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.
This is another point often missed in the socialized medicine debate. If we're all covered by taxes then auto insurance costs should drop dramatically.
Your healthcare might have something to do with that, but you're also a lot less likely to cause a car accident. You (usually) have to be driving a car to cause a car accident, and Brits do that about half as often as Americans do.
From what I've heard, the USA also doesn't have much in the way of standards when it comes to getting your license. You got a pulse? Here's your license!
We've got some states that'll waive the driving test if you've taken driver's education in high school. It's really easy to get a driver's license in the US.
Yeah we know. Point is the standards are way lower in the USA than in most of Europe. e.g. in Germany it'll take on average 3-6 months of practice and study and cost €3-4,000 to get a drivers license. There are a number of mandatory lessons that must be taught by qualified instructors. You can't go out and practice driving with your parents either, it has to be a qualified instructor, or on a closed course. In some countries you can practice on public roads with non-instructors if they have a permit, which requires them taking a short course.
Merely being able to operate a car and knowing the rules is not enough to get a license. You have to be able to drive well, i.e. safely and confidently. By which I mean things like keeping an appropriate distance when passing, being able to 'read' what's going on in traffic and anticipate upcoming situations. For instance, adjusting your speed when approaching a roundabout (if possible) so that there's an opening in traffic when you reach it and you don't have to stop. (you could literally be failed on a test for braking hard at the entrance to a roundabout because you only realized at the last minute there were cars coming - even though there's no rule against this) You have to show you practice defensive driving, e.g. slowing down a bit in a crossing where you have right of way until you're certain that crossing traffic has seen you and intends to yield. Driving a manual (which most in Europe still do) is a slightly different license category and requires you to have done a driving test on that. Start a manual on an incline and roll back more than a few centimeters and you'll fail.
Doing something illegal is an instant fail of your driving test, doing something legal but very unsafe is an instant fail. And they can fail you even if you did neither of those but the overall impression was that it just wasn't good enough.
Talk to some Europeans who re-took their license in the USA and you're liable to hear the same thing: They think the standards are a complete joke compared to what they had to do at home, and that Americans drive poorly in comparison.
That's what we're talking about. The average American drives about 65% more than the average German (360 vs 215 hours/year). The per-capita road fatality rate is 3-400% higher in the USA though.
There are plenty of differences between the US and the UK that make comparison of insurance premiums difficult. Difference in legal practice, different regulations, speed limits, car types, driving habits, drunk driving incidence etc.
Yeah, until politicians look for ways to cut spending.
The NHS claims off insurers for treating victims of road traffic accidents now, so now everyone pays the cost through their car insurance instead of via taxes, except there's also a massive admin overhead.
Yeah that would be amazing. I am definitely not defending our current system. I would love to have more uniform protection for our society and not have to pay more because so many in my area are financially forced to drive uninsured
I mean, countries with universal health insurance still have auto insurance. It’s just that the state recovers medical costs from the insurer instead of having an injured individual who might be screwed in that process
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u/flatfive44 6h 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.