car insurance

I know these stories are always fake anyway but holy shit, buy a bike and chill out for a few years.

I personally know someone who totaled 4 cars before turning 18. He literally treated the gas as an on/off switch.
So people that bad at driving are out there.
Truth be told, drivers here in the US are TOTALLY untrained for the most part. My oldest is currently in driver's Ed and it is a joke, in regards to actually how to drive a car. I have spent a lot of time training him as I have a long history taking racing and advanced driving courses. I've held SCCA and FIA racing licenses and I have taken some courses that are usually reserved for police officers The only problem is I do not feel that I'm a very good teacher for him. But he has picked up some things, even if he isn't up for threshold or trail braking.
- Most of the USA also seems to lack options for adults to take a class and be given professional instruction on how to drive, for some odd reason. If you're out of high school there are no classes for you.
  I wonder if it's like that in most other countries as well?
- There was a kid at my high school who was famous for wrecking 7 cars his senior year. Parents just kept buying him new ones. Like, brand new. Off the lot. It was insane.
- As someone that ended up being the teacher for the majority of my friend group. If you are struggling with the teaching more than likely you're trying to give answers to their questions. Which is actually more unhelpful than helpful.
  If they're asking you how to make a certain kind of turn, or how to know how close they are to something. Just giving them an answer isn't really useful because they don't know how to arrive at that answer, instead you need to help them ask the correct questions.
  " you didn't quite make it in that parallel park, get out and take a look at where the car is. The back of the car is only just barely in the spot, so clearly you didn't end up deep enough in the spot. What do you think you need to do to change that"
  And have them keep practicing until they start to figure it out, it will seem frustrating for them in the moment but it's genuinely more useful for them to try things on their own and attempt to reach the answer. than it is for them to be handed the answer, because then they understand not just the answer is, but the why of the answer. Why did I not make that turn, what does it feel like to not make the turn properly. Which is very important for being able to apply those same principles of vehicle control to other situations.
  One of my favorite things to do with people is to set up some cones or a block of wood or whatever and just tell them to try and park as closely as possible to that object without touching it. I have them do that, get out, go look at how close they were to it, and then try again if they were nowhere near it until they can get it to Within less than a foot. Great way to help train sense of vehicle position.
- Yes this. We teach kids, slow down in the rain, but give no guidelines on how to calculate how much they should slow down. Hell I have ran into very few adults that even understand the concept of out driving your headlights.
- It’s alright, he probably doesn’t need to know how to do a PIT maneuver or corner drifts :P
Yeah, people like this are why my (absolutely spotless record, not even a parking ticket) insurance is so high. They drive rates up for everyone around them, simply due to the fact that you can get hit by them through no fault of your own.
I dated a girl whose brother had four accidents on his record at the time. He was 17 years old, so just barely old enough to have his license, (in my area you can get your permit at 15, and license at 16). After his second totaled car, their parents told him he was buying his third car with his own money. For them, the first totaled car was a fluke; The second was a pattern. So he got a job at 16, bought a junker with his earnings, and totaled it six months later.
The worst part is that two of his accidents happened in the exact same circumstances. Slick roads from an ice storm. He takes one particular corner too fast, hits a patch of ice, and ends up totaled. He totaled two cars on the exact same icy corner, because he didn’t learn from the first accident.
- New intern at work was talking about smashing 2 cars while speeding just weeks apart. Then starts talking about wanting to get a motorcycle. Kid isn't going to make it to 25.
Wouldn't they have revoked your license by this point?
- Not necessarily. Actual accidents don't always confer citations and many of those can be discharged for simply proving your insurance paid the other person. It's not illegal to be a klutz, it's just expensive.
- Depends where in the world this is.
- I have a friend who has, give or take a couple, wrecked vehicles more than 20 times. Most were minor, barely involving damage to the vehicle he was driving or the vehicle/object he hit, but a couple were catastrophic. I think the majority were because he has roadway hypnosis/narcolepsy. I've had him fall asleep mid sentence talking to me when he was a passenger. A perfect candidate to have that license taken, right? The two ways I know of to take a license involve driving while intoxicated or a doctor personally notifying the licensing agency about a person's inability to drive. Believe it or not, most doctors have a vested interest (because they want clients) in not personally notifying the agency. However, there is no set path to revoke a license for simply being a bad driver.
- It's surprisingly hard to take someone's license away.
You'd be surprised...
I did know people like this growing up, but they were always driving fucked up one way or another.
That's bound to work out great with their history of crashing...

