4 ms·
>I'd love to be rewarded for actually being a good driver. Rather than being lumped in with bad drivers who have a high chance of being in $50k accidents, which
by Retra 10y ago
>I'd love to be rewarded for actually being a good driver. Rather than being lumped in with bad drivers who have a high chance of being in $50k accidents, which everyone has to collectively pay for.
The whole point of insurance is not to lump you into good driver / bad driver categories. If you make bad drivers consistently pay for accidents, then you might as well not have insurance at all, and you'll pay perfectly in direct proportion to the accidents you are involved in.
Insurance adds fuzziness to the otherwise "perfectly rational" outcome because people that do not behave rationally with respect to accident avoidance and financial planning will be at a severe survival and status disadvantage to those who do. It's like putting safeties on guns to prevent careless people from shooting people or getting shot. It makes the world more forgiving of individual mistakes at public cost.
- maxerickson 10y agoIn the US, car insurance gives discounts for all sorts of things and charges bad (really, high risk) drivers more. For example: https://www.statefarm.com/insurance/auto/resources/high-risk-auto-insurance https://www.statefarm.com/insurance/auto/resources/high-risk...
- eru 10y agoThe whole point of insurance is to make you pay for the risks you take, and not for when you get lucky/unlucky. That we often lump people together is just one implementation of insurance. But not a necessary feature. Otherwise, there would be no insurance for one-off events---but that happens all the time. There's nothing inherently 'social' about insurance. See eg http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2015/03/warren_buffett_s_billion_dollar_bracket_challenge_the_legal_feud_that_killed.html http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2015/03/warr...
- Houshalter 10y agoThe entire point of insurance is to pay based on risk. Someone with a bad driving record should, and does pay much more for insurance than a normal person. An old person should and does pay more for health or life insurance. A wooden house costs more to get fire insured than a brick building. The point of insurance is not to let bad drivers get away with their bad driving. It's to make sure you aren't punished for bad luck. But if we can exactly predict the probability you will get in an accident, there is no luck involved, you are just a bad driver.
- Retra 10y agoYou already pay based on risk without insurance. You pay insurance to reduce your risk -- to reduce the costs associated with an accident.