You don't need car insurance in order to own a car if you never drive it on gov't roads

Practically every interstate, tollway, Federal highway, state highway, municipal road, farm road, and county road is paid for and maintained in part by the government, which means your tax dollars come into play - just as your tax dollars also funded the creation of state drivers' licenses and the bueraucracies needed to distribute and maintain them.

So if you keep your car in the garage as a collector's item, you don't need car insurance. If you drive your car off-road, no car insurance needed. If you drive the car solely on your own property, ditto.

Ball's in your court...

Why are they so worried that the gubmint can't require you to buy their product?
Isn't car insurance a product?
Isn't Flo on teevee selling us a product?
And what about that gecko, is he from England or Austrailia?

That's the jist of it. Now if you want to extrapolate that into air travel with the FAA and the requirement to obtain an AGL just to launch many types of model rockets, we can discuss that, but I think my OP makes the case rather succinctly.

In 2010 I had to show my driver's license to the lady at the desk before she would even give me a ballot.

And yeah, the teabaggers just rammed it through the Texas legislature this year. Turns out our version of Voter ID doesn't recognize ID cards issued by the Veterans Administration, so if a Korean War vet doesn't drive anymore and doesn't have a state ID card, guess what? He gets thrown out of the polling place by cops. Supremely unfair.

So, when my mom was going to vote for Obama, her driver's license was about to expire, so I had her vote with an absentee ballot.
They asked her to send a copy of her driver's license to them in order to get that absentee ballot.
So, I scanned it on my computer and printed it out to send to them in order for her to be able to vote in 2008.

After she voted, her driver's license expired.
She thinks she is too old to drive, so now she doesn't have gubmint ID.

And when did that happen?

SOME form of ID has always been required at our polling place. It could be a bill, library card, license, anything with your name and address on it. I show my license because it is the handiest thing to see in my wallet.

I registered to vote and when It comes time to vote I walk into the church house where most of our voting is done, I'm none religious btw, but anyway I go in and tell the ladies, its always ladies who work the ballet boxes, who I am and they look and see if I'm registered and if I am I sign by my name and am given a ballot at that point and go make my choices. My ballot is then placed into a black box to be counted, the only part that I don't like. No show of ID required or wanted at our polling places.
I guess us okies are behind the curve or backwards or what ever others want to label us.

because when we first moved here my car was hit by a woman with no insurance. She also didn't have money to pay for the damage she admitted she'd done. Fortunately, she was HONEST -- so I was lucky. She paid me back, eventually. But I'd have much preferred that she'd had insurance.

Hidebound mostly, in tradition, not much different at all from "Mayberry".

There's not a damned thing wrong with living in a small town in the South.
Not one damned thing wrong at all.
It takes a lot of guts for someone like you to come here and state your positions and be proud of where you live after seeing all the crap said here.
I get sick of reading all of the harsh sentiment that is spewed towards the South here at DU.

Takes no guts at all to brag on our little town.
Red state it may be, ( tho a LOT of Dems locally) but the cost of living is 50% less than most other places,
I can afford to see a doctor and pay cash, and if my roof blows off in a hurricane I can count on at least 20 people to coming running and help me cut my way out of the yard without being asked.
People in small towns all across the South know the secret to survival in these hard times: a real sense of community, where helping your neighbor has nothing to do with political affiliation.

People who bash the South have much less manners than the people I meet who actually live here.

I could get over the voting issue :-)

So if all roads became privately owned toll roads, no one would need insurance?

But then again, do you really want half a dozen for-profit ventures controlling every single road in these United States? Some teabaggers might consider that a nifty idea.

I'm betting on the vultures.

Take a look at how many roads in Texas have become toll roads just within the past 8 years. The rich barely feel the pinch - but the working single mother with two kids to feed? Hell yeah.

And the registration has to be kept in the car at all times, along with the proof of having insurance.

