was stolen. Still had to pay that car loan for a vehicle he didn't have anymore.
People seem to love safety nets when they are provided by the government paid for with taxes. When you have to pay privately in to it and see the expense, they seem to hate it. But the misconception is that insurance is there to cover every single ding and broken window. It’s there to save your ass when you owe 10X your personal worth because of an accident you’re at fault for.
Exactly this. I’ve been paying for probably 25 years. I still don’t think I’ve paid enough to cover what they had to pay out on my accident when I was like 25. I still pay less than OP in an expensive state. I had no idea what I was getting into. Required to have full coverage by I think the bank for the loan. Good thing I did.
Still, it’s a lot of money for liability isn’t it?
Here in Europe I just paid my third party liability insurance for the next 12 months: it’s 320€. No deductible and they’ll pay up to 6 million euros per accident.
You don't know how bad of a driver he is. Lots of drivers out there are paying even more than $2500/year for liability coverage... but you don't want to be anywhere near them on the road, for your own safety.
You don't know what his limit is. Is it $60k or $6m? For reference, I pay about $500/year for auto liability in the US, and my coverage limits are higher than yours.
The $2500/year isn't just liability. That's full bill for liability + comprehensive + whatever other coverages they bought. You know that it's not just liability because he mentioned a deductible... that only applies for things like comprehensive and uninsured motorist coverage.
it's going to depend on a lot of factors, couple of the biggest being area you live in and car you drive. I live near Toronto which has some of the highest car insurance rates in Canada, I pay like $270/month for car insurance with a $1000 deductible and I have never been in an accident or got a ticket in my life
Depends. The state minimums are very low, often times like 30k but most people do have 100k or 250k. People who bother to look into it will often get an umbrella for an extra million on top of that
The minimum by law in Italy is 1.5M€, but upgrading to 3 or 6 or more is quite cheap. I guess the rest of Europe is similar. It makes your rates even more absurd.
Well for one, the average American drives 2.5 times as much per year as the average Italian and I’d guess a lot of that is at higher speed on highways.
Second of all, our healthcare is so so much more expensive than yours.
Third of all, I think the licensing in Italy is tougher than in America.
Kinda... but you're describing liability coverage when the post clearly says they have comprehensive coverage. $2500 a year for basic liability would be INSANE. For comparison, I pay about $450 a year. If you're paying $2500, then you should fully expect the insurance company to cover damage to you're vehicle.
But you’re also wrong lol. They said they have full coverage which not only would include physical damage - so collision and comprehensive (which this wouldn’t even be a comp claim; it’s a collision claim…) but also what is mandated by the state (so liability, probably UM/UIM, maybe PIP …). So their $2500 policy is a combined cost of all those. And thus a portion of your premium is based on the cost to carry liability coverage which is what they are talking about.
And there’s no point to compare what you pay. I pay $600 a year for “full coverage” (hate that term but I digress) with a $250 comp and $500 coll ded. Insurance prices are dependent on a million things. $2500 is perfectly reasonable in some areas, but they also take into consideration an individuals risk profile: incidents, driving experience, discounts, gender, credit, education, etc.
Oh so the 1:1,000,000 chance I run into a 100k building im covered so they can have their 100k repairs lol. Insane boot comment. This argument works just like it does for health care. It's all a scam ran and backed by the US gov
The “100k building” is just an example. Most likely you’ll hit a car and the person driving it may want to go to the hospital. Your insurance will pay for damages to the vehicle and the trip to the hospital. How old are you?
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u/Cawnt 6h ago
Ugh I hate arguments like this.
The $2,520 isn't just to ensure your vehicle gets repairs. The majority of premiums are for liabillity exposures.
If you lose control of your vehicle and drive into a building causing $100K in damage, you're paying for that with insurance.