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Comment by tamimio | Hacker News Reader

It won’t work as you expect. Most of these drivers don’t have insurance. Second, you might make things worse, as now you have other Karen-like drivers who will eventually start threatening other people to report them, and that will escalate a situation from flipping a bird to a more dangerous situation. I sometimes watch dashcam rage videos on YouTube, and these drivers won’t care or even become more aggressive once told there’s a dashcam. This is not to mention the questionable results of ML that could report false positives.

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It's not clear to me how you can claim most of these drivers don't have insurance.

Also. Nothing is stopping Karen's from reporting things right now. So what if they do? If you've done nothing wrong then the reviewer would just trash it. And probably put Karen's reports in the "immediately discard" pile in the future if she sends in frivolous claims all the time.

> If you've done nothing wrong then the reviewer would just trash it.

Or, more likely, they'll just see it as a report and raise your rates, because you've been reported by someone. Because they can; all they need is a reason.

Plus, I don't like the idea that someone I don't like could editorially create a video of it looking like I was driving irresponsibly, and then my rates go up. Then they do it again and again.

Example: When I leave in the morning, I take my daughter to the bus stop. I then wait for her bus to get there, she gets on, and I wait to turn left onto the road. The bus driver waves me on, to take my left before they let the other traffic go, so I don't have to wait for 20+ cars. I turn left and off I go. I expect it wouldn't be hard to edit a video of that to make it look like I pulled up to a bus picking up children and then drove through the bus stop signal illegally.

I watched dashcam videos, and most times after accidents, it turned out that there is no insurance or, worse, wrong insurance information is given, only to be found later that it’s fake. Obviously, this is not real statistics, but something I observed.

> nothing is stopping Karens from reporting things

True, but when you provide a platform for that, you incentivize the behavior. As mentioned below, you might start getting “points” in the app for these reports, just like how you report gas prices and get points that might win you free gas.

And likewise, you might get points deducted for wasting the reviewers time with a frivolous submission.

The far more risky and dangerous - ostensibly for the original caller too - phenomenon of swatting exists despite all that. I would not be so sure about the quality of society's controls and feedback mechanisms.

If we're talking about the Bay Area, anecdotally my experience is the percentage of uninsured drivers seems MUCH higher than other California metros.

I have used footage from my Tesla to get evidence and plate # that I could hand over to my insurance company and the police three times. 2 out of 3 were uninsured. This was during the past two years.

Around 10-30% of drivers in the United States don't have car insurance depending on the state.

It really depends on the state on how strict they are with car insurance. My state is very lax and they don't even really check at the DMV. The fine for not having car insurance is also only ~300 bucks and a 90 day license suspension and it only goes up slightly until like the 4-5 time you get caught. It just honestly doesn't make sense to have car insurance with the cost/risk that low. People who pay $50-100 bucks a month for car insurance are morons btw. You can insure yourself for like $30k, and you don't have $30k lying around paying $100 bucks a month is a terrible financial decision.

Insurance in general is a whole racket. Its literally only works due to the fact people on average pay more than they receive. "Oh but what if a bad thing happens" way to live your life, disregarding economics and averages.

Take out a personal loan or save the money you would spend on insurance evry year in a liquid asset (not cash that's almost as bad as insurance). Buying insurance is for npcs.

Only insurance that makes sense to have is insurance that is government subsidized, but that isn't because its better its because you are forced to pay part of its cost with your taxes. Enjoy getting screwed sideways by big government, who literally paya middle man to help ensure their citizens get healthcare instead of directly to the actual healthcare facilities. Insurance offers no service, its a worse scam than banks and credit cards combined.

> Insurance in general is a whole racket. Its literally only works due to the fact people on average pay more than they receive. "Oh but what if a bad thing happens" way to live your life, disregarding economics and averages.

That's literally the _entire_ point of insurance. You pay a little more than the average you're expected to actually need so that, in the event of a catastrophic event, your not on the hook for an amount that would destroy you financially. The fact that any sane person would think that you should expect to collect, on average, more from insurance than you pay into it... is baffling to me. Just plain math would show that's impossible.