Seems like a racket to me.
I have never liked insurance salesmen.
They're all sort of slimy and oily haired types, like used car salesmen, ya know?

be registered? Put it in a garage and who's going to bother it?

I may be wrong but I think registration is for cars that are intended to be driven.

You can't even register a car here without proof of insurance.

I never even said that!
Can you read English?

I know there are some out there, but I haven't seen any here.

insurance to register the car then it stays uninsured for 11 months.

why would you register it?

your lender requires that you insure their investment.

But, a person can choose not to own a car and avoid insurance altogether.

Here in California, you merely need to show a surety bond for $35,000 to opt out of the car insurance requirements. Bond's usually only require 10% up front, so if you can post $3,500 and have the rest sitting in an interest bearing account, you're good to go.

Car insurance is only required for those who don't have the financial means to cover their own damages and losses.

to CA's, but too many people had neither insurance nor the means to pay. Now everyone has to have insurance.

And I'm glad about that -- having been hit by one woman without money or insurance.

Sort of like the bank requiring at least a $1500 monthly balance, or you get charged a fee.

auto ownership.

Keep it on your property you're good to go.

in NH or WI.

Along the same lines... a number of states don't require a safety and/or emissions inspection.

Both sound good to me.

Which is one reason this "Masshole" is seriously considering moving to NH once I retire (2-3 years at most).

The most abused term in your politics today.

Go to Somalia. Go w/ God.

'Authoritarian', I mean.

I was driving to a nearby town when I was in my twenties on a US highway (US 131, between Plainwell, MI, and Kalamazoo, MI, if you care). I was driving a very old pickup trick I had bought for a dollar following the prior winter, when I kissed a tree at about 30mph while driving to work.

It was, again, winter. This pickup was an '81 Ford (this incident had to have been in 1994 or '95). The thing was a rusted-out shacknasty rattletrap whose only positive attributes were the four wheels and a (surprisingly) well-working engine. It took me on a 63 mile daily commute until the next Spring without ever breaking down or failing to start. BUT...

As I was driving, I heard a big clank and then a loud dragging sound, and almost lost control- I swerved this way and that, crossing the lane, until I could slow enought o regain control. I was going about 60 MPH, so of course the noise got my attention immediately. If that hadn't done it, the sudden loss of speed and control and the resulting turbulence would have. I was thinking that the exhaust pipe had finally rusted all the way through in that one spot and the thing had finally broken off, leaving me with a dragging muffeler.

I wasn't prepared for what had really happened. My tailgate had fallen off on one side. I was dragging my damned tailgate behind me for about five hundred feet! I closely examined everything I could at night on the side of the road (losing my wallet in the process!), and couldn't find a cause, so I reattached it, lowered it, and continued. I examined it more closely the following day, and found nothing amiss mechanically; apparently, the frame of the truck itself had deformed enough to make the passenger side of the tailgate no longer fit properly into its hinge.

I'm damned lucky there was nobody directly behind me that night. I can only imagine a carload of Chevy-driving teens saying "oooh, he's driving a Ford, let's get up real close to him and annoy the fuck out of him" (hey, this is Southwest MI) and getting a windshield full of tailgate for their trouble. And it would have been my fault, legally speaking. If someone had wrecked their car and died in the accident, I would have been found guilty of manslaughter at the least.

Just some food for thought.

There's lots of folks in Texas who own at least 50 acres of land - we've got tons of ranches. Walking all over that acreage isn't always an option, especially once you get to something the size of King Ranch; automobiles at that point are downright mandatory.

No matter what your local circumstances happen to be, so get your damn head out of the clouds and back on earth.

What is the entire fucking point of your OP, anyway?

And I know they will find purchase in this soil...

farms with no tags (not registered) or insurance.

As long as you drive the car on private property, you don't need insurance or a license.

That's the point many here seem to be missing.

Car insurance is optional.

