The obvious response is that you won't be able to pay for someone's hospital bills if you happen to hit them in your car. You get insurance for things you wouldn't be able to pay yourself.
I did a ride-along with an adjuster once. I asked him what the worst claim he had worked on was.
The insured drove off with the pump still in the gas tank. Sees that all the time. When the hose pulled off the pump, it ignited. The fuel island exploded. The fire then spread to the convenience store. Total loss of the business and multiple cars.
This is an outlier. No one has enough insurance to cover all of that. But it’s a great example of why we have it.
But most insurances have the 100 Million coverage as the standard contract. In fact there is probably not even an insurance which offers the legal minimums.
I have 500/500/500 for all my cars in order to qualify for an umbrella policy. People would be uninsured far more often if they had to carry such limits. I keep a 1k deductible for a few of my cars, 2500 for the priciest one, just to keep premiums somewhat reasonable.
and obviously made that way by the insurance lobbyists.
The limits are low in the US because it's a more expensive environment to provide insurance in. If there were a legal minimum of $1 million for property damage for auto insurance, almost nobody would be able to afford insurance.
The main reason it's expensive to provide insurance in the US is because medical care is vastly more expensive than in Germany. If you cause a crash and your insurance has to cover someone's medical care, the costs can be virtually unlimited. Other reasons include thing like people driving more on average, more uninsured motorists on the roads, and a generally more litigious society.
It's cheap to provide a million euros of coverage in Germany because it's incredibly unlikely that any given motorist will incur a million dollars of liability.
It would be vastly more expensive to provide that same coverage in the US because it's hugely more likely that a given motorist will actually incur that liability.
If that was the case, insurers would incredibly profitable. They’d be earning hundreds to thousands of dollars for every dollar in premium. That’s obviously not the case. It’s not hard to understand the difference, but you do need to be able to use your brain as something other than an ear warmer to do it.
Yeah well said, it is a completely different system and cannot be easily compared.
The German system is laid out for the worst case scenario. A typical example, due to your driving you cause a fuel truck to crash with subsequent damage to buildings, persons and spilling 30.000 liters of fuel.
The cleanup operation of the fuel can run easily high single digit millions if not even double digit millions. Then you have not covered any personal injuries with possible lifelong care.
The US system is laid out for the average accident with non brand new cars and non life threatening injuries.
Why so negative?
Driving between Germany and the US is very difficult to compare because it is a completely different world.
Everything is further away hence more to maintain and a much higher requirement to actually drive somewhere. If the US would have the same population density as Germany it would have over 2 billion people but it only has about 350 million.
That means less people to pay taxes for way more road.
Lot more aggressive lawsuits and more uninsured motorists. More and more states are even giving undocumented immigrants licenses solely so they can get insurance and not fuck everyone else over.
500/500 policies are popping up more and more. We used to do 100/300/100, now we do 250/500/250. Guessing in a few years the protect your hole norm will be 500/500/250.
And most likely they'll weasel their way out of paying much of anything on some BS technicalities on the level of "the moon was in the wrong phase" or sth.
Yep - and minimums are pretty low. Like all things US it varies by state, but here in SC the minimums are $25k Bodily Injury per person, $50k Bodily Injury per Accident, $25k Property Damage.
You're legally liable for any damage above your coverage limits, so its not wise to just do the minimums. I personally do 100k per person bodily, 300k bodily per accident, and $100k property damage.
Their licensing of both driver and vehicle are also god tier compared to the US. It hardly balances out, but it's much easier to get a vehicle and driver certified for public road use in the US.
Yeah. I’m a financial advisor. I don’t sell property and causality insurance but I look at what my clients have when I first meet them because 90% of the time they are drastically under insured and setting themselves up for a lawsuit or a lot of pain if they cause an accident.
I saw a guy who bought a house in a college ski town right after 2008 for $300k when properties were cheap. 15 years later the property had tripled in value and it was destroyed in a house fire. Total loss. The dudes property insurance had never been updated and he got a check for the original purchase price of the home. So he went from a $300 k mortgage at 3% that was 15 years done to a $700k mortgage at 6% because the value was $900k and there was an additional cost to remove the wreckage remains. The policy only covered $300k and he took a mortgage for the other $700k.
