What if Insurers Didn't Pay for Crashes Caused by Texting? | Hacker News Reader

What if Insurers Didn't Pay for Crashes Caused by Texting?

bucks.blogs.nytimes.com

8 pointsFluidDjango24 comments

People would lie and say they weren't texting. Premiums would increase. The end.

Unless the insurance companies can get hold of phone records, and find time stamps of texting activity. Depending on the phone, there maybe keystroke logging info available as well.

"The other person in the car was using it."

Interestingly enough this would drive for increased surveillance in the name of safety -- "but airbag deployment sensor didn't register anyone being seated in the car besides the driver". Isn't data obtained from black-boxes on cars already used in some court cases to solve disputes about the speed at the time of crash?

Is anyone's behavior is affected by what their insurance carrier covers? Maybe 1% of people-but that's likely people who are careful enough not to text while driving in the first place.

This is like shouting to the world "fat people should eat less and exercise more!"

This is the key point, in my opinion. If someone is willing to risk their life to text while driving, someone is willing to risk financial ruin while driving. It's even less of an incentive and would change nothing.

In order to have a successful campaign against texting while driving, it must be made socially and culturally taboo, the way driving drunk is in most places.

This is a bad idea. As the article points out, the point of insurance is to cover this kind of thing.

What insurers should do is steeply jack up rates for first-time crashes when the driver is doing something irresponsible, and make these consequences public knowledge. But this isn't the best idea either -- now people with poor decision making skills get to choose between insurance and {booze, cell phones, ...}, and the party that loses is the person they hit while driving uninsured.

I suspect what it will really take is a MADD-style campaign to turn public opinion heavily against using phones while driving. Just zinging people when they get into a wreck won't modify behavior much; there needs to be a punishment for actually engaging in the behavior. Doing it with laws won't cut it either; the people who enforce said laws are some of the worst offenders when it comes to tinkering with mobile devices while driving, from what I've seen. (I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's a job requirement.) About the only mechanism that can really do the job with any sort of consistency is social pressure.

I've said this before, and I'll restate it again here for relevancy.

We have spent people's entire lives vilifying drunk driving. We haven't had nearly as much time to demonize texting and driving. Comparatively, it's a relatively new phenomenon, even if the act of driving while distracted (cheeseburger, conversation, just plain not paying attention) are not.

I've personally been in the car with someone who was so nervous and preoccupied with something that was on his mind, he rear ended a guy who was in front of us plain as day. He wasn't drunk, he wasn't texting, he was just thinking too much about things that weren't on the road. A lapse in judgement and observation and SMACK right in to the next guy's bumper.

Education on why it is a terrible, horrible idea to text while driving is certainty a step in the right direction, though I've always been a believer in making the punishment fit the crime. Driving while texting and cause an accident? Take away your ability to send/receive text messages.

Disagree. Insurance to cover accidents doesn't have to cover negligence.

Since most people don't have the funds to cover the costs of damage done with a multi-ton hunk of metal moving at high-speeds, we require them to have insurance in order to operate such a thing. We've left it up to the insurance companies to determine the odds of an individual operating the vehicle in a negligent manner. If you have a better idea, let me know.

No, but its an irrational model that doesn't work (clearly).

Lets imagine I could insure myself against irresponsible gambling. What are the odds then? Who pays?

If a model doesn't work, it doesn't work.

Actually that model works phenomenally well. Let's say you wanted to greatly reduce the amount of irresponsible gambling in legal casinos:

1) You require all gamblers to furnish proof of insurance against large losses

Problem solved! Private insurance companies will only insure those that are unlikely to make poor bets, will engage in deductibles and caps to limit their losses on the few that will be irresponsible.

The cost is that all people will have to fund the first-time offences of the irresponsible, but for driving that's an inefficiency that is probably worth it.

In Australia the mandatory insurance will cover any third party medical bills. Any insurance to cover more than that (your medical bill, your property or third party property) won't pay you in case of negligence (drunk driving, knowing that the car was road unworthy etc).

"An accident is an accident"

I don't like this mentality. Is a collision caused by drunk driving really an accident?

It doesn't matter, because the most important reason you have insurance is to cover your liability to other people. If you rescind that coverage, you're screwing over the other people.

Obviously, if you harm other people by driving while intoxicated, it should immediately become sharply (perhaps untenably so) more expensive to insure you.

I'm not arguing against insuring negligence, I'm arguing against calling negligence an accident. It's a neat way of removing culpability. "It was just an accident!"

"An accident is an accident" was being said by the insurance specialist, and in reference to the insurer's responsibility. In context, it was meant to say nearly the opposite of what you're inferring - something more along the lines of, "We can't pick and choose like that." Which is true; doing so would defeat the whole point of mandatory liability insurance.

From the insurer's perspective, yes, yes it is. There's damage and the insured has contracted the insurer to compensate for the damage caused. What if the drunk driver can't pay an injured party's medical bills? Do you just say, "Well, he was drunk, so there."? No, of course not--the injured parties need to be compensated and have their medical bills taken care of--doctors don't work for free.

Of course, I just don't think they should be called "accidents." When a person is willfully negligent the damage they cause is no accident.

I think it's just part of our society's bias in favor of motor vehicles, to assume that any damage with a vehicle involved is an "accident".

I have been on a bicycle when someone deliberately tried to run me off the road for "fun".

The only criminal case ever in the whole state of Texas, where it was actually assumed that a driver deliberately tried to run a bicyclist off the road, and it was no "accident", was when some guy happened to do it to Lance Armstrong. In every other case, it was legally assumed to be an accident.

But, as the article states, where do you draw the line? You could argue that someone changing radio stations was "willfully negligent." It is not up to insurance companies to decide legality or enforce the law. If the driver was found to be doing something negligent or illegal, they will be fined/charged by the police.

Of course. Collisions aren't "caused by" drunk driving. They are caused by drunk drivers, who make more mistakes than average.

Out of all the problems our country has with insurance firms, I'm not sure "they cover too much" is one of them.

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