It's a scam because they force you to buy it, yes, and because they make it prohibitively hard in many states to provide other methods of financial responsibility. You basically have to be a car dealer or run a limo service, here.
It's also heavily regulated, FWIW, which provides barriers to entry.
My first real job was for my state’s “assigned risk pool”. I won’t name my state here for privacy reasons, but many states have this concept.
The idea is, if you have such an awful driving record that NOBODY will volunteer to write you a policy, you go through the assigned risk pool. The pool “randomly” assigns you to an insurance company, which has to take you. The insurance company writes you a liability only policy, in theory at a substantially higher rate than you’d get if you didn’t have such a lousy record.
In practice, since liability is mandatory if you want to drive, and public transportation stinks, there was a lot of political pressure to keep rates down. If memory serves (this was 15+ years ago) there was a cap: no matter how many accidents, DWI convictions, or tickets you had, they could only charge you a certain amount over market.
This. How do you still have a license after 13 crashes? And how do you have insurance after 13 crashes (or was she driving without insurance)?
licenses and insurance are both government scams
It's a scam because they force you to buy it, yes, and because they make it prohibitively hard in many states to provide other methods of financial responsibility. You basically have to be a car dealer or run a limo service, here.
It's also heavily regulated, FWIW, which provides barriers to entry.
She was a “traveling”nurse in the LA area. Probably making like $200K
I'd think an insurance agent would look at "when, not if" and nope right the hell out of even offering a policy at any price.
My first real job was for my state’s “assigned risk pool”. I won’t name my state here for privacy reasons, but many states have this concept.
The idea is, if you have such an awful driving record that NOBODY will volunteer to write you a policy, you go through the assigned risk pool. The pool “randomly” assigns you to an insurance company, which has to take you. The insurance company writes you a liability only policy, in theory at a substantially higher rate than you’d get if you didn’t have such a lousy record.
In practice, since liability is mandatory if you want to drive, and public transportation stinks, there was a lot of political pressure to keep rates down. If memory serves (this was 15+ years ago) there was a cap: no matter how many accidents, DWI convictions, or tickets you had, they could only charge you a certain amount over market.