[metaphor]

> Pleasantly tolerable fee for a day where my car hits black ice and physics takes the wheel

Hope that day doesn't come because, ironically, liability won't cover your losses. It may, in full or part, cover the incidental loss of others impacted, but not your own.

[gambiting]

What do you mean? In the EU every car insurance has to cover minimum 1 million euro in personal liability and 5 million in 3rd party liability. My own with Aviva covers 5 million euro for personal and 20 million for 3rd party. But car insurance typically doesn't pay healthcare bills since healthcare is nationalized, so it's very hard to imagine how payouts would be anywhere near those sums. You'd need to crash into multiple buggati veyrons to get close to the maximum liability limit. I'm paying £400/year.

[corty]

I don't know about the rest of the EU, but for Germany at least, your assumption is dangerously wrong.

As the party at fault in an accident, you are on the hook for the total amount of damages, no caps or limits, in cases of negligence, intent or "inherent danger" (if you drive a car, hit a pedestrian, and no fault can be found with anyone, the car's driver is on the hook because of the "inherent danger" of the car). The car insurance only covers up to the pre-agreed limits in cases of inherent danger and negligence. For intent, they have to make the victim whole and then get the money back from you.

Healthcare cost will be initially covered by the healthcare provider of the victim in all cases, but if you are found to be legally at fault, the healthcare provider will collect the bill from you or your liability insurance as the party at fault. To the full amount they can extract, no limits. They won't do that for just a few scratches, because usually they don't know what that bill was for until their client tells them about it. But for larger bills, they will inquire and then come to collect. If the collection exceeds the limits of your liability insurance, a court determines intent or you did something else the liability insurance doesn't cover (e.g. non-named driver in limited contracts, knowingly driving a dangerous vehicle, using a vehicle insured as private use in a commercial (Uber) setting) you will pay...

Oh, and in Germany, only liability insurance covering the 3rd party's damages is necessary, the rest is voluntary. Your limits sound about right.

[gambiting]

Like I said in my other comment, my wording wasn't correct.

And as for the insurance not paying out if you were negligent or actually acted in an intentional way - that's literally every insurance ever. Your home insurance won't pay out if you leave an open fire inside the house and then go for a walk either - that's negligence. Or if your burning house causes damage to someone else, they will pay them to make them whole, and then try to recover money from you. That's just standard procedure.

I'm just saying that while in the US having to decide your liability limit is a worry of most motorists, I don't know or even heard of anyone ever worrying about this in any EU country I've ever lived in - the minimum limits set by law are very very high already, and most insurers offer even higher ones as standard.

[dmurray]

> In the EU every car insurance has to cover minimum 1 million euro in personal liability and 5 million in 3rd party liability.

Source on this? I've always understood you only needed third party insurance, and the EU website [0] seems to back this up.

> it's very hard to imagine how payouts would be anywhere near those sums.

If you kill someone or permanently incapacitate them, you could be on the hook for their lifetime loss of earnings. Here's [1] a family being awarded €650,000 following the death of their mother. Agreed, it's still hard to rack up €20 million and I don't know what the precedent is if you run over a billionaire, but in theory I believe the payout here is uncapped.

[0] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/vehicles/insurance/val...

[1] https://www.personalinjuryireland.ie/news/fatal-car-crash-in...

[gambiting]

>>Source on this? I've always understood you only needed third party insurance, and the EU website [0] seems to back this up.

Sorry, I suppose I worded it incorrectly. The minimums mandated by the EU are 1 million euro for damages to property, and 5 million euro for damages to persons, and actually, having found the document, even that is not entirely correct - it's 1.2 million euro for damages to property, and 1.2 million for damages to persons per victim up to 6.2 million euro per claim

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2016...

[metaphor]

I'm not familiar with how EU/UK differentiates "personal liability" from "3rd party liability" and what all that entails. The parent said:

> $50 a month for liability

...so I presumed a resident of the US.

US car insurance policies vary from state to state, so I'll just say how I understand it in layman IANAL terms.

In my state, personal injury protection (PIP) and property damage liability (PDL or commonly just "liability") coverage are the minimum requirements to legally drive a vehicle. There's also bodily injury liability (BIL), but since my state is what's called a "no-fault state", it's not a hard requirement unless you're a taxi (although my coverage bakes it in; I understand this to be applicable towards passengers).

The parent also said:

> Pleasantly tolerable fee for a day where my car hits black ice and physics takes the wheel

In this case, liability coverage as I understand it won't cover damage to the insured's vehicle while driving, which falls under "collision" and is entirely optional for a vehicle that is outright owned (i.e. no lien on the title) in any US state, as far as I'm aware.

So PIP would cover your injuries, PDL would cover damages to the property of others, "collision" covers your property while driving, and this other thing called "comprehensive" covers your property when not driving...and if that doesn't cover all the medical/property bills, then involved parties are free to sue each other.

[sushshshsh]

Why would I care about the damage done to my car if I'm knowingly paying for liability only on a sub $2000 car? When physics takes the wheel, I can't control who else I hit and how fast

[metaphor]

I apparently didn't catch the part of your previous remark where you alluded to the value of your car, but to be fair, the car insurance industry isn't both heavily regulated and immensely profitable because most people truly understand what they're buying, as a mandatory legal requirement more often than not.