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GON,, go out and have an accident. Break a couple of legs, lose an eye, then make a claim. That way you'll get part of your money back, at least.

Papaya juice

We are still charities if we never make a claim. My charitable contributions at the end of my motoring life if I never make a claim, will be approximately $35,000, adjusted for inflation. At that time, the intangible promise by the company to pay for medical treatment for bad unsafe drivers, extinguishes. I will lose every cent of that tangible $35,000. It is tangible, isn't it, or is it in my imagination. I will be expected to cop that on the chin, its the worst deal ever, if I never make a claim. If CTP were to remain compulsory, then at least give us all the chance to negotiate our own premium. A form could be filled out ... "Have ever completed an advanced driving course?" "Have you ever made a claim against a CTP provider?" "Do you live in a densely populated area?" "Have you ever been involved in a vehicle crash on public roads?" "How often do you drive after sunset?" "How many demerit points have you acquired in the last five years?" "In your own words, tell us more about why you think you deserve a cheaper Greenslip?" Something like this needs to be done for a fair go for motorists. Our money is tangible, a stand-alone promise to pay is not, it's only a promise to pay bad drivers, and the rest of us (safe drivers) who never make a claim, are asked to provide the funds, never to see our money again. Forced charity.

GON, I don't know if you are serious of just ship styirring. If the former, you clearly don't understand what insurance is: The promise is very tangible. It means a) if you hit someone and you are at fault, you are protected from any claims they have on your property. More importantly, the non voluntariness of it means that if someone hits you and it is their fault, because it is government guaranteed, you are guaranteed to get the treatment and compensation for your injuries and I believe loss of income, but owuld have to check. This is a very tangible promise and as absolute as it can be. Of course, if the driver doesn;t have insurance to cover property damage (i.e. your car's damage), then because that is a voluntary form of insurance, you may have to go for them, if they have anything, to recover yuor costs. But CTP is only personal insurance and the state (and community, I dare say) agree that this is a vital protection to protect the interests of the community in gerenal. In addition, it helps to pay for the even worse drviers who drive cars without current reg and CTP, who, if they hit you, would not have any way to pay for your treatment or lost income.. But, hey, if that is your preference, then I guess you can find somewhere in the world to live where it is optional. Not too many western countries, USA included, don't require CTP insurance. I think you are mixing up insurance with investment products, where you earn a return on your money. With insurance, you p[ay a premium for protection for a specific period of time. They work out the expected cost of the scheme, which, apart from admin, is the cvost of the claims they expect, how many policies they will have to write, and to cover for oninusred people (where participation and payouts are compulsory). Yes, you will be covering someone who has a worse record than you, and there are others, such as Octave that are likely to drive a lot less than others, and he is covering some of your expense (on the assumption you drive materially more than 5k kms a year). You are not paying for the claim.. otherwise, there would be noo point to insurance. Now that I am composed.. When was the last time you haggled with car insurance? I think you mean you can shop around. And yes, you could. But, you;re mixing up voluntary insurance with privatisation. The UK and the US have privatised CTP, but it is still mandatory. There is a theoretical argument for privatised CTP as it shoudl intorduce competition and it should lead to more competitive pricing. But the reality is sort of. The isurance market is made up of brokers, reinsurers, and underwriters. Most of the insurers you see on TV/hear on radio are brokers/agents or reinsurers. Some, such as AAMI are direct underwriters. A broker is a commissioned agent - they receive a comission for each policy sold. A reinsurer accepts some of the risks but transfers the vast majoprity of the risk to underwriters. The nature of the risks adopted by reinsurers are the long term catastophic risk that occurs really infrequently. The everyday and common stuff is transferred to the underwriter. If you go to the underwriter direct (e.g. AAMI), they take on all the risk and cost. They calculate you premium as if you went to a reinsurer. So, for every insurance policy, regardless of where you go to get it (ie. haggle for it - that still cracks me up), it will involve an underwriter's premium plus a reunsurers premium what what they call the long tail risk, polus the brokerage commission (it is rare an underwriter or reinsurer will discount the broker fee in the same way wholesalers generally don't stff their retailers. Yeah - I know there are some do it, but their marketing approach is to not use brokers or price comparison sites - which are also just self-service brokers). What will tend to happen is that you will find there ae very strict regulations around the provision of CTP insurance because the government have to be comfortable that the private insurers can meet their obligations - especially since it is a compulsory insurance - otherwise there is no point to the insurance. So, there is this thing called regulatory capital they have to hold based on their forecast obligations over different time horizons, because their revenue is not guaranteed. This may sound counter-intuitive, but it is possible to have a future liabillity for which you are no longer receiving a premium payment. For example, if you were iwth insurance company X at the time you hit a pedestrian because you didn't see them, that claim and associated cost could go on for years, but you may switcvh insurer because insurance