Car insurance... state mandated extortion?

oops, I did not read far enough

my mistake about Virginia, istopped reading when it said , fulfills your responsibility

And one more thing about Virginia: you have to pay a personal property tax on any big ticket items you own, like cars, boats, motorcycles.

We are required to have flood insurance where I live because big brother in washington has deemed this area to be a flood area.

I have no problem removing that REQUIREMENT
as long as the people who live in the flood zones understand
that if they get flooded
Washington isn’t going to bail them out
again and again and again to the tune of about $50,000,000,000 over the past several decades.

People want to live in the flood plains
but want the Government take all the financial risk for them. So drop your insurance
then don’t come crying for a hand-out when you get flooded out.

Don’t forget that your normal homeowners/renters insurance does not pay for flood damage. They’ll pay for water pipes breaking and so on, but for the many folks here in the midwest that got flooded out by days of rain, they are out of luck. Flood insurance is generally too expensive for those that have never ever been flooded before, plus if I’m not mistaken, flood insurance does not pay for lower level (basement) damage until it gets to the main level. So one might ask what good is it anyway since all of your utilities are usually in the basement.

If you really wanted to get rid if mandating car insurance, then the law needs to be change so that you agree that by driving a car you hold the other people harmless in terms of money. You buy the coverage you think you’d need to cover your losses. Yes the other driver could be sent to jail for DUI, etc, but you wouldn’t collect any funds from them only from your insurance. Basically you’d buy accident insurance that covered you no matter what kind of accident. (yes each person would have to buy coverage to cover themselves) Now you can drive with no insurance if you want, but you can’t collect anything if there’s an accident. And I would go as far as saying if you don’t have insurance the hospital could REFUSE to treat you. BTW I would have used the same approach with the ACA, setup standard 70, 80 90% plans, pass a separate bill to help those who can afford insurance get it, and allow hospitals to refuse treatment (even in an emergency) if you don’t have insurance. That way you don’t need to buy health insurance if you don’t want it, but you can’t stick the rest of us with your bill.

EDITED for clarity

@rwee2000‌ That doesn’t address what happens to other drivers when the driver with this bare-bones insurance is at fault for an accident. How does their insurance company collect the money for repairs if the at fault driver has only covered himself for his own losses?

I felt that @rwee2000 was quite thorough in stating that eliminating all insurance mandates would best be served by leaving everyone on their own to sink or swim, @starman1.

Ok, so in that suggestion everybody must accept a level of risk by making the voluntary decision to drive a car?

In that case the most obvious problem is that cars can collide with things other than another car. Would everybody be forced with a decision to either live everyday life at higher risk or pay increased insurance in other areas. I.E. when a car hits a pedestrian, the pedestrian better have good health insurance because they can’t get any money from the driver. If a car drives through the front of a house, the homeowner better have good homeowners insurance because the drivers insurance won’t be paying out for this accident.

people get injured by foul balls everyday in the summer. it s the risk you take when you go to the game

I would think in a “no insurance” scenario, it would all revert to lawsuits in the courts.

So the guy who’s driving 50mph over the speed limit and wipes out 5 cars as he crashes through a red-light
takes no financial responsibility???

Who said he’s not financially responsible?

Who said he's not financially responsible?

If you don’t have insurance
and too poor to pay and don’t own any assets
then you don’t have any financial responsibility. I think we abolished debtor prisons years ago.

You’re confusing “responsibility” with “ability to pay.”

You're confusing "responsibility" with "ability to pay."

If they don’t have the ability to pay
then they don’t HAVE to pay
thus absolving them from all responsibility. I’ve dealt with it - with a couple of bad tenants I had. One Tenant did well over $20k damage to my duplex. He had no money
and no assets
Yes he was responsible (proven in a court of law)
but had no ability to pay
and never had to pay
thus absolving him from any financial responsibility.

Being a responsible adult means that you have to be able to make injured parties whole. For most of us this means we need the big assets of insurance companies for car insurance as well as an umbrella liability. Its not people driving 50 mph over the limit or driving drunk or texting. Its damage that anyone can do in the normal course of living. None of us intentionally goes out to injure someone or run into a school bus but it happens to the best of us. And when that happens we rely on insurance to take up the slack.

Being a responsible adult means that you have to be able to make injured parties whole.

I agree
but that’s the problem. I’ve dealt with a couple so-called adults (both over 40) who didn’t take any responsibility for any of their actions. I tried garnishing their wages
but they moved out of state
never had what you’d call careers
just different jobs. And garnishing wages out of state is almost IMPOSSIBLE.

“Yes he was responsible (proven in a court of law)
but had no ability to pay
and never had to pay
thus absolving him from any financial responsibility.”

So he was responsible, before he wasn’t responsible.

@wesw,

My insurance is less than the VA uninsured fee, but then again I carry only liability.