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Why can't we simply let people decide for themselves whether they want to ride in insured vehicles or not? Maybe because society would bear the costs for those

Why can't we simply let people decide for themselves whether they want to ride in insured vehicles or not? Maybe because society would bear the costs for those people? Who will pay when those people wind up in hospital, racking up bills of hundreds of thousands Euro, and there's no insurer to cover the cost? Sorry, but the price for living in a society is that you don't get to pick and chose, which laws are appropriate for you. If you don't like them, you're free to try to change them. You are not free, however, to just ignore them at a cost to everybody else.

ygra 12y ago
> Who will pay when those people wind up in hospital, racking up bills of hundreds of thousands Euro, and there's no insurer to cover the cost? Health insurance. I'm not aware of them not paying for obvious things like accidents, etc. They do avoid paying for things that are not strictly medically necessary, e.g. cosmetic surgery in many cases. But if you get a ride with someone and they get into an accident where you are injured, the question of hospital bills should not arise. At least not for the victim.
- CaptainZapp 12y ago
  Health insurance. Ahh, exactly as I said: society at large pays for the profits of a private company. And actually (at least in the case of Switzerland) you're wrong. Health insurance does never pay for accidents, period.
- Schweigi 12y ago
  The victims insurance will for sure claim damages from the driver. As the driver most probably will not be able to pay the victims insurance has to cover the loss. This on the other hand means that the insurance needs to raise the prices for all their customers in order to cover for those kind of cases. To prevent that it is mandatory that all people are properly insured and pay their fair amount in respect to the risk - so a commercial driver has much higher insurance costs than a private driver.
- kuschku 12y ago
  In Germany health insurance does not cover medical procedures if they were caused by someone else (or at least they try to get their money back with lawsuits). And the insurance of the driver wouldn't cover commercial activities, so he'd have to pay everything on his own. Good luck finding a single driver for Uber then, because just one accident could bring a driver 300k$ into debt.

ygra 12y ago

> Who will pay when those people wind up in hospital, racking up bills of hundreds of thousands Euro, and there's no insurer to cover the cost? Health insurance. I'm not aware of them not paying for obvious things like accidents, etc. They do avoid paying for things that are not strictly medically necessary, e.g. cosmetic surgery in many cases. But if you get a ride with someone and they get into an accident where you are injured, the question of hospital bills should not arise. At least not for the victim.

CaptainZapp 12y ago
Health insurance. Ahh, exactly as I said: society at large pays for the profits of a private company. And actually (at least in the case of Switzerland) you're wrong. Health insurance does never pay for accidents, period.
Schweigi 12y ago
The victims insurance will for sure claim damages from the driver. As the driver most probably will not be able to pay the victims insurance has to cover the loss. This on the other hand means that the insurance needs to raise the prices for all their customers in order to cover for those kind of cases. To prevent that it is mandatory that all people are properly insured and pay their fair amount in respect to the risk - so a commercial driver has much higher insurance costs than a private driver.
kuschku 12y ago
In Germany health insurance does not cover medical procedures if they were caused by someone else (or at least they try to get their money back with lawsuits). And the insurance of the driver wouldn't cover commercial activities, so he'd have to pay everything on his own. Good luck finding a single driver for Uber then, because just one accident could bring a driver 300k$ into debt.