I wanted to add a side note that I don't believe that all insurance types make sense in every situation. For example, I was presented with the option of buying pet insurance recently. I make enough that, for any given problem my pet might have, I can cover the expense. As such, there is no "catastrophic outcome" that would cause me serious financial harm. That, combined with the fact that the code of pet insurance is slightly higher than the expected cost for everything my pet needs, means it doesn't make sense for me to buy pet insurance. As such, I chose not to.

Admittedly, having it since we got her would have wound up saving us money overall, since she's had two CCL surgeries (at ~6-7k a piece). But the decision we made was based on expected cost and averages; so the choice me made was (effectively) a bet that didn't turn out to be the right one. But it generally _would_ be the right one given the facts we had at the time we originally got her.

I am saying insurance as a concept is stupid and anyone who has insurance is dumb except in few rare cases caused by government tipping the scales of the market.

The only thing baffling here us your reading comprehension bud.

You missed my entire point. You think I think that? Well, if I was on another website I would say something about you as a person about the type of human being who can't even understand what they are reading but then replies with an ignorant comment.

> I am saying insurance as a concept is stupid and anyone who has insurance is dumb except in few rare cases

I disagree with this completely. I have a car. I drive safely. It is unlikely that I will get in an accident and hurt someone. But I pay for insurance because it's _possible_ it will happen anyways. If something goes wrong, I could either

- Have the insurance I pay for cover the expense of handling it, or

- Have everything I own taken from me to cover the expense of handling it

The cost of insurance is above the the cost of (<covering the expense of a catastrophic event> * <likelihood of me having such an outcome>), but still very much below the cost of (<covering the expense of a catastrophic event>). As such, it is my belief that it makes sense for me to pay for that insurance.

I find it confusing that anyone would believe otherwise. Unless perhaps you're saying that the government should cover all such catastrophic outcomes, which doesn't seem realistic to me.

> Well, if I was on another website I would say something about you as a person

So, you'll insult me and pretend like you didn't? What are you, 6 years old? Clearly you found it insulting that I could not comprehend your view on the subject (which was not my intent), but seriously?

I didn't read this except the last part. But don't be hostile and insulting if you don't want a responze back. In real life if someone ever talked to me the way you do, it wouldn't be words and it wouldn't a fight.

People who insult out of nowhere grew up in the softest environment where you could get away with that. You lived a privileged charmin lifestyle where you could say whatever you wanted and not have any consequences. I wish just for a second i could see you in person.

To paint a clearer picture for you since you love to twist whatever I say, certain people from privileged groups have mastered the art of aggression from a thin vaneer of social acceptability. I deny this aggression. If you show me aggression, I don't care what socially acceptable way you show it. This isn't football, in real life its not a game. Your life is a game, never experienced anything real. Suburban fraud.

> You can insure yourself for like $30k, and you don't have $30k lying around paying $100 bucks a month is a terrible financial decision.

Certainly not here (Washington), you must have at least $60,000 AND it MUST be deposited with the DOL or State, unavailable to you, and you will not earn interest on it.

How do you propose people get to and from work to come up with $30-60K in savings that they can afford just to have sitting on account with the state?

> Take out a personal loan or save the money you would spend on insurance evry year

You're generally paying around 9-12% on this personal loan. Say it's over 5 years (that's assuming you can afford the $1,300/month payment), you're paying $21,000 in interest.

> Buying insurance is for npcs.

So your solution to NOT pay $50-100 a month for insurance is to pay a lender $1,300/mo for 5 years (assuming the amounts haven't increased then)? I don't think you've actually thought this through.

It literally would take you FIFTY YEARS to break even on this plan.

And in the meantime, you're only "insured" for the minimums, and if you're in a car accident at fault can easily be sued for more.

If I'm reading RCW 46.29.560 correctly, you do get the interest, and I think you can shop around to hopefully get a decent rate on a CD to deposit?

That said, if you expect 10% returns on equities and 5% interest on a CD, you still need to be paying around $3k/year for insurance for that to be a good deal on expectation. It could make sense if interest rates are really high, or I suppose if you use a loan to buy a CD, you'd just be paying the spread. Seems like a lot of work and extra liability to maybe save a few hundred dollars when presumably anyone doing this would consider that a rounding error.

