Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

What? They must have insurance, and the state minimum is $30,000 per person.

> The Maryland General Assembly approved the increase in April, slightly upping legal minimum insurance coverage to at least $30,000 per person and $60,000 per crash.

View on HN

Yeah, but they have a special program for Taxi's that allow what they call "self-insurance" where the taxi is insured by a bond or letter of credit with the MVA.

In most places you can self-insure as a rich individual driving a personal car too.

When there is an accident, injured parties go after rich people, like the expression "deep pockets", and juries aren't sympathetic to them. Rich people are advised to get (and can afford) insurance more than middle class people.

The same applies almost everywhere in the US and not just to taxis - if you can pay a cash bond at the DMV, you can ride without insurance.

> The same applies almost everywhere in the US and not just to taxis - if you can pay a cash bond at the DMV, you can ride without insurance.

Exactly. And that's amazing. I don't want to pay any insurance, I can self-insure and pay with my own bond if I'm caught into an accident.

Yup, the difference between a taxi and an individual though is the taxi company will create an individual llc for each taxi so if a given taxi is in a bad accident they will just bankrupt that llc and try to skip out on paying anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com