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Hot take: maybe that is actually desirable? If insurance has a plethora of good actuarial information and risk modeling, and one's insurance costs are high, th

Hot take: maybe that is actually desirable? If insurance has a plethora of good actuarial information and risk modeling, and one's insurance costs are high, that's the market telling that person that they probably shouldn't be driving. If high insurance costs promote alternate means of transportation for highly risky drivers, that's a net win for everyone on the road.

bobthepanda 2y ago
the point of insurance is to make sure if you get into a crash with somebody else and they are at fault, that they even have the means to pay you in the first place. if forced to, people make the decision to drive uninsured because it is nigh impossible to travel around this country otherwise, and then it's worse when they do get into an accident and cannot pay the other driver's costs. you can't squeeze blood from a stone. this is also partially the reasoning behind ACA requiring health insurance; hospitals were struggling because they could not collect from people with no money that were winding up in the ER.
- vel0city 2y ago
  Sounds like we need better enforcement of insurance requirements. Driving a car uninsured should have some extremely stiff penalties. Once again, maybe if the penalties are high enough and the costs expensive enough for more people, there'd actually be more of a push to re-think overly car dependent life. It will optimize society overall to have risky, uninsurable drivers not driving. It's not like healthcare. There will always be healthcare costs. We don't have to have everyone drive all the time, we choose to.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Realistically, the other person ends up in jail and then you still can’t get compensated for car repairs. It’s not super clear why that would be better than the pooling of risk that happens today that results in compensation. American society has chosen to create a built environment that is inhospitable to anything else except driving, so I don’t think this is actually a real choice. The people who are getting into crashes all the time are not the ones pushing for that built environment.
    - vel0city 2y ago
      I'm saying they should face such extreme penalties it's not worth it anymore and have it policed so those people aren't on the roads in the first place to get in a collision. Right now you're pretty much not going to have anything happen driving without insurance unless you get into an accident that you can't escape from. If it was highly likely for someone to face judgement every time they went out you'd probably have significantly fewer uninsured drivers out there.
      - bobthepanda 2y ago
        Then you basically just have a roving class of jobless people stuck at home. We’re not talking about the currently uninsured. We’re talking about a “hot-take” proposal to significantly increase the amount of uninsured people today, people who today can get insurance.
        vel0city 2y ago
        Or we get a stronger political will to no longer force car dependency on everyone when people actually start to understand the real costs of car-centric design. When the stores and restaurants where rich people shop can't get anyone to work there anymore without paying people the full costs of actually driving far away maybe there will be a will to change things. Lots of people around the world can go to work without needing a car.
        bobthepanda 2y ago
        Using our justice system to meter out extreme punishment would mostly impact poor people, and it is not as if the US has historically been very good at listening to the suffering of poor people. The Bay Area can barely keep service workers in housing and its taken several decades of this problem to get even the slightest bit of progress.
        akoncius 2y ago
        yeah and do you realise what you are suggesting? your proposed change will take decades to rework cities to move away from car-centric city design, to introduce public transportation, to rework current districts, to move shopping malls/restaurants closer to living districts etc. all of this just because you wanted to make stricter insurance just to make it more (by how much?) efficient for insurers, so that they would make more profit.
  - ds_opseeker 2y ago
    > Driving a car uninsured should have some extremely stiff penalties. I want to agree with you, but wonder if you have ever been poor? When you need the car to get to work so you can feed your kids, but you can't afford all of - feed kids - rent - insurance because you got hit by a surprise medical bill (kid got sick, maybe?) I'm strongly in favor of your end goal (less car-dependent life), I'm just cautious about using punishment as a way to get there. Unless we made the fine proportional to income?
    - vel0city 2y ago
      Let's expand that. Let's name your hypothetical person, Bob. He's living on the edge financially, and decides to go without insurance. Let's bring in another person, Alice. Alice is also not in great financial shape. But Alice is able to pay for insurance and follows all the rules. Alice has a small amount of savings, go Alice! One day, Bob hits Alice. It causes medical issues for Alice. Alice might have insurance, but it's potentially still expensive for Alice. Because of her injuries she can't work for a few weeks. She works hourly, so now loses wages. Luckily with FMLA she won't necessarily lose her job, but she needed every paycheck. But it doesn't really matter, because her car is now gone. She can't drive to work anymore. She can't drive to groceries. She can't afford a car, as a huge chunk her savings went to cover those medical bills and missed paychecks. She's pretty SOL huh. Sounds like we need to let Bob off the hook for inflicting all this on Alice. After all, he needed to drive without insurance. No. We should just make it possible so Bob didn't need to drive in the first place instead of excusing his choice to still drive when he couldn't really afford it. We should structure the incentives so Bob doesn't want to drive if he can't afford it. People driving without insurance ruin lives like Alice's all the time.
      - Draiken 2y ago
        That scenario is completely missing the point. Bob has to drive because of the lack of good public transportation and the fact that he can't afford a house near his work. Not to mention if he can't afford a car with insurance it's because his job simply doesn't pay enough. It's much more likely that external factors put him in that situation, rather than himself. Yet you propose we should punish him personally and paint only Alice as a victim. That's naive. Both are victims. These are systemic problems and trying to solve them with individual punishments is only going to hurt individuals while not fixing the underlying issues that really matter.