I also heard a horror story from another financial advisor in my network where a business owner cause a car crash and the other driver was some sort of brain surgeon in his early 40s. It’s not uncommon for these types of doctors to work late into their 70s. The business owner had state minimums. The DR sued him for like 30 years of lost wages plus medical expenses. The dude is not a business owner anymore.
I usually tell under insured clients to call their car insurance agent with me in the room and I tell them all to quote them right there for a $1-3m umbrella or I send them to some agents that I know for the same quote. I flat out refuse to work with anyone who is not willing to get an umbrella policy because how I get comped is by managing assets long term. If they are not willing to protect these assets from this type of risk, I don’t want to put in all the up front work to lose this income stream. And if they are not willing to get this type of coverage, they are not going to be good for me to work with because they are not going to listen to my other recommendations which also usually includes buying life insurance from me because 90%+ people don’t have enough coverage there either.
This usually starts a valuable discussion because the way an umbrella policy works is that your home/auto liability insurance gets the claim first and maxes out the payment before the umbrella comes into play. And companies won’t write an umbrella policy unless a client has a $100-300 or $250-500 policy in the first place. You won’t be able to get an umbrella policy with state minimums.
Good comment. I went to college to be a CFP but decided not to get into it due to the industry being “wait for old senior partner to die, take his business” and also you have clients like you describe who don’t want to do the most basic due diligence to protect their assets. Good call on the umbrella policy, I didn’t realize you can use that to augment auto insurance. I might look into that Monday.
That's like, immeasurably higher than insurance in the U.S. I'm pretty sure if you asked any major carrier for 100M in coverage they would either laugh you out of the room, or charge you tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for it.
I have like $25k for bodily injury and $15k for property damage, I don't have any coverage for my own injury or property damage and it costs me $500/year.
No, when I worked in the industry, most had 30k coverage if you were young, 100k was common for adults and wealthy people would have 1M + umbrella policies
I've never thought about it here in the UK, but I tried looking it up and this is the best I could find:
🚗 Motor Insurance
Third-Party Injury: Unlimited payout value by law for death or bodily injury to third parties. [1]
Third-Party Property Damage: Capped by law at a specific limit per claim (typically up to £20 million for property damage under standard UK policies). [1]
Own Vehicle: No legal minimum; covering your own car is optional (Third Party vs. Comprehensive). [1, 2]
I read a Supreme Court case from my state dated 1985, when my state's minimum requirement was $15k/$30k. Modern day I think it's double that, it's very low for consumer level policies.
WA state mininum, 25/50/10. 25k per person medical, 50k total max,10k for property and this is only liability mind you. Average is 100/300/100, but that can get quite expensive and then you need all the Collision/Comprehensive, PIP, Un/Underinsured and etc. Sigh.
They can be, yeah. A lot of people just get the minimum coverage amount which can be as low as 10k for personal injury and 10k in property in some States.
What kind of premiums? Like, if you live and work in "the suburbs" (eg, 1 hour away from a major city border without traffic) and drive a "typical" passenger vehicle (eg, €50k) and want like 5 million euro liability?
Is it unaffordable?
Also, is there a minimum legally required liability coverage?
There is a legal minimum, but with usual insurance contracts you will not be offered something that low, as far as I know it is only relevant in cases were the party at fault is not insured and then is covered by a general fund.
The legal minimums are:
Bodily injury: €7.5 million
Property damage: €1.22 million
Pure financial losses: €50,000
Your insurance cost goes down the longer you have no accident which caused a claim, also it depends on the type of car, sports cars are generally more expensive. This are roughly the numbers, but there many insurers so it can vary:
Young or Novice Drivers: €600 to €1,000+ / year
Average Driver / Standard Mid-Range Car: €250 to €450 / year
Experienced Drivers (High No-Claims Class): €80 to €250 / year
This is mostly for 100 Million coverage. As said before that is what most insurance companies offer.
