Relatedly, I think the government should evaluate vehicles for pedestrian safety and impose appropriate liability insurance minimums on failing vehicles. The same goes for vehicles with aftermarket modifications that reduce pedestrian safety.
There should be a tax applied to excessively large consumer vehicles. They have an outsized affect on the roads, on the safety of others, and cause stupid things like not being able to see past them when they are in front of you.
They should also pay much more for insurance, since they, again, will consume an outsized portion of it, compared to others not driving a penis replacement.
For pedestrians, I suspect it's no different. Whether you're hit by a Kia Soul or one of these Canyoneros, you're still quite likely to die, assuming the vehicle is going faster than 5mph.
The bigger vehicles slam you down and then drive over you, for a much less pleasant experience.
You'll be sent into the air. Not 400feet or anything, but you will not simply be rolling gently over the vehicle, then hop off and continue your day.
How high do you think someone can fly without cracking your skull when you land on pavement?
Where did I say I'd be rolling gently over the vehicle?
I'd much rather have the chance of rolling, flying, or at least something that will allow my body the chance to lose momentum. Rather than within 1 second find my skull under the wheel of a 9,000 lb vehicle.
I don't mean to imply that that is a low risk, only that speed is quite a crucial factor.
I'm still surprised California hasn't tried enforcing weight taxes again given many residential streets even still have weight limits posted but not enforced. I'm not surprised that so far no other state currently has the political willpower to upset consumers like that (or to deal with federal complications against a congressional atmosphere and regulatory capture that thinks such taxes are unfair to inter-state commerce).
Those events just aren't as common as HN believes, so the driver of a KillMax HighBumper 9000 doesn't pay much more in insurance than the driver of a Civic.
There aren't any insurance companies that will even write you a car insurance policy that will cover the potential costs for a very serious injury. It is too risky for them. Heck, the maximum coverage you can even voluntarily buy in the US is lower than the minimum requirements in some other countries. Some countries require millions or tens of millions in coverage, some require unlimited liability. In most of the US many insurers won't even let you voluntarily buy more than $250k/person, and are only required a tenth of that.
(Seriously, it's quite magical. A high-limit umbrella policy plus a minimum-limit homeowners' or renters' policy and minimul-limit auto policy is generally less expensive than moderate-limit policies without the umbrella.)
The reality is, in many parts of the US, half or more of drivers have minimum coverage or zero coverage.
Damages to the car and driver are either covered under separate provisions of insurance or come out of pocket.
Hardly anyone has assets of $10 million, so they do not have the assets to insure. Many people do not even have assets of $50k, so again, why would they need insurance? If they get a judgement against them for $50k, they are bankrupt. That's what bankruptcy laws are for.
If your life is worth $10 million, you need to be the one to insure it for $10 million. Not the working class person who has no assets.
I see forced purchases of insurance for people with nothing to insure as similar to debtor's prison. Obviously not as extreme, but the same concept.
That's probably because you're looking at it entirely wrong.
The third-party cover in insurance is not for you (the driver), it's for the poor sod that you turn into a pavement stain.
If you kill them, their family has had someone taken away from them - would you be happy with $50K for the loss of a spouse?
If you don't kill them, but inflict life-changing injuries, the resulting lifetime healthcare costs could easily be more than $50K.
When you take to the road, you do incur some risk, but on average you pose more of a risk to others, particularly if you've chosen to drive a car that you can't see in front of properly.
The UK introduced compulsory third-party cover in 1988. Even back then, the cap was £250,000 - it's not led to any societal problems (although, the accident rate in the UK is far, far lower than in the US so policies probably are going to be cheaper).
I do agree, though, that 10 mil is definitely pushing it a bit far.
If that was an issue for me, I would make sure that I had the appropriate level of insurance for that event, rather than relying on the hope that some random driver on the streets where I live would have the appropriate level of insurance. Many of the drivers where I live have no license, the cars they are driving aren't registered, and they have no insurance.
That's a law enforcement issue (they don't enforce laws here either), not an civil one. The insurance thing is my responsibility.
If you get run over by a car in California and you're lucky enough to get hit by one of the 83% of drivers that has car insurance, and one of the ~90% of drivers who stop for an accident, the insurance company is required by law to provide you $15k in coverage for your injuries.
Not every problem requires a new layer of bureaucracy. I could imagine companies gaming the tax by being just a pound shy and just all the unnecessary red tape seems very wasteful without actually fixing the problem
I think the most practical solution will be to take all of the externalized costs of these vehicles, and charge them to their owners. I would argue that this is, in fact, less bureaucratic than creating more regulation.
Don't worry, this won't be new regulation, just a sweeping ban of certain vehicles based on a number of factors
Do you ever think what the externalized costs for having thousands of regulations are to businesses and consumers? Attitudes like yours is the reason I can't buy a kinder egg in US or European eggs have exactly opposite regulatory requirements in US vs Europe.
We eschew this kind of complexity in engineering. It's the most obvious thing in the world. Anybody that works on complex systems will tell you the same. But we view regulation and government as immune from these kinds of tradeoffs. We hear things like "this bad thing should be banned" and never stop to think what that means in practice and what fragility and distortions it adds to the system
In unrelated news, average new car prices in the US climb to 48k while China has a new car under 10k
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a39617404/nhtsa-fuel-econo...