bobthepanda 2y ago

the point of insurance is to make sure if you get into a crash with somebody else and they are at fault, that they even have the means to pay you in the first place. if forced to, people make the decision to drive uninsured because it is nigh impossible to travel around this country otherwise, and then it's worse when they do get into an accident and cannot pay the other driver's costs. you can't squeeze blood from a stone. this is also partially the reasoning behind ACA requiring health insurance; hospitals were struggling because they could not collect from people with no money that were winding up in the ER.

vel0city 2y ago
Sounds like we need better enforcement of insurance requirements. Driving a car uninsured should have some extremely stiff penalties. Once again, maybe if the penalties are high enough and the costs expensive enough for more people, there'd actually be more of a push to re-think overly car dependent life. It will optimize society overall to have risky, uninsurable drivers not driving. It's not like healthcare. There will always be healthcare costs. We don't have to have everyone drive all the time, we choose to.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Realistically, the other person ends up in jail and then you still can’t get compensated for car repairs. It’s not super clear why that would be better than the pooling of risk that happens today that results in compensation. American society has chosen to create a built environment that is inhospitable to anything else except driving, so I don’t think this is actually a real choice. The people who are getting into crashes all the time are not the ones pushing for that built environment.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    I'm saying they should face such extreme penalties it's not worth it anymore and have it policed so those people aren't on the roads in the first place to get in a collision. Right now you're pretty much not going to have anything happen driving without insurance unless you get into an accident that you can't escape from. If it was highly likely for someone to face judgement every time they went out you'd probably have significantly fewer uninsured drivers out there.
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      Then you basically just have a roving class of jobless people stuck at home. We’re not talking about the currently uninsured. We’re talking about a “hot-take” proposal to significantly increase the amount of uninsured people today, people who today can get insurance.
      - vel0city 2y ago
        Or we get a stronger political will to no longer force car dependency on everyone when people actually start to understand the real costs of car-centric design. When the stores and restaurants where rich people shop can't get anyone to work there anymore without paying people the full costs of actually driving far away maybe there will be a will to change things. Lots of people around the world can go to work without needing a car.
        bobthepanda 2y ago
        Using our justice system to meter out extreme punishment would mostly impact poor people, and it is not as if the US has historically been very good at listening to the suffering of poor people. The Bay Area can barely keep service workers in housing and its taken several decades of this problem to get even the slightest bit of progress.
        akoncius 2y ago
        yeah and do you realise what you are suggesting? your proposed change will take decades to rework cities to move away from car-centric city design, to introduce public transportation, to rework current districts, to move shopping malls/restaurants closer to living districts etc. all of this just because you wanted to make stricter insurance just to make it more (by how much?) efficient for insurers, so that they would make more profit.
- ds_opseeker 2y ago
  > Driving a car uninsured should have some extremely stiff penalties. I want to agree with you, but wonder if you have ever been poor? When you need the car to get to work so you can feed your kids, but you can't afford all of - feed kids - rent - insurance because you got hit by a surprise medical bill (kid got sick, maybe?) I'm strongly in favor of your end goal (less car-dependent life), I'm just cautious about using punishment as a way to get there. Unless we made the fine proportional to income?
  - vel0city 2y ago
    Let's expand that. Let's name your hypothetical person, Bob. He's living on the edge financially, and decides to go without insurance. Let's bring in another person, Alice. Alice is also not in great financial shape. But Alice is able to pay for insurance and follows all the rules. Alice has a small amount of savings, go Alice! One day, Bob hits Alice. It causes medical issues for Alice. Alice might have insurance, but it's potentially still expensive for Alice. Because of her injuries she can't work for a few weeks. She works hourly, so now loses wages. Luckily with FMLA she won't necessarily lose her job, but she needed every paycheck. But it doesn't really matter, because her car is now gone. She can't drive to work anymore. She can't drive to groceries. She can't afford a car, as a huge chunk her savings went to cover those medical bills and missed paychecks. She's pretty SOL huh. Sounds like we need to let Bob off the hook for inflicting all this on Alice. After all, he needed to drive without insurance. No. We should just make it possible so Bob didn't need to drive in the first place instead of excusing his choice to still drive when he couldn't really afford it. We should structure the incentives so Bob doesn't want to drive if he can't afford it. People driving without insurance ruin lives like Alice's all the time.
    - Draiken 2y ago
      That scenario is completely missing the point. Bob has to drive because of the lack of good public transportation and the fact that he can't afford a house near his work. Not to mention if he can't afford a car with insurance it's because his job simply doesn't pay enough. It's much more likely that external factors put him in that situation, rather than himself. Yet you propose we should punish him personally and paint only Alice as a victim. That's naive. Both are victims. These are systemic problems and trying to solve them with individual punishments is only going to hurt individuals while not fixing the underlying issues that really matter.