Before Driving a Zipcar, Consider Liability Insurance | Hacker News Reader

Before Driving a Zipcar, Consider Liability Insurance

nytimes.com

12 pointsmikecarlton9 comments

This reads like a hit piece by someone with a grudge against zipcar, for some reason. It seems well written enough but I can't figure out why zipcar is mentioned repeatedly when he provides examples of other car sharing services that do worse, and one person he quotes mentions individuals with 50k policy limits. This article would be better if it was cautioning all car drivers to ensure they had adequate insurance.

I like how he proudly claims to have been advocating this issue since 2005, then begrudgingly writes that it has never been an actual problem in ZipCar's history.

You buy insurance mostly to protect against costs that are expensive and unlikely to happen. The article points out that in New York, which has a lot of Zipcar customers, 3 percent of bodily injury liability insurane claims are over $300,000. So although no Zipcar rental has yet resulted in such a claim, it still seems like something worth insuring against.

What the hell kind of story is this? The $300,000 is a perfectly reasonable coverage. Right now I have $250,000 per person and $500,000 per accident liability coverage and I find that to be perfectly reasonable. You can't even go over $500,000. This hit piece making it seem like $300,000 is cheaping/screwing the customer is pretty sickening.

> The $300,000 is a perfectly reasonable coverage.

Really? My liability insurance in Germany covers up to €100 million per accident, and that's pretty standard. I always feel a bit anxious when driving rental cars in the US (even with SLI) considering how sue happy Americans are.

I'd hate to see what a €100 million euro car accident looks like! It seems like you'd have actually have intent in order to actually be responsible for that much damage.

http://www.insure.com/articles/lifeinsurance/body-parts.html

Random googlings point me towards Haftpflichtversicherung being German Third party liability insurance which seems to be uniquely German in that it is so high compared to other countries. The linked forum[1] talks about Germans being shocked others don't carry such high coverage.

US States set their own minimums and none break $100k required. [2]

[1] http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t97713.html [2] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States...

Yeah, I don't know what the big deal is either. I am a happy Zipcar member (for when I'm in SF) and I own my own cars (down in LA) and I drive a fair amount (30k+ miles/year). People driving around me would be lucky to have that kind of liability insurance in CA where the minimum is like 10% of what Zipcar provides, and that scares me more than the idea of getting into a catastrophic accident in a Zipcar.

It's a cheap shot for sure, but it would be nice if zipcar offered some extended liability coverage.

EDIT: If any hn'ers have experience with non-owner's auto insurance and didn't totally hate the company, please let me know.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com