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Comment by yholio | Hacker News Reader

> The part about driving skill is definitely just wrong, there are many reasons why cars get damaged.

There is a long list for sure - but they are all very unlikely. The risk of having your car stolen can be mitigated with a 50$ GPS transmitter. Fire? What year is this, cars still spontaneously combust, or maybe do you live on an active volcano? A moose going though your window sounds like a life and death situation, having your car totaled and walking away safe and sound would be glorious.

If you were to purchase insurance for such risks, it would be negligible compared to the major source of insurance claims, trafic accidents. So you are are either paying for other's people accidents, and it makes no sense to continue to do so, or you are actually getting a positive value out of it because you are a bad driver, case in which it makes sense to try to improve your driving, while keeping the insurance.

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All of my non-mechanical car damage has been either from someone else's driving or while the car was parked. The last one involved a guy who had a seizure at the wheel and barrelled through a red light in a truck. There wasn't any way to avoid it, fortunately it was a light swipe though.

My most expensive repair was in a parking lot where someone scraped and dented the entire side of my car trying to get into a space they really should not have. I'm under the impression most damage to cars happens in parking lots or street parking.

Still, as I wrote above, I still agree that insurance for the car isn't worth it, even though at some points it would have had positive value for me. In the long run it statistically won't.

For experienced and attentive drivers that tend to be hit by others, it's important to have proof of liability. The dashcam (preferably one that operates when the car is stopped) has saved me multiple times. Insurance companies control the claims process and setup rules that disadvantage the uninsured. Whenever I am in a trafic incident, I stop the car on the spot and take at least a bunch of photos with both vehicles involved from multiple angles, the damaged area and any debris , the general vicinity, lanes etc. The capacity of self delusion and/or outright lying of people is fantastic, I have had one claim the incident happened in a completely different intersection.

If you have such proofs and credibly convey the message that you know the law and are willing to sue, then all damage becomes fixable on someone else's insurance and you pay only normal wear and tear on your vehicle. In 200.000 Km, I only had a single fender bender that was my fault, around 200€ in damage - while insurance would have costed me in the 5000-10000€ range for the same period. Since I am an aggressive (within the limits of the law) driver, I was involved in a dozen or so minor accidents.

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