It seems like car insurance is a bad investment, even though it's necessary thing under the laws of New York. It covers your liability should you cause an accident, and that is a good, even though unnecessary for the majority of time. It makes the insurance company partially responsible for any damages that you cause. That allows you to avoid having to pay monetary damages of thousands of dollars in an accident that you are at fault, to say nothing of the court costs.

Many of us have collision insurance on our cars, but insurance regulations make it impractical to use for most of us. On my truck I have collision insurance with a deductible of $500. I purchased it for $6,500, meaning the insurance would pay out at most $6,000, which is close to the book value if it where totaled. It might very well be worth the $10 a month or $120 a year, at least for a while with the value of the truck. I could not imagine using it, unless there was a documented accident caused by striking another vehicle or I felt that reporting it would make up for the seriousness of the damages.

When you consider the loss of a clean driving record without any accidents, as it applies to insurance, it rarely pays off to make a claim against auto insurance. It is far cheaper to fix your truck or car yourself from junkyard parts, assuming that you don't care about looks. Autobody repair gives you a slightly broken, but pretty looking car and little more.Paint mixing and the removing of dents costs a ton of money in most cases, particularly when many panels that has to be removed and replaced. Maybe it makes sense when somebody else hits your car, but us mere mortals its pretty impractical.

So what is the purpose of auto insurance if your never going to use it? We all have bad days, and many of us will have to use it. I just hope to keep my premiums low, and note the impracticality of submitting a claim except in the most extreme of cases. If the author hits a tree with my 4x4 truck, it is off to the junkyard to buy parts and not off to my local sheriff to get a police report and then to the insurance company to try to get money. That's how car insurance works versus other insurance in which you get some kind of benefit out of it.

This system makes perfect sense for the insurer, but little sense for the mere mortal who pays in more and more and never gets anything out from the pool. At least with health insurance, you receive some of the benefit over time, through regular check ups. Moreover, most of us get sick more regularly then we get into auto accidents. There are also other fringe benefits from health insurance like low-cost psychotherapy and exercise programs. You could argue that psychotherapy only exists for the sick, but it's good for the masses to critically examine themselves. At least it lacks a $500 dollar deductible.