It's illegal to drive without insurance in Texas as well.
It's also illegal to murder someone and yet people still do it from time to time. Stealing is illegal and yet stuff gets stolen. Drunk driving is illegal and yet people drive drunk. Turns out just making something illegal doesn't completely stop the action.
When we build our societies where you need to drive to function it's not surprising people will continue to drive when they shouldn't. Maybe we should build our societies so people don't have to drive just to live.
>Approximately 17% of drivers on California roads are uninsured, according to statistics from 2022 presented by the Insurance Information Institute. This means nearly 6 million drivers in California may be unable to compensate those injured in accidents.
About 1% of cars do not have insurance in the UK at any given time.
> When we build our societies where you need to drive to function it's not surprising people will continue to drive when they shouldn't. Maybe we should build our societies so people don't have to drive just to live.
What are the consequences? For most drivers most of the time, they save a few hundred bucks a month. If caught, they'll issue a ticket with a fine that's about a month or two of insurance. Maybe their car will get impounded (unlikely). Maybe they'll face jail time with enough repeat offenses, but once again its unlikely they'll get pulled over in the first place. We'll just continue crushing the poor.
The consequences for those they harm are pretty severe. Having your car destroyed can be lifechangily expensive for someone who is barely scraping by. Adding healthcare costs on top of that are pretty bad. Even with health insurance injuries from a car accident could get expensive fast, and add to the fact the single most expensive thing you owned just got destroyed while you're now unable to work. Too many people forget about the costs of driving they impose on others, thinking "that won't happen to me, I just won't hit anyone".
Driving without insurance is an incredibly reckless and selfish act.
> In cities, definitely. In rural areas?
Most people don't live in these "rural areas". And even then, I'd argue those "rural areas" could do quite a bit to reduce car dependence. Once again, how can these places solve transportation issues for those who can't afford insurance?
You seem to have somehow interpreted what I said as defending driving without insurance? Did you read my other comments (particularly the ancestor to this)?
I meant consequences for those who are caught - i.e. is there a real deterrent?
Why do some of the US states mentioned have such high rates of lack of insurance.
> Most people don't live in these "rural areas".
but many do
> And even then, I'd argue those "rural areas" could do quite a bit to reduce car dependence
Depends how rural they are. In an edge of town/close to town ___location (such as I live in) a huge difference would be made by more frequent bus services. Righ
I mean, what, are we going to start executing people because they were poor and decided to pay rent instead of their car insurance bill to get groceries? Give them some poverty-inducing fine they can't discharge in bankruptcy? That'll really teach them to be poor!
Most people not bothering to pay for car insurance aren't wealthy. They're doing so because being asked to pay several hundred bucks a month just so they can go to a $12/hr job and eat is a stretch too far, and chances are nothing will happen on any random day of them driving without insurance. Meanwhile on the unlucky day they massively harm someone else and will probably flee the scene and end up continuing on without consequences. And even if they do, they'll once again probably just get a fine, maybe get some kind of judgement against them which will be like getting blood from a stone.
The consequences are most of the time they'll be fine. Otherwise they'll get a fine. If they keep doing it and they keep getting caught their car will get impounded and they'll go to jail. Then they'll get out, scrape together enough to buy a car, and the cycle continues. But that requires actually getting caught many times which the whole "getting caught" part is pretty lacking.
It's all but illegal in the US too but the feedback loop of increased cost, increased regulation, increased mandates for insurance has driven up the cost enough that the baseline cost of compliance is so high that unless you're solidly in the middle class driving expired/unregistered beaters with no insurance and abandoning them to impound every now and then and/or pleading financial hardship with the courts is preferable.
And when most people running expired or no reg are just everyday working stiffs and most of them can't afford huge fines it's neither useful as a pretext for fishing nor revenue so the harassment by cops stops happening. And the rhetoric of the voting public has pretty firmly against the cops harassing the crap out of people recently too.
No amount of screeching about how these people should be stomped by the jackboot for noncompliance will make the economics of that pencil out for the state. You force these people to pay up either to the state or the insurers and they won't be able to live at their current economic level and they'll just turn right back around and be on the section 8 and welfare rolls which is probably worse for the public good. It's just a shitty situation no matter how you cut it.