Is there any hope for me?

Yes, public transport.

Is this a European joke I'm too American to understand? /s
- As an American living abroad I can honestly say I don't miss being required to drive everywhere. Haven't owned a car in six years and there's like 2 times a year I need a car so I just rent one. Way cheaper that way.
- You can still take a taxi I'm sure, may just be more expensive than this guy's insurance premiums.

The insurance agencies really need a way to recommend the government take someone’s license when they’re a public danger like this.

Well they do give them a strong incentive to stop driving.
- They only give them a strong incentive to stop driving legally.
Of course sir, you're new low cost car insurance policy is right through this door over here .... 🔒
Give insurance companies the will power to say no im not going to insure you. And then cap insurance rates. and by cap i mean no insurance should be more expensive than the rate new drivers are allowed to be charged.
Where i live insurance rates have a discount for being a good driver. Goes up each year to cap at about 40percent. This is tied to your liscence not insurance.
Increase that discount for good drivers and make sufficiently bad drivers unable to be insured.

Keeping people like this off the road is one of the biggest reasons why every place needs robust public transportation systems.

Bro needs a bus pass

Sounds like my wife's asshole cousin who has been in so many crashes and totaled so many cars at this point that he's had his license taken away and has to get around Indianapolis on a scooter. And he's in his 20s.

I remember the day at a family function when the roads were icy him bragging to us about how he made it down to the function doing 80 on icy roads and sliding around everywhere but didn't crash. Seriously, he was bragging about it as if it made him Mario Andretti.

His dad is a doctor, so I'm guessing he was paying that high insurance for quite some time, but no longer. His dad also bought him a Cadillac which, obviously, he totaled. I love his dad, he's my GP, but he has a big blind spot when it comes to his son.

doing 80 on icy roads and sliding around everywhere [...] bragging about it as if it made him Mario Andretti.
This, at best, makes him kinda okay at Mario Kart.
But even that game forces you to give up if you crash too many times.
- It's one of many reasons I can't stand him.
  The fact that his voice has two volume levels, secretly mutter something offensive and shout at the top of his lungs no matter how close he is to your ear, makes me hate even going to her family's functions.
bragging about that is like bragging about negligently discharging a gun in a crowd of people and miraculously, nobody gets hit.
- I wouldn't put that past him either. And I hope he doesn't have any guns, but I have a feeling he does and I have a feeling he's pointed them at people as a "joke" before too.
I was actually surprised at how recent the bike infrastructure was in downtown Indianapolis so using a scooter to get around would not be bad in downtown at least.
- He's in Greenwood. Less bike friendly.

So best case for someone like this: don't drive. Get other people to drive you, use public transportation, get a bike, etc. But this is probably America and that is 100% not possible everywhere. Or even most places.

There is another option: State-Owned High-Risk Auto Insurance. These are insurance plans owned by individual states. Because US states all require auto insurance to drive a car and because driving a car is goddamn necessary in a lot of America, this exists.

It's VERY expensive. Like when I was looking at getting good coverage for 2 newish cars I was staring down $500/6mo. Our state's high-risk was $2,000+. But it exists for people like in the post who are just too expensive for ordinary insurance companies to want to insure.