Period.

want it to appreciate in value

He had no drivers license as President, but his ranch was so big, he could get that Caddy convertible up to 100 mph on his driveway. It's now a state park.



Did anyone ever tell you how incredibly rich and corrupt LBJ was?

...but regardless of how rich LBJ was, I think the premise is legally sound.

Besides, LBJ probably would have hated my stance on gun laws.

without maintaining a basic level of insurance, and I can't say how much I agree with that. One of the insurance quotes I got for DC (some years back) was $1.000 more than my "regular" insurance... to cover uninsured drivers. Yeah, as if we don't have enough public transportation.

The ONLY way to avoid both is to use that vehicle on your own property, exclusively (VA laws), and I think you still have to pay a minimum amount to keep it registered.

a motorcycle that was registered but had no insurance for several years, i currently have two vehicles that are neither registered or insured.

Motorcycle insurance is always cheaper though. A motorcycle wreck won't cause as much property damage, and there usually aren't any medical bills - just an undertaker.

you to post a cash bond instead of purchasing auto insurance.

that there *are* folks driving around with no insurance, otherwise you would not need insurance to cover uninsured drivers.

And they told me it was mandatory... after I'd already got a couple of quotes for 1/3 of the price. I hate being lied to.

The same company (initials: AllState), back in May, refused to provide me coverage on a new old car because I don't carry and use a credit card, after they quoted me basic liability coverage $80/year over the full coverage rate I'm paying now, for comprehensive coverage + with the gecko.

I'm thinking that only older Republicans buy insurance from some companies, and they're getting screwed. Hell, I probably didn't even get the best deal possible, because it was rushed.

if you have a car with no tag or insurance on your property you can be ticketed and the car seized.

Mandatory health insurance is a tax for the privilege to live?

are paid for by the taxpayer, and, as such, people have a right to drive on those roads, unless you break the rules. Government should never TELL free citizens that things that they paid for are a privilege for them to use! It is a privilege to be able to serve the public. They are chosen by the people, not the other way around.

I already paid for the fucking privilege once.
So why when I change to using a different TYPE of vehicle, why do I have to purchase more expensive "specialized" insurance just to ride my bike?

Sounds like a racket to me.

ever had to pay. The collision and liability is much lower for a motorcycle in California. Sorry you live in an asshole state with weak insurance regulations. Maybe you should get off the internet a few hours of the week and advocate for a better deal.

on the weekend there and just have a dinner at a restaurant than in any of the other 14 states I have ever lived in.

We can only ride motorcycles for 8 months of the year here, at the most.
So the other 4 months are just freebies for the insurance agents because we can't ride during those months.
And new motorcycles require year-round coverage.
So, motorcycle insurance isn't half of what it takes to cover a car here at all.
Yet, motorcycle insurance is redundant if I already carry auto insurance.

I think California is much more of an asshole state, by the way.
We don't have nearly the drug problems here that California has.
Or the crime problems California has.
Or as high of a murder rate as California.

So, I don't know what the point was about California.
Idaho didn't used to require insurance for motorcycles, but since most of the rackets are run by Republicans, they passed laws requiring it.

Tribal Roll card. But to get back into the US, this Native American has to provide a passport. Trust me, it is harder to get the Roll Card. I would rather suck bull's balls! What sense does that make?

Owning a car and, hence, owning private auto insurance, is not a requirement for U.S. citizenship.

Nor should be owning private health insurance.

- keeps coming up when there is really no comparison at all. It's an "apples and oranges" situation.

So they keep claiming that piss-yellow must be gold.

:applause:

and cancel the insurance on it when it's parked for the winter.

There's an amazing difference among the states.

I had one insurance policy that I switched back and forth between
my motorcycle and my snowmobile depending on the season

I don't take my horses out on public streets, but I still need liability insurance in case someone trespasses on my property and hurts themselves by messing with the horses.

Swimming pools don't go anywhere, but you have to have liability insurance in case someone falls in and drowns.

