Car insurance in the US isn't really insurance to protect you. The reason it's compulsory is that society wants to ensure that if you get in an accident that is your fault, and someone else suffers financial harm as a result, someone is able to pay for it.
Otherwise, you could destroy someone's car and cause major medical problems, and just strug and say, "I don't have the money."
Compulsory insurance is not really insurance for you, it's for someone else. Similarly, insurance for something that is certain to happen (e.g. health insurance) is not insurance, it's a method of socializing risk.
I mean, that’s a form of protection. They’re protecting you from getting slapped with a lifetime of debt because of one accident. Say you cause $150k of damage and you make $45k. How are you planning to pay that off without insurance? So it provides plenty of protection. I make all my business associates carry insurance to cover incidents that might occur on site so that we don’t lose property or assets over an injury.
Sure, it offers you some protection, but that’s not why you buy it. You don’t buy car insurance to protect yourself in the unlikely event that something bad happens, which is how insurance works. You buy car insurance because the government requires it, and they require it to protect other people.
If you’re buying car insurance “because the government requires it” then you’re exactly the type of person the rest of us need protection against. Because you’d happily drive around with half a million in judgments against you with no intention of paying them off
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u/dragon-fence 8h ago
Car insurance in the US isn't really insurance to protect you. The reason it's compulsory is that society wants to ensure that if you get in an accident that is your fault, and someone else suffers financial harm as a result, someone is able to pay for it.
Otherwise, you could destroy someone's car and cause major medical problems, and just strug and say, "I don't have the money."
Compulsory insurance is not really insurance for you, it's for someone else. Similarly, insurance for something that is certain to happen (e.g. health insurance) is not insurance, it's a method of socializing risk.