At this rate I bet it's cheaper for them to Uber everywhere.
- No way. Even just commuting assuming $20 each way (cheap for rush hour) that's $4,800 every 6 months. Probably 2-3 times as expensive as the high risk insurance.
Where on earth are you getting insurance for 2 cars for $500/6 months? I'm middle aged, drive a 10 year old car, and have a perfect driving record, and mine's about $100/month. I've priced the same level of coverage with other companies and that's pretty much what all of them offered.
Eta: I'm literally asking. I have no loyalty to my current company, if I can get it cheaper, I'm out.
- That was a few years ago. But I have the same coverage and cars for $580/6mo. BTW it's cheaper to pay all at once usually.
  But our cars are compact and subcompact about 9 & 10 years old. We carry 100/300/100. It's GEICO is MD but it was also about the same with progressive in FL. Only one of us has a perfect record, the other is still minor and rare.
  So you may just live in an expensive state for insurance.
- I'm in a similar position, middle aged, clear driving history for about 15 years, car's an '18. I pay ~$450 every 6 months with Progressive. Paying the whole amount up front gives me a good discount. If you can't do that size payment at once you can pay with PayPal credit and it should be no interest for 6 months so you can get the discount and still pay monthly.
- I live in the Netherlands and now pay €188 a year. It's just a "wa" insurance meaning if I hit something they pay the damage of the other's, but not mine damage.
  I drive a car from 2009 and have 10 years of no damages. So if your willing to move to the Netherlands wait 10 years you can lower your payment. (Not really a option I guess)
- Farmers
  2003 Subaru WRX and 2001 Toyota MR2
  250 bodily injury per person
  500 bodily injury per accident
  100 property
  Comprehensive and collision on the MR2.
  Total is 494.50/6mo

Where can I find more humor like this?

Hopefully not on any road near you.

I actually believe this is a real story

I believe it. A childhood friend of mine had totaled like 7 (very cheap) cars by the time he turned 25.
After a particularly brutal crash, he was diagnosed with epilepsy after having an absence seizure in the presence of an ER nurse.
Hasn't wrecked since.
- Are you saying he drives better with epilepsy or that he hasn't driven since?
If it isn't a real story, there are plenty of real stories like it. There are just a disgusting number of people who are reckless drivers.
Almost no one in the town I live in uses their turn signals. It's infuriating. I can't tell you the number of times I've almost rear-ended someone who suddenly slam on their breaks in the middle of an intersection and turn off. I also live in a subdivision with no sidewalks and a speed limit of 25 mph. People are regularly walking their dogs and kids are everywhere. I see people flying down the curvy subdivision roads doing at least 50.
I'm amazed I haven't heard about anyone getting killed.
- A lot of it is also people who know they shouldn't drive but have no other choice. In the vast, vast, vast majority of the US, if you don't have a car you can't even go to the store or get a job.
- Worst part is if you did rear end them in that situation, you're the guilty party for insurance etc.
There are the “Worst driver” TV shows. There are some real head cases in there.
I can believe this is not sarcasm

I legitimately don't get people who can't drive. It's actually ridiculously simple to not break the law or get in an accident. I've never had a ticket or been in an accident. Closest was I slid on ice and hopped a curb once, but there was no damage at all because, get this, I was driving slow enough for the bad weather conditions :0

