Good here is in reference to the average crash statistics.
Most drivers are safer than the average, because you can’t go below 0 and some people are really bad.
Good here is in reference to the average crash statistics.
Most drivers are safer than the average, because you can’t go below 0 and some people are really bad.
I know someone who's been at fault in at least 12+ car accidents, and she keeps driving (as someone else put it you almost have to drive in the USA). There are colossally bad drivers out there and we don't yet have a viable system for keeping them off the road.
How is she able to get insurance coverage?
Most US states have some sort of assigned risk pool which makes minimum coverage available to even the worst drivers, as long as they still have a valid license. (I'm not claiming that this is necessarily a good public policy, just pointing out that it exists.)
https://insurify.com/car-insurance/knowledge/assigned-risk-a...
I'm happy to make the claim this is terrible policy that literally kills people. Every dollar spent on this should go toward transit funding instead.
But, when the (sad) alternative is that person keeps driving without insurance and the unfortunate victims are left with the full bill, I think the absurd insurance may be better than not?
Surely this problem is mostly solvable with ALPRs now. Every plate is attached to an owner and the insurance status can be checked. There's the situation where an uninsured driver is using someone elses car, but that's at least most uninsured drivers taken off the road.
1) What makes you think she has insurance coverage?
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuarial_science
With that many accidents, I'd assume bankruptcy if she didn't.
re: 2) yes that was the point. She'd have to be paying multiple thousands in an assigned-risk pool policy with that record of at-faults.
An estimated 1 in 6 drivers in Los Angeles don't have insurance. I know at least a dozen people who have been hit by uninsured drivers, and that's not counting hit and runs, who probably are also mostly uninsured.
The victim's own insurance will pay if they have uninsured motorist coverage (you'd be a fool not to have it, living in LA at least), but there is basically no punishment for the uninsured driver, assuming a fender-bender. The police won't do anything. The insurance companies don't think it's worth their time to try to squeeze out something from someone who probably has almost nothing anyway.
Unfortunately, if you make (or are born with) enough resources, you might skate for quite a while. Eventually you might get a lot of fines and even some jail time, but afterwards, some people just take their chances and drive anyway.
Strangely enough... Most US states do not require insurance. Yes, really!
In almost every state, you may post a bond in lieu of insurance, for an amount as low as $35,000!
You cannot measure driver goodness (skill and vigilance) by looking at crash statistics, because crashes are definitively circumstantial. Most very clearly bad/dangerous/unskilled/unvigilant operations of automobiles do not lead to crashes.
Population level statistics let you look for statistical aberrations that you can’t detect at the individual level.
Further suppose you define “good driving” as a set of behaviors but failed to include narcolepsy or similar medical conditions in your definition, then some of your “good” drivers would represent a significant risk to the general public. Thus the actual criteria the defines good driver behavior is accidents.
It looks like the median/mode is 1-2 car accidents (50% of drivers), and the average is 3-4. 25% of drivers have no accidents (as far as insurance companies are concerned, ie, no claims or police reports).
I'm curious how this looks with various ways of normalizing for amount driven; is that no-accident crowd the quartile of drivers who don't drive very much? The biggest factor in being in the opposite group (the 10% of drivers with 50% of accidents) is "drive all the time, commercially or otherwise".