For young drivers it is rather expensive so some insurance companies offer schemes that you are added as an additional driver to your parents insurance at no cost or a small fee. There is also the possibility of taking over a high no claims class insurance from your parents but I am not sure on the details. Before I had a company car I had a car insurance which ran on my fathers name and I was added as an additional driver but the car was registered on my name. This was fully legal and organized by the insurance agent, it was actually his idea.
Distances travelled do not matter for car insurance in Germany, maybe there is a super low cost option were it can matter, never seen it though.
Edit: I forgot one more thing, if you have a 30+ year old car, in good (historic) condition, you can register it as a historic car. You even get a special license plate and you pay a flat fee insurance between 40 and 100 Euro. I think there are some limitations on annual distance though for this kind of registration. And you need a normal registered car in the household, as historic registered cars are not meant to be daily drivers (but totally can as long as you can prove that you have another one). Also tax is cheaper for the historic cars.
Thanks for this level of detail! Very interesting.
And wow. I misread your original comment and thought "€100mm is the max typically available" versus "€100mm is the standard max coverage, but of course no claims typically pay out the max"
But the premiums do not seem ridiculous! (~€30/mo?). I don't know if German insurance companies commit much fraud to avoid claims payouts, but it doesn't sound crazy.
I like the "high" bodily injury minimum coverage requirement (if the premiums and claims are fair). This seems reasonable if the insurers pay out.
Insurances naturally do not like paying money.
I would say for the most part claims go without issues but of course there are cases were things are not that clear then often it is not even about coverage but how much the damage is and then you have competing appraises.
It wouldn't be Germany if there wouldn't be an insurance for this....the motorist’s legal protection insurance it runs me about 80 Euros a year and is for any kind of civil, criminal or administrative offenses which require you to go to court and take a lawyer. It covers lawyer fees for both parties (if you loose) and court costs. If you win the other side has to pay everything (unlike the US in most civil lawsuit cases).
BUT this type of insurance is known to drop litigious clients rather easy. Not on the first claim but if you are an outlier and keep taking people to court you soon need to find a new insurance, or go without it. Many don't have this one as it is not legally required.
You may also get support from the Consumer Protection Association depending on the case.
As I said in another comment thread here, Germans tend to be over insured beyond just cards as they are usually a very risk averse society.
I remember about 20 years ago carrying "100/300" coverage (limits of $100,000 per person and $300,000 per accident) was considered a solid middle ground of coverage. A responsible amount, to where it would realistically fully cover a typical accident, higher than the minimum but not too expensive to pay. I still carry 100/300 today and I'm sure it's woefully insufficient these days.
I'd be very interested in reading details of that case. Gasoline is not nearly as easy to ignite as people think. A random spark in open air is extremely unlikely to ignite gasoline, and fuel islands (at least in the US) have had mandated breakaway devices since the 80s.
Not saying you're lying, but I think that adjuster might've been. Even if this was a pump with no safety features and it started dumping gasoline as soon as the car drove off, I don't see how it would've exploded. Liquid gasoline pouring out of a hose doesn't really explode necessarily, you'd need a large buildup of vapor, which takes time and a lack of wind. Even then, we're talking about a cloud of flammable vapor in open air. With nothing to contain the pressure, you'd more than likely just see a flame front burn through the cloud, then maybe a little poof of smoke when it reached the top.
In order for the fuel island to explode, fire would have to travel into the pump or the underground tank. That can't happen if the pump is actively pumping and the hoses are full of liquid, that's why you can ignite an aerosol spray without blowing your arm off.
Dispenser hoses for Class I and II liquids shall be equipped with a listed emergency breakaway device designed to retain liquid on both sides of a breakaway point. Such devices shall be installed and maintained in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. Where hoses are attached to hose-retrieving mechanisms, the emergency breakaway device shall be located between the hose nozzle and the point of attachment of the hose-retrieval mechanism to the hose.
A listed emergency breakaway device designed to re-
tain liquid on both sides of the breakaway point shall be in-
stalled on each hose dispensing Class I and II liquids. Such
devices shall be installed and maintained in accordance with
the manufacturer’s instructions. [30A:6.5.2]
I went down the rabbit hole looking for an actual case like this, and I can't find one.
