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Comment by aplusbi | Hacker News Reader

"An accident is an accident"

I don't like this mentality. Is a collision caused by drunk driving really an accident?

It doesn't matter, because the most important reason you have insurance is to cover your liability to other people. If you rescind that coverage, you're screwing over the other people.

Obviously, if you harm other people by driving while intoxicated, it should immediately become sharply (perhaps untenably so) more expensive to insure you.

I'm not arguing against insuring negligence, I'm arguing against calling negligence an accident. It's a neat way of removing culpability. "It was just an accident!"

"An accident is an accident" was being said by the insurance specialist, and in reference to the insurer's responsibility. In context, it was meant to say nearly the opposite of what you're inferring - something more along the lines of, "We can't pick and choose like that." Which is true; doing so would defeat the whole point of mandatory liability insurance.

From the insurer's perspective, yes, yes it is. There's damage and the insured has contracted the insurer to compensate for the damage caused. What if the drunk driver can't pay an injured party's medical bills? Do you just say, "Well, he was drunk, so there."? No, of course not--the injured parties need to be compensated and have their medical bills taken care of--doctors don't work for free.

Of course, I just don't think they should be called "accidents." When a person is willfully negligent the damage they cause is no accident.

I think it's just part of our society's bias in favor of motor vehicles, to assume that any damage with a vehicle involved is an "accident".

I have been on a bicycle when someone deliberately tried to run me off the road for "fun".

The only criminal case ever in the whole state of Texas, where it was actually assumed that a driver deliberately tried to run a bicyclist off the road, and it was no "accident", was when some guy happened to do it to Lance Armstrong. In every other case, it was legally assumed to be an accident.

But, as the article states, where do you draw the line? You could argue that someone changing radio stations was "willfully negligent." It is not up to insurance companies to decide legality or enforce the law. If the driver was found to be doing something negligent or illegal, they will be fined/charged by the police.

Of course. Collisions aren't "caused by" drunk driving. They are caused by drunk drivers, who make more mistakes than average.

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