(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)
Fuck all of that.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
That's BS on it's face. Most states don't allow it or they restrict it to big business and government agencies.
Most people's money isn't making a return greater than what insurance would cost them.
Second, this completely ignores my point about credit.
States' interest here is in guaranteeing that there will always be a minimum amount of money to compensate victims, regardless of what other financial shenanigans you have going on in your life. That's not a standard that lines of credit and investment accounts meet. Self-insurance is simply a terrible option for most consumers, so no one does it.
That's probably true in theory, but not in practice, given how high US credit interest rates are compared to European countries for instance.
> Without credit scores, fewer people would have access to credit.
Too many people having access to credit is exactly how we got the worst financial crisis of the century, so it's not really something to brag about… People talk about US public debt a lot, but private debt is even more worrisome.
If my hypothetical cost over an N decade period is within a fraction of a percent of payouts in that time what do I gain by paying for insurance other than creating a principal-agent problem?