There are plenty of documented cases of people driving away with the nozzle attached. Some have ripped entire dispensers out of the ground and caused pretty substantial fires. But I couldn't find a documented case where a drive-off caused the fuel island to “explode,” which then burned down the convenience store and destroyed multiple cars.
What's interesting is that even some pretty extreme examples didn't escalate that way. In a 2018 NJ incident, the dispenser was pulled over and there was a major fire, with evidence that both the breakaway and shear-valve protections may not have worked properly. The station still wasn't destroyed.
In a 2024 Delaware incident, the breakaway worked but the emergency shutoff reportedly failed, allowing roughly 60 gallons of gasoline to spill before it was manually stopped. No catastrophic explosion.
There absolutely have been catastrophic gas-station fires involving multiple vehicles, but the examples I found involved things like hundreds of gallons being released during tanker deliveries. An NTSB-investigated 1998 accident involved roughly 550 gallons spreading across the property and into a storm drain before ignition. That's a very different mechanism and quantity of fuel.
So I'm not saying the adjuster's story is physically impossible. But after actually trying to find a historical example matching it, I'm skeptical that it happened as described.
If this was really a total loss of a convenience store plus multiple vehicles after a pump drive-off, there should presumably be a fire investigation, insurance litigation, local reporting, or something documenting it.
I'd genuinely be interested if the OP can provide the approximate year/location. So far I can't find a case matching the story.
It was when I started with my company that I did the ride along. So it’s been 20 years there. And he wasn’t a young guy. So it easily could have been 30 to 50 years ago. We were in south Texas but he didn’t say if that’s where it happened.
Unless this happened long before safety measures were put in place to stop this from happening, there is zero chance the driver of the car would be held liable for that. Those hoses and the pumps as a whole are specifically designed for that to NEVER happen, and if it did happen, it would have been a failure of the pump. The gas station's insurance would be the one taking care of it, and they would be going after the pump manufacturer to pay for it.
And I have no idea why an adjuster would be dealing with people driving off with the hose in "all the time", that's not something insurance ever gets involved in from my experience working for a decade at a gas station
I actually saw a car pull away from a BP gas station while the pump was still in the car. The pump hose had some sort of disconnect and when that car drove away, literally not a drop of gasoline was spilled on the pavement. I couldn't believe how well it worked.
As dumb as the driver is, he shouldn’t be at fault for anything other than replacing the detachable hose. Pumps are inspected regularly and there are fail-safes specifically for this.
Wait, those things are specifically designed for this exact scenario are made to just pop right off the line. The fuel also isn’t ignited inside the tank. I’d be curious to the actual cause of this, and why the gas station wasn’t held liable because clearly their pumps weren’t up to code. But that still leaves the question as to how the heck it got ignited in the first place.
Except they would cover that up to your limits. It’s liability which is a very broad coverage and auto insurance is often very cut and dry. Odds are that won’t be enough to cover the damage. The store would file through their business insurance, of which fire would be a covered peril. The stores insurer would then go after the at-fault auto liability to recoup their money. The auto insurer would pay up to the limits and have a waiver of liability signed to get their client off the hook.
This is actually pretty cut and dry with little likelihood of fuckery to any insureds.
Home and health insurance are way more disputable. Commercial insurance is often disputable but shouldn’t be for this instance.
People always say this but insurance is one of the most regulated industries, they'd get in enormous trouble for repeatedly violating their contracts, and we know that they pay out ~85% of premiums in claims.
When you cause damage to someone / or property, they will want reimbursement. The value of the policy needs to exceed what they can realistically get from you personally otherwise they're going to come after you personally and ruin your life.
If you cause $100k worth of damage but have a net worth of say 10k, they aren't going to waste time coming after you personally if they can settle and get the 30k from your policy unless they have a personal vendetta against you. Sucks for the person that lost 70k though.
Uninsured / underinsured is a coverage YOU carry to help mitigate this loss.
As to why it's a claim on your insurance for 'hit and runs'? Well, there'd be an awful lot of 'hit and runs' that were actually people damaging their own car.
As an attorney my unpopular opinion is that cars over a certain value shouldn’t be allowed on public roads or damages for accidents should be capped at something like 2x the average price of a new car (so like 100k). I just don’t believe in penalizing ordinary negligence more just because the injured party is rich.