Cars are just as much attractive nuisances as horses and swimming pools. Even if your car never goes anywhere off your property, I would expect you would need liability insurance in case someone breaks in and steals it.

Here in Florida, even if your vehicle does not run at all, you are required to purchase a tag and keep it updated. And you have to have insurance to get a tag, so there you go - you do need to have insurance even if you never drive it on gov't roads.

That's what your attempt to make a valid argument.

May be you are one of the hyper rich that collect cars and waste good space. The average american and even some that are wealthy use their cars for activities that take them on roads. Your proposition has more holes than swiss cheese.

even if you don't drive it and even if you keep it on private property. In order to register it, you need insurance.

California law requires that cars either be registered or have a "non-op" permit. Non-op's are cheap, are sufficient if the car isn't used on the road, and they DO NOT require car insurance.

I have an ancient Chevy C-10 collecting rust on the backside of my property. It runs fine, and I keep a non-op active on it just in case I ever want to sell it or register it for road use again. It costs $16 bucks a year, but that beats paying for overdue registration and late fees. I can drive it around private property all I want with a non-op, but will get ticketed the moment I try to take it on a roadway.

It does NOT have to be insured.

NC requires any and all cars have registration, insurance, and safety/emissions inspections.
SC requires the same excepting safety/emissions inspections. SC does collect the fees associated with the former inspections without requiring you to get one.

My car was towed and seized sitting in my apt parking lot and by the time I got around obtaining the money to buy the insurance, the storage fee was more than I could pay for it. Btw, I wasn't driving the car so I didn't think I need to maintain a car insurance for it and it even had a FOR SALE sign on it but none of that explanation was enough to convince the impound guys.

Maybe its true on paper but the impound can still seize your car while its sitting at home.

The government or the landlord of the apartment?

I strongly suspect the latter.

It was later sold on state auction. As it turned out, it was cheaper to buy it back through state auction that pay the insurance and storage fees incurred. Actually the real reason why I could not get the insurance for it was because the car was in my sister's name who at the time was no longer in the country.

So yes, the govt(state) took my care right out of the apt parting lot and am not talking about those parking lots that shared space with the public roads. This was a fenced but not gated area and they still towed it

at least liability insurance in case you ran over your neighbors cow. Obviously you are not required to have insurance in any of those cases you mentioned, but it might not be a bad idea to carry insurance to cover damage that might occur to the car if something happens to it, or it is stolen.

if you don't tag it then who cares as you'll not be driving it on the roads or if you do you won't for long and the shit you'll go through when they catch you will entice you to not do that again. Thats all I know

If you tag it and its not in working order because of whatever then you can get a tag but its a black tag that isn't allowed on the roads. Its purpose is to allow you to keep tagging a vehicle while you're rebuilding it so you won't owe a penalty when you do want to start driving it again. I've done this before. Here the penalty is equal to what the tag would have cost anyway so its not a smart way to do business anyway.

No one is forcing you to drive or own a car.

requiring photo identification (which costs the bearer 20 bucks or so, if they want to exercise their voting rights)

Because they would need to love the Republican-pushed Voter ID Jim Crow laws ALSO in order to stay consistent.

...I don't have a problem with having to show ID to vote. Getting back to insurance, you're OK with letting someone drive who doesn't have the financial resources to pay for damages and injuries if they are at fault in an accident? That has nothing to do with ideology; it's just plain crazy.

The simple RIGHT of property ownership. Not about driving a car on the road. (That was a very weak attempt at deflection on your part)

I have owned a car that did not need to be insured. Legally. That is the law in my state. I told the state I wasn't driving it on the public roads, that it was still mine, but not on their roads anymore. In accordance with state law, I did not pay insurance on it. My property remained my property and I had an unconditional right to it. Same thing with my body. It's mine. Not the state of Georgia's. Not the US Federal Government's. I will not and do not have to pay anyone just for the right to keep it.

