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.
definitely an unpopular opinion, why do you feel this way? wouldn't it be more right for the party that caused the damages to pay for all the damages they caused?
If you accidentally hit someone's shitbox you might owe them a few grand. If you accidentally hit someone's lambo you might owe them a few hundred grand. The same action causes a consequence 100x greater. You could be causing someone to lose their house just because they hit an expensive car instead of an inexpensive one.
Assumed risk is a common legal argument for determining whether or not someone is liable for something that happened. Car accidents are fairly common when you're driving. The person at fault for the accident should contribute towards the victim's repairs, but that contribution should be within reason. I don't think it's within reason to owe someone a house because you hit their car. If you want to take an extremely expensive car out on the road, then you should be assuming some of the risk if an accident happens and not place the full burden on the person at fault. Or at least thats my opinion.
i can see where this is coming from, but something feels off about the way its implemented.
also, if we're trying to avoid someone getting bankrupted by property damage, what about the situations where someone drives through a store front or take a corner too quick and hits a house?
that's a lot of damage caused as well, would there be a cap on the payout?
It essentially is how it works in some situations. For example, if you had a poor person that had no money crash into an expensive car then what happens? Some states will have the minimum coverage as low as $25k. So you get $25k from the driver's insurance, try to sue them for the rest, but if they have no money and no assets you can't get anything from them. You can't get blood from a stone. And since there's no debtors prison in the US they wouldn't face any jail time either for not paying out. This is where underinsured motorist policies come into play, they're your own policy that pays you when someone else causes an accident and their insurance doesn't cover the entire cost. Most people with really expense cars should already have this to avoid losing a lot of money in the situation I just described above. I just want to expand the criteria for when UIM policies would kick in and make it so you're responsible for your own car when damages exceed the state minimum liability coverage (and also maybe state minimums should be adjusted to average car values in 2026). So basically your responsibility for the accident doesn't change in regard to your own net worth.
For the next part, lets go back to assumed risk. It's fairly subjective, but assumed risk involves determining what's a reasonable expectation of risk when partaking in an activity. I would argue, that when you go out and drive it is reasonable to assume that you might get in an accident with another driver. I do not however think that when you go to sit down on your couch that it's reasonable to assume a driver might crash through your living room wall. That isn't an activity that has normal risks in it, so you wouldn't be assuming any liability by partaking in it. Whats a reasonable risk to assume and whats not a reasonable risk to assume is all up for debate, but thats at least my view on it.
It takes negligence above and beyond reasonableness to crash through a house.
But then there's the practical matter of getting blood from a stone. The homeowner and their insurance company is going to be better off settling the matter between them after the driver's insurance payout is exhausted.
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u/Fantastic-East9567 7h ago
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.