It’s actually ridiculously simple to not break the law or get in an accident.
Driving a car is absurdly difficult, incredibly dangerous, takes only a second of distraction to kill yourself and others and in general is such a nightmare that it is contrary to what you say a miracle that people aren’t crashing into each other all the damn time.
Like, everybody I have gotten in a car with for the past 10 years invariably will get stressed out significantly by the unavoidable chaos of driving enough to visibly become emotional about it even during a short drive. Driving is miserable.
- I can agree with some of your response to what was said by the other commenter, but my impression is that person was shocked that someone at a young age has been involved in double digit accidents that mostly sound like their fault. Some people really just are incapable of driving, though that shouldn't diminish that small lapses or true accidents do happen.
  I would disagree that driving in general is miserable, though I'm sure this can vary by location. While i would prefer better access to efficient public transit (live in the USA), being able to get in a car and go anywhere is pretty freeing, provided it isn't during high volume times, especially on a freeway.
- Driving a car is absurdly difficult, incredibly dangerous, takes only a second of distraction to kill yourself and others
  Yes and no.
  It seems that most people are falsely convinced (or even peer-pressured to some extent) that you must drive at the speed limit or even above it. But you actually don't have to. You must adjust your speed for weather conditions, road conditions, traffic intensity, surrounding safety infrastructure (or lack of it) and your skills and current condition.
  It seems that learning how to choose your speed is missing from most driving courses worldwide. Sometimes, road maintenance provides some advice on that, for example in France you have different speed limits for wet/dry road. But in other cases drivers ignore that guidance - sometimes highway speed limit is lowered due to lack of hard shoulder or animal fences but very few people understand that and most just ignore the limit.
  And then there's your own condition - if you're tired, slow down, your kids are crying in the back, slow down, you're on new road, slow down, have a gut feeling, slow down!
  What you're describing is actually mostly a case for driving too fast for given conditions. Even if you're not speeding but you can't read and comprehend signs, road, other cars, pedestrians and navigation - you're driving too fast, slow down.
  So I think both your and OP's comments boil down to attention. As long as you remember essential driving rules and pay attention to road, surroundings and those rules it's difficult to cause an accident. But if your attention is slipping then it's a slippery slope.
  And if you observe that you often struggle to pay attention to one of those things, you should review your actions and skills and apply necessary corrections.
  Driving is easy in a way that it's schematic and there are not many rules compared to say aviation. But it's not mindless! You must think about your skills, capabilities and your state of mind and act according to those. In aviation pilots do thorough risk assessment before and during flight, and drivers should do that as well. What makes driving easier than flying is that when you identify the risk as too high you can just slow down or stop.
  So to summarise. For God's sake SLOW DOWN! It saves lives.
- I never said it didn't suck, but it only sucks because other people are terrible drivers. It isn't absurdly difficult at all unless you're incredibly incompetent.
- Wow. Not for me. I drive ten hours a day sometimes. Never freaks me out.
- Also, an accident is just a matter of time / miles. You can be the most careful driver in the world and a car can pull in front of you on the freeway and come to a dead stop. You'll hit them from behind and the insurance company will blame you.
I legitimately don’t get people who can’t drive.
Setting aside folks with serious disabilities, folks with long term mental decline, folks with mechanical difficulties, folks with rambunctious kids in the back seats, folks in neighborhoods with high speed limits and generally unsafe driving conditions, folks who have to drive through inclement weather, folks who don't regularly maintain their car's brakes and tires, folks who drive cars that have poor visibility (big trucks, particularly), and folks who just never learned rules of the road before getting a rubber stamp from a DMV that does not give a shit...
It's difficult to understand why other people don't drive as well as I do.
One sec. Sorry. Banging this out on my phone while driving and I had a whoopsie-doodle. Let me clean this up and I'll finish my post.
- Ok so obviously if you have a medical condition that makes you unsafe to drive, you shouldn't drive. If you don't maintain your car that's entirely on you. If you choose a car with poor visibility you're purposefully endangering everyone around you so you shouldn't drive. If you don't understand the rules, you certainly shouldn't be allowed to drive but that's a whole separate issue.
Yet every fucking "car forum" is just filled with people who believe that it is their God given right to do 100mph+ on every highway, and that if you slow them down they are then justified to aggressively weave in and out of traffic.
Practice just going the speed limit. It is liberating.
- I’m one of those people! I demand passage and all other cars are what I like to call Enemy Traffic. Whenever I encounter Enemy Traffic I just lay on my horn until they surrender.
  I’m a real person and not a caricature. I exist.
  Also, I blast music when I hike.
  Whenever I encounter Enemy Hikers I just stride confidently down the middle of the trail and they bounce off my football pads like ping pong balls.
  One time at Chautaqua Park in Boulder a lady asked me to hold her dog’s leash while she used the restroom. So I had a stranger take a quick video of me helping out: https://youtube.com/shorts/OGBDBl6MuDc
Let us accept that these people exist. They are one of the many reasons walking, biking, bussing, and train riding should all viable as main modes of transportation. If your town is too small for a train, leave that out. If it's too small for a bus, leave that out. Ain't nobody's town too small for good walking and biking layout and design. We did it naturally right up until we got hooked on cars.
- I totally agree and fully encourage people to not drive whenever possible. Most of the truly stupid drivers won't do that though
Some people have zero spatial awareness and/or an inability to judge speed and distance -- their brains just aren't wired for it. They can be perfectly normal in every other way, and some don't even realize (or are willing to admit) it's a problem.
- Yep, and we should have driving tests that actually are challenging so people like that don't get a license.
I haven't driven in decades. It's something I'm terrified of. Luckily I've lived in dense urban areas so even well before Uber/Lyft there was always plenty of public transit and cab stands everywhere.
I don't have the gross motor coordination to safely operate a car. I could probably drive one remotely with a controller, but I can't make the full-body motions needed to press pedals and steer with my arms at the same time.
- I was obviously not referring to people with medical conditions. The average able-bodied person should be able to safely operate a vehicle without causing an accident.
Well, almost slow enough

