[mattlondon]

It kinda works already without outright banning them: the mandatory insurance will get more and more expensive the more accidents they have.

So they price themselves out.

Of course, they may then decide not to have insurance at all. In most countries that is illegal and doing that in a premeditated way is criminality and something else entirely.

Not sure if insurance is mandatory in the US or not - I assume instead you just get into a gunfight with the other party instead?/s

[amy_petrik]

Not sure if insurance is mandatory in the US or not

It's mandatory and requiring proof when you register your car. Your insurer also has a line to the DMV (car registration government) to say, "FYI this guy is not insured" and the DMV gets mad.

It's a known problem, particularly with undocumented peoples, that they are often uninsured. California studied the issue: https://www.insurance.ca.gov/01-consumers/105-type/95-guides...

In the report California states up to 13% of the US residents of some areas do not happen to possess documentation documenting their legality of being in the US. Often they came from countries with no insurance requirement, so they are unaware of American culture and policies in this regard. The report also states 10% of drivers are uninsured. I'm not sure why the DMV isn't getting mad in this case, being informed the car is not insured. So it's "mandatory" but 10% of drivers are not insured. Similar to how in California retail theft is technically "illegal" but a lot of people will do that without consequences. Honestly if you ask me we need to be waiving the insurance requirement for cultural reasons and take a verbal Spanish-first policy to help accommodate people who have undocumented English skills or are without documentation of being literate.

[londons_explore]

1 issue is insurance doesn't pay out much for road deaths.

Government generally budgets deaths at $3M-$30M per person killed. Yet a car accident that kills someone usually doesn't result in any payout at all.

That in turn means insurance companies are offering risky people lower rates than economists would suggest for the societal cost/risk.

[potato3732842]

Just because it costs the government 10mil or whatever when they have an oopsie and kill someone doesn't mean anyone outside the .gov is actually seeing a cent. It's mostly overhead of cleanup, both physical and legal/process.

I bet the actual payouts to families are similar for normal deaths that don't result in a media spectacle and the court of public opinion being involved.

[londons_explore]

If you're having an accident costing $10k twice a year, your insurance ought to cost at least $20k/year.

But for whatever reason, it seems such people end up with far lower (yet still expensive) insurance quotes at more like $4k/year.

[potato3732842]

They can't charge $20k/yr because that costs more than buying a POS, not registering it and getting it out of impound a couple times and then abandoning it.

With numbers like that you're fundamentally running against the people's willingness to comply (which includes the cop's willingness to enforce).

[steveBK123]

Precisely - even insurance doesn't have the fat tail of awful driver data because they are disproportionately driving around uninsured illegally.

[n4r9]

That doesn't make any sense. The insurance company willingly loses money just to avoid the possibility of someone driving illegally?

[potato3732842]

They're not losing money. They're taking it from everyone else.

"oh you hit a mailbox during an ice storm that we paid out $50 for after your deductible, that'll be a $400/6mo increase in premiums for the next five years"

[n4r9]

Still doesn't seem to add up. Consider someone that causes accidents at a rate of £20k/yr, and whose insurance is £4k/y. Either they're insanely wealthy and are paying the repair costs themselves via deductibles, or the insurance companies are losing money.

[potato3732842]

You don't understand. Insurance is using that person as a pretext to jack up the rate of everyone who shares demographics with that person. Even if that person is only paying in 80% of what they cost on a 5yr basis a bunch of cheaper people are getting screwed into paying 200%. It works better for insurance company this way because at least they're getting 80% out of the guy rather than zero.

[trollbridge]

It’s mandatory. That doesn’t stop people from driving a relative’s car with no insurance. Or driving with expired tags.

Good luck if such a person hits you; they’ll simply drive off. Recently a friend of mine had a fender bender with someone else, most likely his fault. That person didn’t have a valid registration or insurance and wasn’t at fault but begged to just go without calling the police. My friend handed them the cash out of his pocket since he felt bad for damaging their car, but they did NOT want to see the police.

The only way to enforce not having expired tags/no licence/no insurance is strict police enforcement. A lot of Americans don’t like that and so police agencies end up being lenient, preferring to focus on more violent crimes instead of just trying to pull every car with expired tags over.

[steveBK123]

Wait until you hear about the post-COVID rates of lawlessness in the US with uninsured and/or unlicensed drivers on the road..