Voter ID laws are passed by Republicans -especially in the south- to disenfranchise poor people who don't already own cars. Such laws force voters, even though there is no significant evidence of voter fraud in this country (the kind Republicans always allege Democrats are engaging in), to obtain state issued Photo ID at their expense, requiring travel to a Dept. of Motor Vehicles office and a cash payment, thus putting a tax on the right to exercise their vote and a hurdle in front of some voters that doesn't impact others. Most Democrats understand that such laws are proposed by racist Republicans to keep poor black people from voting. If you don't have a problem with these laws, you are not a good Democrat whatsoever. Sorry.

You don't need to insure a vehicle that won't be driven on a public road. So what?

As for voter ID, we'll just have to disagree. You need ID to cash a check, board an airplane, open a bank account and lots of other things - I don't know how you can live without valid ID. I think voting is just as important, so I have no problem showing ID when I vote. A Georgia ID costs $20 for 5 years - that's not going to break anyone.

You'd be suicidal to take them on a highway even if it were legal, but I believe a majority of states allow 50cc mopeds on secondary roads. In Virginia, there is no license required, no registration (except by greedy local governments who try to jack the poor for something), and no insurance. One still pays road taxes through the gasoline they burn, at 70-130 mpg.

I've been riding a moped since 2007, exactly because I failed to turn in my tags when I canceled my insurance for the winter on my little convertible, which I learned the hard way carries an automatic, irreversible $500 fine and 3 years on high-risk insurance. $500 is ten percent of my average annual income.

The reason 50cc mopeds are legal in most states is because the courts have recognized a simple inequity: the road and rail network, combined with anti-pedestrian laws and institutionalized racism in city planning, automatically (and quite often intentionally) makes it impossible for poor people to go anywhere on foot. So states have a choice between letting mopeds on the road, or building a few billion dollars' worth of foot-bridges and sidewalks--which they will never do.

I encourage those of you who live in states where restrictive moped laws exist to pursue lawsuits against those states. The nation's impoverished people, like me, need inexpensive, independent transportation, even if it is sure to send people like me to an early grave. Hell, for Republican lurkers out there, that's damned feature.

But their reasons have more to do with their multiple DUI arrests


http://publicnewsnow.com/us-news/item/126581-man-arrested-for-dui-on-lawnmower
http://f2dd.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-guy-hops-on-lawn-mower-gets-dui.html

In VA, those with DWIs are specifically forbidden from riding mopeds. The one time I was pulled over, the first question I was asked after the usual formalities was, "have you ever had a DWI?"

So for a while, it seems the DWI-people turned to lawnmowers. There were two or three different guys that I noticed on my 70-mile round-trip commute to my poverty wage no-benefit job who were riding their lawnmowers down the grass infield of Route 11 to the gas station almost daily (all of the mom-and-pop convenience stores are gone, so both gasoline and beer are far away for most rural Virginians now, but they're both sold in the few places that remain).

Then, I stopped seeing them, and I assumed the police finally cracked down on them. They probably would have gotten away with it if they'd simply trimmed the infield as they went to get their beer, saving the Commonwealth that maintenance cost! Their tracks along the infield stretched for miles and miles.

The bottom line is that we Americans, in a land governed by the problems of space rather than those of time, will do anything to avoid walking, and the authorities wouldn't have it any other way. Local governments don't make money off of people who walk, but they make a shitload of money off of people who are no longer allowed to drive, but who have (or think they have) no other choice.

a part of what you pay goes to pay insurance on the vehicle which has just done you a service, so indirectly, you ARE paying a 'for profit' company.

but that doesn't mean you aren't paying the private companies which insure your taxi, bus, plane, train, postal service vehicle, fed-ex, ups vehicles, police cars, fire trucks, pizza delivery, meter-reader, ambulance, ............

we are paying for private insurance on many levels.