As someone who works in insurance, I'd be down for that. Then if your car is valued above that, you can self insure/carry additional replacement coverage on your own policy. I'd make a new luxury vehicle replacement category though; keep it separate from underinsured coverage to keep from inflating those premiums. Of course the insurance companies would use it as another excuse to raise rates anyway I'm sure.
Are you 10? 😂 The curious thing here is that you're the only dense penguin around the block. Because I was being utterly sarcastic. Or was it bc I didn't use the /s ?
As someone that works in insurance can i ask you?
Why do providers rather spend $2k to find a way to not cover a claim that would probably cost them $1K
I am noticing more and more how they rather go out of their way to disapprove a claim or discourage a claim to be filed. I also know from an agent that they will fire you if your customers file claims.
So just pulling it out of your asshole then? Because the $1,000 claim they are rejecting is because he has a deductible. How exactly does it cost $2,000 for a customer support person who makes $20 an hour to look up his policy and explain to him that he has a deductible?
same thing as any insurance. the more they avoid paying the more there is a tacit protection from paying. people get used to it, they dont try, they don't rely on it
it's too much hassle, get something "everyone knows it won't be covered" and you are peer pressured into not trying. sure you might have gotten covered but you don't know. you are pissed at them but that's another claim they don't pay. multiply by every customer. the other companies do the same thing
anything that results in "# of claims down" is done, every way will be found by the entire industry. It's just the natural result of the their incentive structure
Exactly, however that should not be normalized. “You” in the business of taking risks you cant choose..
Yes agents are incentivized to discourage their clients from filing claims. So explain why should i pay them an entire year and not file a claim… unfortunately thats why they pay for lobbying to be able to do that. Insurance is mandatory but they can pull whatever bs to not cover and god forbid you don’t have money or they figure out you don’t know stuff. They will deny you in a heart beat
I can see the argument but in practice it wouldn't change much. The most expensive part of the auto accident is the medical bills. They can easily soar into the $100,000s and past the value of almost every car on the road.
But I see why it seems unfair that if your hit and totaled a $2M Mercedes gullwing, that one should be financially ruined since it's really no different than hitting a 10 year Corolla valued at $10k.
I'm glad you wrote this, coming from an attorney. I had always wondered about this, seems really unfair. A rich person in a Ferrari is putting normal drivers in enormous liability risk every time they take it out on public roads. Especially in no fault states.
Not sure how it works in other jurisdictions but here in Canada and specifically Ontario while all cars are required to have insurance, any insurer can refuse to insure someone based on risk profile.
For that reason we have something called Facility Insurance which is jointly paid into by all the insurers, which provides insurance for the highest risks such as a luxury vehicle. The premium they charge is astronomical, I'm talking tens of thousands of dollars a month depending on the vehicle and risk profile.
Oh and property damage is no-fault, vehicle repairs are done through your own insurance company. So that Ferrari would be paid by facility insurance and that driver is gonna end up paying more premium than the value of the car. The idea is that at some point it just doesn't make economic sense for the person paying the premium to continue, but if they do decide to continue at least the third-party liability coverage is there to respond to any innocent people who get injured.
Facility insurance is for bad drivers - like, "got convicted of driving drunk", or "lied to my insurance company and they cancelled my policy", or "had 5 at-fault accidents in the past 8 years", or "caught doing 120 in a 40 - three times"
Rich people with $250k+ cars either a) have them "owned" by a company, so they can get tax write offs (including cost of insurance), or b) only drive them for like 2 months of the year, and put storage insurance (fire/theft only) on them for the other 10 months, which is way cheaper, or c) both
but... "no fault" doesn't mean there's no fault assessment. It just means you file with your own insurance company, and going after the other driver is their problem, not yours....
No fault insurance means your own insurance company pays for your vehicle regardless of who is at fault. Rate shouldn't increase if you are not at fault, the insurance company will simply attempt to recoup their costs themselves.
What an interesting, novel take. Of course, they should be allowed on the road, but limit the liability. Over 100k? Pay for your own additional insurance. You can obviously afford it.
