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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Insurers aren’t properly internalizing the liability costs and therefore are pricing premiums too low for the risk these vehicles create. Maybe judgements need to be higher for deaths and injuries caused by overweight vehicles? I don’t have enough context to say. If they’re significantly more dangerous, it should be priced accordingly (based on claims data).

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I don’t have any data myself, but it is a common argument in the United States that automobile drivers enjoy ridiculously little legal liability for injuring or killing pedestrians and cyclists in all but the grossest cases of recklessness or negligence.

Here is a recent case where a driver of a Jeep swerved into the oncoming lane to at high speed try to hit a bicyclist. They were only given a misdemeanor.

This person should not be allowed to drive a motor vehicle. There is almost no consequences for motorists who repeatedly violate the law and risk others' lives. We should be much more aggressive about taking away people's drivers licenses who demonstrate that they are incapable of public safety.

https://jalopnik.com/jeep-driver-gets-misdemeanor-after-tryi...

They don't really care about a lot of the externalities, like more land used per parking spot, more energy used by transportation, increased road wear from heavier vehicles, etc.

They would certainly be leaving a lot of money on the table if that were true.

Right, if big vehicles are more dangerous, where is that uninternalized cost being squeezed out if not the vehicle owner’s premium.

Who says more dangerous equals more expensive? Killing a victim can often be cheaper than the medical costs required to treat a severely injured person.

Or more commonly, someone who drives a compact car drunk habitually through a dangerous neighborhood is higher risk than a high-income person with a good driving record who drives a heavy car in a quiet suburb.

The people who cause the most insurance losses are often people who really don't have their lives together. They're driving cheap pieces of junk and wrecking them frequently.

> Killing a victim can often be cheaper than the medical costs required to treat a severely injured person.

Maybe, but I am rather skeptical of this claim being true under most circumstances.

And even if it is true that the payout from insurance is bigger in the case of injury than death, there's potentially lost revenue if the insured goes to jail.

>there's potentially lost revenue if the insured goes to jail.

It is surprisingly hard to end up in jail after killing someone with your car in the US. As long as you weren't drunk, weren't doing something crazy like going 40mph over the speed limit, and didn't flee the scene, the most you are generally looking at is a misdemeanor if you are charged with anything at all.

Likely the victim's medical or comprehensive insurance - most states only require very small liability limit policies that won't really cover much in a big crash.

California, for instance only requires ~30k injury coverage and ~5k property damage, not even enough to replace a cheap used car when totaled these days.

Strong agree that California’s minimums for insurance don’t make sense. I’m constantly surrounded by $75,000+ cars and have bumped up coverage amounts considerably

Weight is a confounding factor if an accident does happen, but the biggest risk that insurers deal with is the driver and the environment in which they operate their vehicle.

Attributes like weight or type about a vehicle have relatively vanishing impact on risk in reality. https://www.iihs.org/ratings/insurance-losses-by-make-and-mo...

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