(Though for an insurer, it’s the same thing - whether you’re risky because you’re a bad driver or because you drive on poorly constructed roads or around other poor drivers is inconsequential to them)

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mschuster91 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah well fuck insurers. We are supposed to get spied upon by our cars with their blackboxes, by our insurers, by Google, by national security services of various countries... and what do we get in return? Dinged for other people's bad behavior which we cannot reasonably control. Either you follow the car in front of you very closely and get hard braking events, or other people switch lanes in front of you and in the worst case slowing down during lane change, provoking yet another hard braking event.

Fuck all of that.

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chad_oliver 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Credit scores are universally hated but they make it possible to offer lower interest rates to more people. Without credit scores, fewer people would have access to credit.

Similarly, people often don't like it when insurers track and score their driving. However, this allows insurers to offer lower insurance fees to more people by _not_ offering lower insurance fees (or instead charging higher fees) to people that are driving in a risky manner. This does of course assume a competitive market for insurance but I think in most countries that's a reasonable assumption.

There's nothing fairer than user-pays, especially when users can choose to pay less by changing their behavior.

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cucumber3732842 2 hours ago | parent [-]

>There's nothing fairer than user-pays, especially when users can choose to pay less by changing their behavior.

If user pays is so fair why does anyone who could access credit or liquid assets in excess of their state's minimums have to pay hundreds to thousands per year for auto insurance?

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AlotOfReading an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Most states allow you to go without insurance by fronting the cash. It's called self-insurance. You put up some minimum amount, file a form with the state DMV, and keep the approval certificate in the vehicle like normal.

It's relatively unknown for individuals because most people have no desire to lock up tens or hundreds of thousands of spare dollars just to avoid car insurance. As far as I'm aware it's primarily used by rich collectors who need to insure large collections that don't fit more traditional insurance profiles. Much more useful for businesses.

	▲	cucumber3732842 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>Most states allow you to go without insurance by fronting the cash. That's BS on it's face. Most states don't allow it or they restrict it to big business and government agencies. >because most people have no desire to lock up tens or hundreds of thousands of spare dollars just to avoid car insurance. Most people's money isn't making a return greater than what insurance would cost them. Second, this completely ignores my point about credit. I can easily get hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit secured against my house or tens of thousands in unsecured credit (credit card). Why must I pay to keep the lights on at some insurance firm? And I'm not particularly rich. If the numbers pencil out for me then surely they must pencil out for millions of people.

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chad_oliver an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

That's an entirely separate issue, isn't it? In my country (New Zealand) there are no requirements to have auto insurance. If you don't have insurance and you hit a million-dollar car you're gonna be in an awkward situation, but that's a risk you're allowed to take.

Note that you _are_ legally required to pay your annual ACC levies, which fund no-fault cover for injuries. However that doesn't cover property damage.