本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛The way the no-fault insurance is that where a damage happened in a car accident, no matter you don't need to prove that you are not at fault in the accident to get paid by your insurance company. Insurance company will assign the 'fault' using a standard rule to decide your deductable and premium of next year.
However, Ontario's no-fault scheme is not a pur no-fault scheme and has a "verbal threshold", i.e. damages or injuries over a certain description (verbal threshold) are actionable in tort. Therefore, a third pary liablity insurance is necessary in this situation.
While all Canada provinces have no-fault schemes, most US states have traditional tort liability system and you must sue to determine who was at fault. (most can be settled before acutally going to court). And the part at fault (and therefore it's insurance company) will pay for the damage.
The reason to set up the no-fault scheme are: 1) it could theorectically lower the insurance premium by saving the litigation cost, 2) it could provide quick payment since no fault need to be decide and the, again, no litigation process needed. 3) it could help in such situation that the at-fault party has no insurance so that the other party may not be able to get compensation in 'at-fault' system.
However, although probably no-fault scheme does expedite the payment system, data shows that many no-fault states have substatially higher insurance premium than at-fault states. One of my friend moved for a at-fault state to a no-fault state and his premium went up from ~USD750 to ~2500 although he was still driving the same car. My thought on this is that in no-fault states/province, you only only need to pay the premium for possible cost that you hit somebody eles, but also the premium for possible cost that you are hit BY somebody eles. In other word, it generally punishes most ordinary drivers due to some small amount of reckless drivers in the society.
And for the point 3) listed above, in at fault states, insurance all have 'non-insured motorist insurance' to cover the cost if you are hit by a non-insured driver. And the probabily you are hit by a non-insured driver is much less than by a bad but insured driver since, afterall, drive without insurance is illegal and most people don't want to do that - and the cost for 'non-insured motorist' insuance is actually very little.
We all complain about high insurance cost. I think one root cost is this no-fault system.更多精彩文章及讨论,请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net