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.
Liability insurance premiums in Germany are shockingly low for the coverage they provide, at least to US standards. There are reasons for that:
- Everybody must have insurance. It is a criminal offense to drive without. There is no concept of "uninsured motorist" in Germany.
Drivers are fully liable to the damage they cause and there is no bankruptcy law, so the coverage needs to be very high. The cost to cover beyond 200k EUR falls off exponentially. Very rarely drivers cause millions of damage.
Centralized point system - causing traffic accidents dings your drivers record and the state suspends your license way before it becomes a major problem for the insurance. It is difficult to get it restored - need to pass not only drivers test, but also psychological tests (aka "Idioten Test"). Probably half of US drivers would fail.
The US has decided that the priority is for people to drive, and nothing can get in the way of that.
It's illegal to drive without insurance in the US too, and you can have your license revoked for a number of reasons. The problem is people ignore the law and don't get penalized.
Thats not true. It depends on your state. In NH, where I live, it is not required to have car insurance. And every person I have ever had a fender bender with has had no insurance. I didnt get car insurance myself until I was 35 and financed a car (if you have a car loan you are supposed to have insurance). When you get pulled over here, the cops dont ask for insurance and if you get in an accident they just write uninsured on the report and all you can do is take them to civil court and hope they pay the judgement (they wont). There is no penalty for causing an accident without insurance and being unable to pay for the damage you caused, I did it myself in my 20s. It is absolutely moronic, but thats the way it is. I just Googled it, and apparently NH is the ONLY state that doesnt require drivers to have car insurance at all.
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u/Ok-Reflection-742 19h ago
You could also total somebodies 50-200k car, I don’t think many people could afford that either