company X just jacked up your premium. They still have to pay the claim for years, while you are now with insurance company Y. And it does happen quite a lot, so the private insurer has to cover a cost that a government insurer doesn;t have to as much (yes, they can - you can move interstate, or you can stop driving, but the numbers are far less than a priovatised multi-provider industry). The other thing is, it is not a fully competitive market. First, there are really high barriers to entry as you have to have a lot of money to be able to meet all your regulatory requirements - which are there to ensure sovency of the insurers so they can pay out (interestingly, the UK prudential regulations are called Solvency, with the current regs being Solvency III, I think). Then you have to have enough liquid assets to pay the claims when they fall due. Not only that, but each underwriter and insurer has to duplicate the administration and operations of the insurance sheme they operate.. More actuaries, quants, admin staff, claims staff, etc., medical teams/panels and the like that are not able to be utilised by curernt insurers as they don't have those liabilities today. The number of underwriters is small - according to Google, there are only 4. I think they have missed a couple - so lets say 6. Ironically, 1 per state, and none for the territories. First, you;re not going to get much competition, but since they are all subject to the same rules and have to cover the main risks, and because this is a compulsory insurance, they will ultimately have to cover some for uninsurd risk - where you will make a claim against your policy even though you are not at fault, you won't get too much competition in this space. Even though you may never had had an accident that is your fault, they are looking at the likelohood of you causing an accident, and as they saying goes, past performance is only a guide. You're getting older, your refelxes aren';t as good as they were, you're eyesight not as good as it was, etc. You probably don't want to hear it, but you could be entering the age where you are more likely to cause an accident and have a claim that a fit 40 year old who is mildly aggressive at the wheel. I think that is a reason why we tend to slow down as we get older. Be that as it may, they will work out an average cost per insured and then apply a small discount or premium for your future probability of risk, of which your past will come into it, but not the only, and in some cases, definitive factor. Then you go to the reinsurance premium. This is where your risk profile has much more of an impact on your premium. Also, your no claims years is likely to be taken more account of here than in the underwritten part of the risk because, although they hold the more catastophic risk here, it tends to be the very low probability stuff. Therefore, driver behaviour will more affect thei likeihood of a claim against this risk than a pure mishap that can give riske to claims under the risk the underwriter holds. The BMW plouhing into the beer garden in Dayesford is an example of that. Teh damage to the pub and the claims by people in the beer garden will probably fall on the reinsurer. But how often does that type of event happen? Very rarely in comparison to the fun of the mill hit and run, or bingle from failing o stop at a give way sign, I would guess. The reinsurer will has to cover losses of an uninsured driver doing the same as the BMW driver as well. So, that gets added eually to all premiums. The brokerage is immaterial, as it will usually be the same regardles of who the insured is. But, yes, you will be able, thankls to reinsurance, get a discount compared to higher risk drivers on your CTP. Well done. Except, there is one problem under a privatised model. And you only have to look at the USA and UK to find it. You get huge discrepancies as a result. The 18 year old in a Ford Focus (so not too powerful. but no slouch) is paying, say £1500 for CTP alone, which you may be getting it for £150. You havbe to have at least CTP to regisster your car or transfer ownership. So, he musters the £1,500 and pays it, registers the car, and the very next day cancels his insurance and gets all of it back. He is now uninsured. There are no ongoing checks (although with ANPR, they are bing picked up more often than they used to). So, now you are more likely to be hit by an uninsured driver. To get your treathment/compensation, you don't go to your insurance company, because they pay a premium to a fund that covers uninsrued accidents (third party being the operative term in CTP). You go to your insurance company and they will handle the claim for you (you pay for that as part of your premium, by the way), but they don;t administer the claim. And, because your uninsured driver may have done a runner, it coiuld be a long time before you see any of it, because they need to satisfy themselves it wasn't your fault before they accept an unisured liability. In the mean time, you could be in pain, lose your income, you job, etc for a very long time before you can get any money or treatment beyond the very basic, etc. Not only that, but because the number of uninsured drivers is higher and they are, for reinsurance purposes, in the higher risk category, thes uninsured fund will demand more premium form the insurers. And that will mean more premiumn to you - remember we are talking mandatory/compulsory insurance here. Which will mean, you probably won't save as much as you think. You're older, so you;re more of a risk whether you like it or not; you've still got to cover at least some of those that aren't as good a driver as you thanks to the underwriting component. And thanks to the privatised component and not hooking it up to your rego, you now have to cover an unisured fund as well as the need to make profit that will drag that difference to a lot lower than you think. Australia (or the states) have got it right. Just check out how much we actually pay for a private CTP insurance is in the US or the UK (and yes, for the US, you have to take into account the ridiculous sums of compenation they pay - so not entirely apples with apples).