Maybe you should learn how to fucking drive?

Pffft, that’s what the insurance is for, so they don’t have to learn.
- Makes me wonder how having a personal driver would affect premiums. Does the owner of the vehicle pay it? Does the driver? Do both?
~~Skill issue!~~ Not everyone has health good enough to drive car safely. Or drive at all.
- Then don't fucking drive. 🤦‍♂️

Never thought I'd take the side of an insurance company.

My suggestion would be to:

Move to a place where not driving is a viable way of getting about. If you already live there, great!
Get a lifetime transit pass and consider getting a bicycle
Ditch your car and never look back

From the amount of accidents they have had. Maybe start with walking and see how that goes first before getting anything with wheels.
- Yeah, I was about to suggest an e-bike or e-scooter. But probably better to just walk or take a bus/tram/metro.
Lifetime transit what now?
- Easy, just move to Luxembourg.
https://www.marketwatch.com/guides/moving-services/cost-to-move-out-of-state/
Average cost of moving out of state - $4000-$12000
https://fortune.com/2024/02/01/emergency-1000-expense-most-americans-broke-debt-bankrate/
Less than half of Americans can currently incur a $1000 expense right now

I got quoted $840 a month for insurance. Clean accident history. Insurance is bullshit levels of expensive.

How old? What kind of car?
- At the time it was a 3 year old Scion IQ.
Damn. I managed to get basic insurance for like $75/mo but it's one where they require you to install a tracking app on your phone for the first month that gives you a higher rate if you accelerate or brake hard. I just drove like a grandma for a month and uninstalled it after.
- Yeah I pay ~1k now for all the cars in the house for a year. No tracking app. 3 cars.
That's a pretty typical rate except for comprehensive for an entire year
- This was a month.
I've noticed that some insurers give insane "fuck you" quotes for no reason. I had Progressive under my parents since I started driving, and when I got my own insurance, it was around $500/6 months through them. I wanted to get other quotes from some other insurers and the rates were absolutely insane by comparison. Like, $500-800 PER MONTH. I have no idea why they were so much more. I know there are loyalty discounts and such, but I don't think they're going to be ~85%.
- Car insurance generally hates young adults. I paid through the nose for 6 months of crap insurance through progressive than immediately jumped to a broker who got me a lower rate on better coverage (and actually knew what the right amount of coverage was) and they've consistently got me more coverage for a lower rate ever since. Granted some of that probably comes from my aging out of that high risk 18-25 bracket but still

The best insurance company for this person is take the bus.

Have you tried reducing your alcohol consumption?

Hey, that was a water bottle!
- It was water bottle, but it was filled not with water

As your attorney I advise you to buy a bus pass.

How tf do you even get a water bottle under the brake pedal?

I imagine they're one of those people who just have piles of trash in their car sliding around the floor and probably dashboard too.
- It's only got one post but !carbage@lemmy.world
It can be done. I drove Uber part time and a group of girls in the back decided why not drunk water bottle fight. One rolled under as I was going downhill. That is up there with one of the most terrifying moments of my life.
I used the emergency brake and stomped the foot brake as hard as i could multiple times until it was crushed then fished it out.
I no longer drive Uber part time.
- Drunk girls are the worst.
- Emergency break? You mean parking break?
pedals have this thing where they have space behind them, and if you have no concern whatsoever for safety and yours, and others lives, then you can just slap a water bottle on the floorpan in front of you, and when you brake, that water bottle can roll forward and get caught under the pedal. Leading to restricted braking ability.