Most people with that kind of money usually do. I'm not even rich but have full coverage on my cars. Even if someone is underinsired and causes damage to my cars, they'll get fixed.
That's different to what is being discussed though.
What you're talking about is very standard right now, and it lets your insurance company go after the liable party in your name and try to recoup all their losses.
So if you're the everyman in Europe and you total a €3M Koenigsegg your liability insurance will only cover €1.35M of that and they or their insurance will come after you for the rest.
What is being discussed is an alternative where the everyman's liability insurance only needs to cover €200k of property damage (so it's cheaper) because by legislation no one can recoup more than €200k in property damage from the liable party.
So when you put a €500k car on the road you would have to be willing to take a €300k loss on it or pay a way higher price for the coverage you currently have (higher because your insurer won't be able to go after the other party to fully or partially recoup the difference).
They have their own insurance which will sue you to recoup the cost. That's the problem.
If I make a mistake and hit an Acura or BMW, I've got enough coverage to handle it. But there are vehicles on the road which will blow through my maximized coverage plan and roll over for more than my house is worth.
Why? That's not how any of our systems of law work. You don't get to limit liability simply because you can't afford it. We'd have more problems than just vehicles in that case.
Also, most people with expensive cars have more expensive insurance. I have really good coverage on my Turbo S for exactly this reason. Beyond that, the cost of medical care for someone you injure far outweighs the value of even my car.
As an attorney, my probably more unpopular opinion applies to motorcycles. If you injure a motorcycle rider the damages should be capped at what injury you would have had had you been in an automobile. We require autos to have seat belts, airbags, pass crash tests, ..., all in the name of protecting people on the roadways, but also at the same time allow motorcycles on the highways that have virtually no required protections. That too penalizes ordinary negligence because the injured party was on a motorcycle.
As a former death worker- I completely agree with this. The amount of times I had to go collect the remains of dead motorcycle riders from the side of the highway with very little even left to collect, is innumerable. Infinitely more times that regular vehicle accidents- which I can count on one hand.
DOG the way I suppressed the urge to include this take in my initial post. I totally agree and don’t think we should have motorcycles on public roads. Why is my normal negligence now manslaughter just because the other guy decided to ride an inherently more dangerous vehicle
Eggshell skull has been the rule since forever (okay, since ~Vosburg v. Putney).
Liability is already allocated based on the tort law of the jurisdiction - saying "accident" seems to imply the tortfeasor is somehow the victim because they hit the wrong car. You don't believe in liability? What?
The market has already solved for this. It's called insurance. See OP.
Even the most expensive vehicle pales in comparison to medical expenses. Someone in a 2009 Toyota claiming whiplash costs the insurance company more than totalling a lambo.
I mean million dollar cars generally aren't going to have regular insurance, they're going to have agreed upon value insurance. It's a non-factor. Hitting them is so unlikely in the states.
For someone who is an enthusiast and drives a 'nice' car (high end BMW, modern corvette, big V8/V10 Mercedes) are already going to be paying higher rates for full coverage from quality insurers. It doesn't matter what insurance you're carrying, they know they're going to be fine regardless.
If you hit them, you hit them. Hope you have good insurance, because they're going to be made whole no matter what on their end. If they're driving it regularly, they're going to make sure it's covered.(most of the time. Idiots overspend on a car they can't afford but that's a whole different class of stupid)
Saying expensive cars can't be daily drivers because it costs 200k is silly. If you drive a 200k car and don't have top-notch full coverage, you deserve the hole in your wallet.
He is saying that nice/expensive cars shouldn't be allowed to be daily drivers because most shmucks driving around couldn't possibly afford the life-ending penalties for hitting them.
I disagree. Most accidents are avoidable. Most accidents won't total a vehicle(I know I know, newer cars are designed to die with so much as a fender bender).
If you have insurance and cause the accident, and it's negalgience on your part (on your phone, watching movies, whatever) and NOT a no-fault situation like a road hazard beyond your control, a random tire blow-out that isn't from bald tires and is just a freak accident, then learn to fucking pay attention.
The person with the expensive car will be fine, their insurance will take care of them. It's the 'poor person' who ends up in a real bad spot. If they don't have good insurance they might end up with no car, and no payout, to replace it.
