Comment by botacode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by botacode | Hacker News Reader

To be fair here (and I say this as someone who's had a spinal fusion as the result of being mowed down by a distracted driver) car ownership is so incredibly subsidized from an insurance perspective that any increase in prices should be described as the removal/reduction of a subsidy.

If the damages/externalities caused by cars were internalized by the system car ownership would already be unaffordable for most. We just choose to sacrifice/maim X-number of humans every year so folks can continue to zoom around and structurally increase sprawl/pollution (which in turn have their own massive un-internalized costs).

All of us pay for these subsidies via significantly higher healthcare prices.

Look up what happened to the Michigan laws/policies that required drivers to actually pay for insurance that would compensate accident victims for their death and suffering. It was lobbied/voted out of existence almost immediately because the costs are simply too high, and we love our cars.

That is neither true of healthcare or car ownership specifically. It’s the Pareto Rule. 20% of participants drive 80% of the costs. This is expanded across the population via averaging from insurance.

Law describes this as the thin skull problem. If you accidentally tap someone that had a thin skull and their head explodes you are still guilty of manslaughter even though the action is both completely benign and unintentional. The extreme alternative is to eliminate high risk people until no risks remain in the system. Insurance is a nice balance in the middle, but that doesn’t mean ownership is otherwise unaffordable for most people.

Not to mention all the road infrastructure and free parking car owners expect to have everywhere, preferably in pristine condition.

And if there is an issue with it, there is a huge outcry and push to fix it ASAP with public funds.

Then the same people complain about trains and public transportation being too costly and not frequent enough.

I'm confused by this comment because there is an entire industry (personal injury attorneys) dedicated to extracting every dollar possible from the insurance company when an accident happens.

I've personally known at least five people who have been in a car accident and then received a windfall of cash after paying off their medical bills and having their car repaired/replaced.

I don't know if this is still the case but years ago my friend, who was in a collision with a drunk driver, was told by his attorney that the insurance will just settle for 3x your total expenses (medical, car repairs, etc). He was being encouraged by his attorney to see chiropractors and specialists because of this.

Are you talking about $30k or $10M though?

I think GP was talking about permanent, life altering injuries that require medical care until the (early) end.

The highest minimum injury coverage states in the US are still like $50k per person meaning complying with insurance law still leaves the most seriously injured victims (or their medical insurer) in the hole unless the at fault driver (if applicable) can pay.

Yes, this. I got 50k and will never be made whole for my acute or lifelong pain.

I had an ace attorney who told me there were no assets to recover beyond the insurance settlement at the minimum limit provided.

My health insurer at the time later tried to take the settlement from me via predatory collections tactics, and I was only able to keep it due to California state laws that protected me if I wasn't made whole (I wasn't hit there but am a citizen of the state).

Most accidents are caused by folks on the lower end of the SES spectrum so a very large number of victims end up like me.

You also don't hear that much of our stories because the dead and the maimed often tell no tales / it's unpleasant to hear. Many settlements also require silence.

I'd bet a lot of money getting hit by an asset of a megacorp that has a legal team which will actually fight for every penny will work out way worse for the average person than getting hit by a private car owned by someone who's just a number to their insurer.

Michigan had unlimited lifetime coverage from 1978 to 2019. That it was no fault doesn't really matter all that much, there's enough people driving and enough collisions that it reflected the cost of doing it, even if there's disagreement about whether the placement of that cost was fair.

Then in 2019 they made unlimited coverage opt in. Now ~Medicaid is gonna cover those injuries. A victory for the supposedly libertarian leaning Michigan House Republicans, moving Michigan from a user-fee type of system to the dole.

> All of US pay for these subsidies via significantly higher healthcare prices.

FTFY

Car are anti-subsidized. Tarrifs are the opposite of a subsidy.

Highways are subsidies for car operators

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