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Home and car sharing are with us now so the insurance companies will need to adapt or get steamrolled.
by pbreit 12y ago
Home and car sharing are with us now so the insurance companies will need to adapt or get steamrolled.
- 5555624 12y agoWhy? Owning and home and living in it present different risks than owning a home and renting it out. Likewise, driving a car for personal use is different than driving it for hire. Home owners and car owners need to be upfront and honest with their insurance companies.
- jakobsen 12y agoBut then driving for hire is not the same as car sharing.
- 5555624 12y agoThat's true, but Uber/Lyft is not sharing a car -- you're being paid to take someone from point A to point B. You're not letting them take your car, use it, and then bring it back.
- jakobsen 12y agoI understand your point, but why even mention Uber when the parent specifically said "car sharing"? Likewise, why does the parent bring the topic of "house sharing" when Airbnb is clearly renting, and not sharing? I just feel that too often we are putting professional services and sharing on the same bag, which I find a bit alarming.
- anigbrowl 12y agoGet steamrolled by who? Insurers are in the business of mitigating risk by paying out on unforeseeable losses. There are more than enough people who purchase private non-commercial insurance for them to make a profit, why should they or the insurance companies' shareholders subsidize the people who want to engage in commercial activity but don't want to pay the costs of doing things to commercial standards? You don't get isnurance because of the low risk of bad things happening, you get it because of the potential liabilites on the rare occasions when they do. Say someone is at an AirBnB, falls down the stairs, breaks his/her neck, and is paralyzed. AirBnB's million dollars of coverage may not be enough to meet the medical costs of such an injury, to say nothing of other damages. So the injured party's lawyer and/or medical insurers will go after the host's homeowner's insurance or else after the host's property or income stream. Hotels aren't expensive because all hotel owners are greedy people intent on bleeding their customers dry (although such owners exist); to a large extent they reflect the significant costs of doing business.
- pbreit 12y agoBy insurers who accommodate these customers, who are already a large and growing set.
- Marazan 12y agoThere are insurers who accommodate these customers - lots of them: who do you think is insuring hotels and regular Bed and Breakfasts? The problem, as ever, is people wanting the benefit of commercial use insurance without the pain of paying commercial use insurance rates.