A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Scott:
===========
You are free to sue me if I do you harm should you decide not to buy
accidental damage and injury insurance. That's the way it should be.

Why "MUST" such insurance be compulsory?
===============

And if sue you, you may own nothing and then I'm SOL.

True. That's an excellent reason for YOU to buy insurance to cover YOU
against that risk, isn't it? In fact, that's the whole point of insurance,
to insure YOU against harm caused by someone, or something else, like a
fire, flood or burglar. "Liability" insurance, on the other hand, insures
OTHERS against you. Screw that. I don't want to insure you against me. If
you want to be insured against the wrongful acts of others, then YOU pay the
bill.


That's why such insurance MUST be compulsory.

No, that's why YOU want to force ME to pay to insure YOU, it's not a reason
why I should do so. If I don't own anything, and am therefore "judgment
proof," then you need to buy insurance to protect you against people like me
who might do you harm, not just in automobiles, but in any way. That's the
way insurance works, you see. You decide how much risk you face and you pay
a company to indemnify you for monetary losses associated with that risk.
You don't demand that everyone else on the planet obtain "liability"
insurance to cover you against some harm that they are statistically
unlikely to cause.

The fallacy of mandatory liability insurance is that it presumes that each
driver is an equal risk when it comes to causing an accident, and that this
means that all drivers should indemnify every other driver against loss.
This means that a good driver pays far more in premiums than he should
because he's not being insured based on HIS risk profile, instead he's being
charged based on the aggregate risk profile of the *worst of the worst*
drivers, ie: those drivers who are most likely to cause the insurance
company to have to pay money.

It's asinine for someone to have to pay based on the behavior of others they
have no control over.


Scott again:
==================
Then why is it not a "fee?" Why do I have to contract with a private
company
and pay them for a full year's coverage, 24/7, that I don't need, as
opposed
to having this "fee" assessed by the government, which would then
provide
the insurance itself.
===============

Well, in BC, you buy your insurance from a government insurance firm.
Without it, you may not drive. Quite right too, IMHO.

So, do you have to buy insurance as a pedestrian so that if you drunkenly
step out into traffic and cause a driver to swerve and crash? No? Didn't
think so. So why aren't you arguing for universal "user pays" liability
insurance to protect you against any possible harm that someone else might
possibly do to you...like, for example, burning down your house, or slugging
you in the nose or hitting you in the head with a baseball bat? Why are
those risks ones you have to pay to cover against but automobile liability
insurance is coerced against someone else?

Your system is somewhat better than ours, in that it's merely a compensation
fund paid for by the highway users, who presumably pay about the same amount
as everyone else, but it's still coercive where it should be voluntary. If I
wish to take the risk of being injured by some dipwad on the highway and
don't want to buy insurance to cover that risk, I should be allowed to do
so.


BTW, I too think it unfair that you pay 365 days insurance for only a
few days use. Surely you can buy insurance for short-term use.

Nope. I should be able to take the risk of driving the truck to the dump if
I want, and if something bad happens and you and I collide, then no matter
whose fault it is, your insurance company pays you for your damages. Then
they sue me.

In the mandatory liability policy model, when I cause a wreck, my liability
insurer is liable for the damages, so my company will fight tooth and nail
to deny the claim, defend me and my actions and place the blame on you, and
you'll be lucky if you ever see a dime from my liability insurance policy.
However, if YOU have insurance to protect YOU against harms caused by
others, then YOUR insurance company has to pay off and then try to extract
compensation from me, or my insurance company. You're much more likely to
actually get a timely settlement if YOU insure yourself rather than trusting
to MY insurance company's altruism.

They call such insurance "uninsured motorist coverage," and it's designed
precisely to compensate me if the person who harmed me is indigent or
uninsured. In Colorado, in fact, it's a very good idea to have such
coverage, because we just repealed the "no fault" law, in which each
individual's insurer paid for their customer's loss no matter who was at
fault, and then the two companies slugged it out in court.

Now, even if I deliberately ram you with my car, you have to sue me anyway
to get anything, and you can be sure that my insurance company will do
everything in its power to prevent you from winning. And, if YOU don't have
insurance against such risks, then YOUR liability insurance provider WILL
NOT HELP YOU in court to win the case, as they would if it was their dime on
the line. This means that you have to hire a private attorney in order to
sue me, and you're up against the weight of a well-funded major insurance
company's legal staff who are strongly motivated to keep from letting you
win.

But, if YOU had insurance against being rammed by me, then your company
would have to pay you, and then your company would be the one suing me to
try to recover their payout.

So, the mandatory liability scam is not just a scam, it's quite dangerous to
rely upon.

Besides, I bet that under the BC system, you forfeit your right to sue
anybody, because such forfeiture of rights is common in government-run
insurance/compensation fund schemes...because the government doesn't want to
be involved in litigation.


As to Scott's assertion: "Sorry, but whether I carry insurance is none
of your, or especially the government's business, and you can both go
pound sand. If you don't like it, then don't drive."

That may work in Colorado, but not in BC. And I'm thankful for that.

Oh, I bet it happens in BC too. The point, however, is that your argument is
specious and not logically supportable. It's quite socialistically
predictable, but unsupportable nonetheless.


--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser