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Imagine it is illegal to insure your car fully comprehensively. If you hit someone or something, your insurance covers 3rd parties but not damage to your vehicle.
Would it change your behaviour behind the wheel?
I'd reckon it'd change how much folk spend on their vehicles, more than how they drive.
I’d reckon it’d change how much folk spend on their vehicles,
As additional.... what if the 3rd party payouts to other motorists were also capped? The rates of compensation for injuries to the person are reasonably set - rated by severity, and the length of time they should be except the heal (theres are 'special' factors too like loss of earnings, but the compensation for actual damage to the person is pretty fixed no matter how rich or poor the person you hit.)
What if damage to the vehicle you hit was fixed rate - a cap per segment of the car damaged and a total payment for a right-off set at a rate somewhere around the cost of an average car?
The value of your own car and the risk you pose to is as the driver to your own vehicle are a negligible part of your premium. Third party risks are a much larger portion of your insurance costs
Why am I as a driver paying, in effect, to insure the bumper on someone else's supercar?
Would it change your behaviour behind the wheel?
I don't believe it would change how I drive - I'm never consciously saying, "ah ****it the insurance will fix it". It would however probably mean I stop leasing cars.
Third party risks are a much larger portion of your insurance costs
They are, but I'm pretty sure they will be heavily loaded towards the potential for your driving to cause someone life changing injuries rather than some body panels and paint - after all if the vehicle damage is too high it just becomes a write off.
Why am I as a driver paying, in effect, to insure the bumper on someone else’s supercar?
Given the number of supercars on the road it must be negligible but is their bumper really that much more expensive than many other cars where there's a bunch of sensors and stuff included. If I suffer a loss due to your incompetence on the road I deserve to be compensated for that whether that loss is a dented wing on a 25 yr old fiat panda or a £100k because you wrote off my shiny new motor.
Having handled a claim where our policyholders 2CV wrote off a Lamborghini belonging to a supercar hire company, this is a can of worms we don't want opening!
But the value of your own vehicle is a very small part of the risk being calculated. Your £500 Fiat Panda could leave a toddler requiring 24/7 round the clock care for the next 80 years.
I remember a period where 3rd party only insurance became more expensive than fully comp because there was a correlation between people who would/could only pay for 3rd party were also the ones making more claims.
Why am I as a driver paying, in effect, to insure the bumper on someone else’s supercar?
Liability...to ensure that anybody can be compensated for liquidated damages in a no-fault accident. Ultimately its not about bumpers though but more about lifetime care and expenses if you paralyse someone from the neck down - could even be a pedestrian or cyclist. In such a situation not many people have a few million in the bank to pay out.
the cost of a bumper on a supercar is negligable compared to potential loss of earnings and care - payouts can easily reach into the 10s of millions for someone who needs a lifetime of care vs maybe 10k for a bumper and a respray. The selby rail crash was somewhere north of £30m for falling asleep at the wheel - think how many accident-free policies at £200/pop you need to sell to cover that.
for me, no it wouldn't. my cars cheap enough that the excess plus raised premiums isn't massively smaller than the value of it anyway.
You are Karen Horner and I claim my £5...
Can't see it making a difference other than to piss people off and appeal to the inversely sobbish.
Follow that thought to its conclusion and you get the inversely snobbish ramming their Nissan Micra into anything that looks expensive just because they can't stand that some people like nice cars and there's no comeback.
You also assume the risk is evenly split. My nice car costs £97 a year to insure with no NCD (and an agreed valuation certificate). My bangernomics Berlingo costs £400 and the excess is almost as much as the car is worth.
In NZ third party insurance is devolved into two segments, injury, which is nationalised and funded through car registration fees and pump tax, and property damage, therefore purchased third party insurance only covers material damage.
Notoriously, car insurance of any flavour is optional, allowing the yoof (and others) to purchase any vehicle that fits their budget, regardless of performance, and frees them up from having to set aside money for purchasing a policy.
Nope, because I drive like Miss Daisy
Given the number of supercars on the road it must be negligible but is their bumper really that much more expensive than many other cars where there’s a bunch of sensors and stuff included.
Its a thought that occurred to me while following a TVR Tuscan (which isn't really a super car, or screwed together well enough that you'd actually be likely to encounter a road-worthy one in order to crash into it these days) In the design of many cars theres a sort of gentleman's agreement that the bits that are likely to come into contact in a minor incident are designed to absorb that mishap where possible and be readily replaceable if its something a bit more than that. Even if the unit cost of a fancy-pants sensor ridden bumper is relatively high, the labour cost and time off the road is pretty modest. If you bumped the back of a TVR the whole rear of the car from, the B pillar backwards, was one continuous wrap around panel, so the most modest of bumps could result is really quite major repairs. If everyone else's cars are designed to try and mitigate the cost of minor accidents why should their insurers bare the cost of the cars that aren't?
In the same way that being injured because you're not wearing a seatbelt when injured in an accident that isn't your fault may be considered considered 'Contributory Negligence' shouldn't that concept extend to vehicles that expensive to repair not because of the severity of an impact but because they are unnecessarily delicate?
It would change behaviour. Same as seatbelt lass resulted in fewer drivers being killed but more pedestrians and cyclists. Risk compensation.
http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2009/11/05/seat-belts-another-look-at-the-data/
In general the problem width road safety is that most people don't percieve that they are taking a risk. So I think it wound have no real impact.
Some how we have to stop regular risky behaviour, texting etc.
I don't think it would change my behaviour.
I'm not more haphazard about how/where I lock my bike when it's insured over when it's not insured.
As others have said aside from potentially some change in choice of car I cant see much change in how people drive. Might see more cars with minor/medium damage but then again many would either pay for that privately or leave it as it is currently to avoid higher premiums.
Maybe if insurance excess meant using up all your cash before using the insurance money it might make a difference when applied to third party but even then I doubt it. Reminds me of some of the cartoons/comments last time there was a fire brigade strike and various ministers were popping up saying drive carefully now.
I’d reckon it’d change how much folk spend on their vehicles
I wonder what effect it would have on new cars. First, would anyone want to spend that much. Second, cheap to repair (or damage-resistant) might become a design feature and selling point.