Sounds like someone should have their license revoked.

So, basically, he had one accident per year. And he is not smart enough to understand that the universe is trying to tell him "Don't drive a car, then!"

I mean "don't drive a car" isn't always an option, especially if you're in America.
- From a certain accident rate upwards, it is. Anywhere.

This guy is the reason all of our rates go up.

Sure, keep driving like that, with some luck you kill a person. Fr walk, use bicycle or bus before that happens.

He already hit a guy at a mall

this is markets working. this is why we want police to have to carry insurance.

Police departments do carey insurance, and a few rare cases departments have shut down because of being uninsurable.
But do we really want private free market solutions for public problems?
- do we really want private free market solutions for public problems?
  When we have public solutions in-place? No. When we have no solution in-place and the police kill unarmed victims of crime who are fully cooperating with commands and then try to suppress video evidence of it? Then yeah, maybe I'm okay with an imperfect solution.

I don't think car insurance is your biggest problem

That's a funny definition of 'accident'.

"Constable official vocab guidelines state we longer refer to these incidents as 'accidents', they're now 'collisions'...Accident implies there's nobody to blame."
Sergeant Nicholas Angel, Hot Fuzz
- I remember in primary school, an actual police officer told us pretty much the same thing during one of those road safety classes. Road traffic collisions are almost never accidents, always incidents.
This. Most collisions aren't accidents. Most incidents are from reckless behavior.

We should get this guy in a smart car as an option on twisted metal.

4.8 rating on Lyft

I saved money on my car insurance by not having a car. Who would want to leave the basement anyways?

I don't think this person should be driving. How do you get into 14 accidents?

I've been in.... I think two? Ever?

I hope that image isn't one of his.... Like, it's showing a pretty clear day, and he hit a stationary post. How do you mess up that badly?

If this is real, this guy should not have a driver's license anymore, he's a menace on the road. Sorry my dude but I hope your insurance prices goes as high as heaven cause you should not have a car!

Any one of these "incidents" would scar me for life thinking about it and they're just casual about it. "Most weren't even bad accidents (hit a guy in a mall parking lot..."

I'd be a bit worried if this isn't someone who's just being sarcastic.

Come to think about it I think the reason why us americans associate giant SUVs and trucks with safety is because we've gotten so lazy relying on computers and finicky cameras that get covered in mud that I personally feel safer driving my 56 bel air over modern cars because I'm able to physically move my head to see the crap around me not to mention the transmission being a two speed automatic it has a hard time getting to dangerous high speeds but I suppose that doesn't really matter when everyone else is blind quite frankly I would love a car with modern crash safety and handling while still having the ridiculous lack of blind spots that 50s cars had I actually praise the vw golf for having not only a backup camera that doesn't get dirty while not doing that stupid thing where for some reason a lot of auto manufacturers think we have a backup camera lets jack the rear seats so the driver has to use the camera that gets covered in mud or make the rear windshield flat enough to become unusable during winter thank you Volkswagen for not doing that with the golf I can have the backup camera and my physical neck to look behind me

That’s a long sentence.
- But there's no period. It's just a wall of text. Maybe they're an ancient Roman?
Holy jesus fuck use some punctuation
Wait until you're older and looking back don't work anymore.
- god forbid you look back while you're capable of doing so.
This part of the reason why I love compact and sub compact cars. My little yaris and versa have better visibility then much larger cars. Yes a back up camera is nice is a lot of situations but so is being able to turn around and see stuff.
Backup cameras give no depth perception. I once backed into someone's car while trusting my backup camera. I've never used one since.

I would recommend Mosgortrans, but I doubt person in question lives in Moscow. They provide their own cars:

So bendy!