Right.. except the whole "argument" falls apart if we consider liability insurance. You can't force other people to have an extra $30k "just in case".

The point of mandated auto insurance is that a lot of people don't have an extra 30k, but we want even those without that extra 30k to be able to drive without those they might get into an accident with having their car damaged through no fault of their own and no way to get back the money from the person who caused it.

Makes no sense. Just have a better court system that makes people who cause damages to other's car have to pay a certain amount to that person per month. Like car insurance but there isn't a middle man and you only pay when you get in an accident.

Garnishment can be too slow to deal with the victim's liabilities, and even still has no guarantee of ever repaying the loss.

No, just make them pay out 30k in installments if they arw liable for something.

Or take them to court. The average person will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in their lifetime from required insurance for all type of dumb things.

We need the government to force everyone to pay an organization that does nothing but hold money in case of accidents and then release it back. We need this because people are too cowardly and fearful, so they accept financial sodomy in exchange for a very small piece of mind.

If we are going to force insuramce on people, why not just go all the way and start forcing people to not eat junky food. It costs the us citizen way more to pay for the obese and unhealthy than anywhere close to the average american will pay for an accident without insuramce. Might as well start restricting all freedoms. Take my money take my freedom, here let me bend over. That is all of you. Paying 30-50% i taxes to the government accepting that they can force you to buy a service i.e. health insurance, car insurance.

Weak people vote for more government control, because thwy are cowardly rats. They desire being controlled, read anti-oedipus and you'll understand that your little brain enslaves itself in a false prison. The mind of weak disgusting borderline subspecies humans have formed a societal prison, where freedom doesn't exist. And the strong non mentally ill are forced to accept this prison or will be insulted saying "they don't common sense" or "aren't practical".

Enough talk, the fact that a lesser human like you actually gets to determine how I live my life is disgusting. The wardens of the prison are everyday "people" who should be culled like cattle. I don't dislike the system, because its an illusion. The system is just a bunch of lesser humans who have drank the koolaid, you don't drink it and they will call you crazy. Reminds me of how Uncle Ted fought against the prison after escaping from the mind control of mass psychosis, so we locked him up. I wish with all my heart God exists, so when all you die you are judged and you have your face smashed into reality and truth at a million miles per second. The few sane are forced to fit in the sea of the mental midgets, who exist not ambivalent to slavery, but as its enablers.

> The few sane are forced to fit in the sea of the mental midgets, > fact that a lesser human like you

What makes you think anyone wants to see your deranged diatribes?

You might feel better overall if you kept some thoughts like this to yourself (based on what you're saying seeking professional help might be a good idea as well).

It's shocking how many people are uninsured or underinsured. Plus, insurance minimums are absolutely ridiculous. Florida's minimum is $10K property damage, $10K personal injury, and they don't even require bodily injury liability. Total insanity. You crash into a Porsche full of doctors with that kind of coverage, and you're going bankrupt.

Most states have a minimum of around $25K for bodily injury liability. You can't even step foot into a hospital without paying $20K, so WTF is the minimum supposed to pay for exactly?

I guess a lot of drivers have so little to their name that they are judgment-proof and just don't care if they get sued for $2M.

> You can't even step foot into a hospital without paying $20K

I had a surgery and was in the hospital for a week. The out of pocket cost without insurance was lile 20-30 thousand if I remember correctly. And that is without coupons discount you usually get from cash payment. I used insurance, so I don't know what the discount wiuld be, but usually its like at least 10-20%.

I don't know what hospitals you got to, but 20K for a hospital visit is something I have never heard of.

My state (MI) has an unlimited PIP option (used to be mandatory) but it's also no fault.

It also has lots of subtle penalties for not having insurance that bite people in the butt.

The whole concept of calling people NPC’s is weird as fuck.

You aren’t a superior being, Derek.

The idea that we are all on “equal” footing in this world is even more asinine. Some folks are indeed the “main characters” and others are background filler. This is the only explanation for the “reality distortion fields” that larger than life personalities possess, well, outside of some SCP object style explanations…

> Karen-like drivers who will eventually start threatening other people to report them,

That's an argument for automating the system, taking the biased human actor out of the process.

Honestly using it for actual serious violent crimes is way better than speeding

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