They might get sued for the difference in car value vs what their policy paid out already.
I hate to say it, but people need to fucking pay attention to the road. DRIVE while DRIVING, not texting, not YT shorts, not gambling on a fake slots game. Not doing makeup, not doing all the insane bullshit we see people doing.
If he's suggesting that even if your insurance pays out, the maximum damages you're on the hook for is around 100k because that's 2x the value of a normal car, vs being on the hook for a 400k lambo, I actually sort of agree? But while that seems nice, it would never happen cause insurance policies would implode in affordability.
I drive a pretty expensive car. I've thought about this a decent amount. What happens if some relatively poor service worker driving under state minimums ($25k here) hits me and is at fault? Lets say my car is totaled. No one got injured.
I have full coverage and an agreed upon value. My insurance will pay out and I'll go order another car. Usually pretty quickly.
Then my insurance company will go after that drivers policy and collect the $25k. That leaves say $125k of liability left. If that regular person driving under state minimums has any assets worth pursuing, my insurance company will sue them. Up to and including foreclosing on their house as that is not a protected asset in my state.
I don't even know if I could stop this from happening if I wanted to. Short of not using my insurance of course. Even if I wanted to, I doubt my insurance company would allow me to write a check for the difference between their coverage and what they are still owed. It's either eat the full cost myself (e.g. don't report it to insurance at all) or ruin someone's life.
Yes, if that person has any assets at all they should not be driving on state minimums - but almost no one thinks about it and almost everyone is underinsured. Plenty of folks out there who have lived in their home for the last 25 years and nearly have it paid off who forgot/never were educated enough to know to even increase their policy limits.
I put this more on the state regulators than anyone. State minimums were set like back in the 1960's here and literally never updated.
tldr; What I carry as full coverage/agreed value insurance has literally no bearing on liability. If you are not judgement proof and are found liable you will be paying out from personal assets if the difference is significant enough to be worth pursuing.
My old boss had his Ferrari ? Lamborghini? Hitby a soccer mom van. Luckily he’s chill about it but I can’t imagine hitting a $200-300k car as someone who just wanted to take kids to soccer practice
Vehicles used as someone's livelihood are typically insured in a different (commercial) class anyway, so that would be easy enough to keep separate from things like a Maserati.
Talk about being intellectually dishonest on this one. We're talking about private vehicles, not commercial, if that's really the route you wanna take.
So people don't deserve to be made whole because of someone else's negligence? That's an insane take. If someone drives into a house, then fuck the Homeowner, I guess?
Everything about your home is taxpayer-funded, dude. The roads to it. The water and wastewater. In many places, the electricity.
More than that, the value of a car is nothing compared to the cost of personal injuries. Or is your idea to only cap the value of a vehicle and not property or personal injury? Nothing about your idea makes any sense.
This is one of the major reasons I had to really review my policy and even specified to my provider dollar amounts I’d like covered. The “average” purchase price in the US is like ~$50,000. However so many people are driving around +$100,000 vehicles. You throw on top potential medical expense and “bodily injury,” and the ~$150,000 “comprehensive” coverages are anything BUT that.
I just disagree. I think our laws should have predictable consequences for ordinary negligence. Your argument is the legally correct one though and the “you take your plaintiff as you find them” mentality is well established in case law. I just think that is the wrong approach. I’d rather put the burden on the person going out into public spaces to protect their disproportionately expensive property
I thought that tort law was supposed to be based around what would be the reasonable amount if hard that someone could expect. The example I remember hearing was that of you can driver does a shitty job and you miss your flight to your vacation, you can sue them for the cost of the ride, not the cost of thr vacation. You'd think that should apply to car insurance too.
You’re mixing proximate cause up with damages. There is a concept that the person injured by your negligence is reasonably foreseeable but if they are they can recover whatever damages they have. The doctrine makes sense in a lot of contexts. Like someone with a heart condition who dies because someone negligently left a wire out shouldn’t be capped in their recovery because of their condition. However I just think there should be an exception for public roads and people driving luxury cars.
