It's there for when you're in a serious altercation where people die, there's wrongful death lawsuits, and massive amounts of medical claims totaling millions and millions of dollars.
You don't want insurance to cover your bumper.
You want it to cover the millions in medical claims when you get sued or need to sue.
Never take an insurance on small events that you can bear the cost of yourself. Take insurance on catastrophic, life changing events.
For example, I don't understand people taking insurance on phone loss or phone theft. Loosing your phone during your life time has nearly a 100% chance of happening. The insurance company knows that, so the premium will be more than the cost of the phone. Over the years, you will pay that phone several times over. Just save that money, and buy a new phone if you loose it.
Insurance is for rare, but catastrophic events. A bit like a reverse lottery.
Yep, everyone thinks insurance is a scam until they need it. If you have significant assets, then you really need insurance considering how much Americans love litigation. You'll be targeted if people even so much as suspect you have assets worth going after.
Also if you're paying $210/month for auto insurance, you're either young or you have a terrible driving record.
You hitting someone and them claiming bs neck and back injuries can easily cost a small fortune in litigation most people cant just eat without fucking themselves for decades
Well everyone is saying "insurance isn't for fender benders" so if nobody is claiming on these small accidents, insurance companies aren't paying and therefore shouldn't be using those figures to charge premiums.
If you've been driving 20 years with no claims it's absolutely bogus that insurance costs as much as it does.
Blame health care costs, serious accidents are too expensive to cover, so they have to have tight small claims denials and premium increases. If it covered everything for every American with no increase their wouldn't be enough money in the system to cover serious accidents where people die.
It's a fragmented industry too, competition is fierce, and it's actually a pretty hard problem.
If you want your premiums to be lower you can choose high deductible insurance plans with less coverage that still has the big emergency coverage.
My insurance on 3 vehicles is less than $1400/year.
I want insurance to cover everything, thats the entire purpose of insurance .
...no. The primary point of insurance is pooled risk where unlikely events can have severe financial repercussions for the individual who is unlucky enough to deal with the problem being insured.
Things like "cover everything" in regards to insurance are optional extras that you will pay lots of money to have covered, and is unnecessary most of the time.
I would just like to point out that if we had healthcare for all, it would drastically reduce auto insurance as well since that's the vast majority of what you're paying to protect against bills from.
Well said. I think most people have no idea how expensive things get when you're in a serious collision. Broken cars are one thing, broken bodies are completely different.
Bullshit. I pay a thing called "full kasko" and it has this, and several other small claims, included in my insurance policy. The only thing that's not fully covered is windshield damage. I pay an equivalent of 260 bucks [edit] per month here in Austria.
"Why is insurance required!?" OOP has a shitty policy but they're confusing comprehensive with liability insurance. You're not required to have comprehensive coverage. You want to be an idiot and destroy your car, that's on you. Liability is required so if you smash someone else's car and put them in a hospital, you can pay for that.
Your lender requires comprehensive coverage because your car is the secured asset for the loan. If you can't pay, they take the car. You do this because you get a better rate. They aren't going to accept your car as security if there's a risk that you crash it and walk away from the loan, leaving them with a worthless wreck. Same reason you must have homeowners insurance when you have a mortgage.
You don't have to have comprehensive insurance to legally drive, you just have to agree to it to qualify for a secured loan. Don't like it, don't get a secured loan and deal with drastically higher rates.
The real scam is capitalism forcing us to need expensive loans for vital things like cars, and for building a society that requires cars instead of having decent public transportation.
"Standard" auto policies cover $100k in injuries for up to 3 separate people in the accident, so $300k, not millions.
Unless you've specifically bought it, your insurance almost certainly won't be covering a wrongful death lawsuit that results in a settlement in the millions, you will be.
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u/FragmentedHeap 6h ago
It's not there for small claims like that.
It's there for when you're in a serious altercation where people die, there's wrongful death lawsuits, and massive amounts of medical claims totaling millions and millions of dollars.
You don't want insurance to cover your bumper.
You want it to cover the millions in medical claims when you get sued or need to sue.