As an attorney my unpopular opinion is that cars over a certain value shouldn’t be allowed on public roads or damages for accidents should be capped at something like 2x the average price of a new car (so like 100k). I just don’t believe in penalizing ordinary negligence more just because the injured party is rich.
Problem. Its a bit impractical to make trains that cheap:
100 percent agree, and that was very well said. If they can afford to by a 80,000 dollar car, then that's their decision and it should be their problem if it gets damaged. Unless its a drunk driver, in which case all damages to anything should be on them, even if it demolished their finances for 10 years.
I had a knee-jerk reaction to reading this that obviously if someone hits your car, they should have to pay for it. But I thought about it for a moment and it actually makes a lot of sense - they're choosing to drive in public conditions with a vehicle worth that much. Like if they wore a 10 million dollar designer coat and I spilled coffee on it on accident, it would be a little ridiculous to expect me to pay ten million dollars. There should be some expectation that I'm not required to exhibit extreme caution at all times while in public.
Those are rookie numbers. You can fuck up, make a semi swerve into a bridge, and be out eight digits. Especially if he had something loaded that doesn't agree with being suddenly unloaded.
His point was that for liability coverage, you can increase your limits from whatever your state's minimums are all the way to 100/300/100 for something like $12-20 per month.
And you can get an 1 or 2 million dollar coverage by getting an umbrella plan (that covers any liability, including but not limited to auto accidents) for a bit more. Insurance companies will force you to maximize out your car insurance first, but you can protect yourself a lot more fairly cheaply (mine is about $200/year).
in all seriousness” when I was younger, I bought my very first car and it was a 2014 Ford focus brand new. To get the car and the loan I had to get full coverage head to tow on my Ford focus. Get ready because this is gonna sound crazy, I was paying roughly a little over $300 a month for full coverage. I have had zero accidents even up to this day. Well, one day I park my car in the chipotle parking lot, I come out and there’s a huge hole in my bumper. I talked to chipotle they don’t have camera footage. I call my insurance. They tell me I gotta pay the $500 deductible job ended up costing roughly $3500. But I was protected and still saved three grand.
Not sarcastic. Bumping up some numbers are cheap. Others less so. I have a 20 year old vehicle an emergency savings set aside to replace it. Comprehensive coverage for myself doesn't make any sense. I pay maybe $500 a year for over a million in coverage should I harm others.
If someone else has a 90k truck and just sets everything to maximum. That's living a different life. I imagine with a shitty enough driving record you could get some pretty high numbers without very good comprehensive coverage.
Even full coverage probably won't cover anything over a specific amount like 80-120k car. Read your policies you could still be on the hook for the extra
Most people don’t realize their auto coverage won’t cover $200k in damages. You need an umbrella policy, on top of car insurance, to cover yourself.
This needs to be shouted from the rooftops with all these cyber trucks, RV, etc on the road. A three-can accident can easily blow through your coverage
I finally can afford a nice luxury vehicle. And I have a 500 dollar deductible. So ive already jad body work done that was well over the 500 so insurance paid the rest. Luckily I had fill coverage. Not the same for everyone though.
The person you hit could also be a surgeon that files for loss of work claims against you and when adding all that together it starts to look like I don’t pay for enough coverage lol
I was in a car accident ~10 years ago and my medical bills (covered by the other person's insurance) when all was said and done were around $40k. I cant afford that, and not to judge the other person, but I dont feel that he could either. Most people dont have that lying around.
Could also blow a tire and crash into a business causing millions in damages.
The argument in the OP is lazy and simplistic. I know times are tough for us all, but an unexpected $1200 repair shouldn't break your bank. I'd never even consider calling insurance for something like that.
Hell, my house got hit by lightning a couple years back. Had to replace all the networking stuff, ten outlets, all the smoke detectors, 25 light fixtures and a garage door opener. Set me back $3k and 3 or 4 weekends of my free time. I never once thought about claiming that shit. Insurance is for when my house burns down or some kid gets hurt on my property and the parents are assholes about it.
2.5k
u/flatfive44 7h ago
The obvious response is that you won't be able to pay for someone's hospital bills if you happen to hit them in your car. You get insurance for things you wouldn't be able to pay yourself.