Thanks Peter and yeah, l mean look at the bottom two. You bet that's where the Iranians would be leading them to. Sitting ducks.

This might give you some idea. The area around the Strait of Hormuz. Territory to the left of the image above Mountains around Tehran

Yeah that was bloody disgusting talk coming from the president of the US for God sake. Imagine how that made the general population over there feel , as if they won't be going through enough.

Yeah they showed videos of the terrain lt's mountains alright lots and lots of it but not just any old mountains. They're very rough the kind that sort of have lots of sharp ripples running all the way down, how you'd even get around on them , no idea. The Iranians would have their ways though for sure. And this is what they were talking about to and of how they could have anything on them and inside them but also be perched all through them too picking off the yanks from above type thing. Very very heavy duty landscape.

Yes, OME, I am in complete agreement with you. My reference to mileage was just to throw a bone to poor old GON.

The present system for costing this insurance is probably the best way to remove the complexity for calculating a premium based on annual mileage. I don't know if it still applies, but back in the day the premium was reduced a little bit for vehicles garaged outside the Metropolitan Area of Sydney. Consider this. In NSW when you get your annual roadworthiness certificate (pink slip), the mileage is recorded. A lot of people wait until the last minute to get their pink slip. The premium for CTP, if based on mileage would have to be calculated before a renewal notice could be sent. Very inconvenient for paying rego on time. As it stands, I get my CTP renewal notice a month before the due date, so I can pay it any time after that, and before the expiry date. Knowing how much the premium will be lets me put a few dollars aside each pension day throughourt the year so that I don't have to worry that I won't have the money necessary when I want to pay it.

Pretty close. The fact that the letter I was picked but not put in the last word ruled that answer out.

If it were voluntary and a sizable chunk of drivers opted out, there would be a smaller pool of contributors, and most likely the cost would be greater. I have no problem with a more sophisticated system where premiums depend on kilometres travelled, although this is complicated and discriminates against country people who may have to travel long distances. When I lived in the country, I did around 45000 km a year, and a trip to work was 100km each way (200 per day). Now I live in the city with good public transport, so I am around 5000 km per year. My compulsory insurance premium is probably subsidising country drivers, but I don't really mind. You say you could haggle, but I think your major complaint was that you seemed to believe your premiums should be refunded if you don't claim. So even if you could shave $50 of your premiums, you still would not get it back. The people in the hotel garden in Daylsford who were killed or injured by the driver, who had a medical episode, deserve something. Compulsory insurance is not just to cover bad drivers; it is to cover the victims of bad drivers. I understand that you believe you are a great driver and could never make a mistake. That could be true (but I doubt it) but what if you are hit by a drunk driver or someone overtaking badly, or someone who drives through a red light, or perhaps answering their mobile and becoming distracted? What you are saying is that your medical treatment or rehabilitation is purely determined by whether the driver who hits you has bothered to take out third-party injury insurance, and if they haven't, you are screwed. That is the nature of insurance, and most grown-ups understand that. You seem to group drivers into good and bad and I suppose you think that only bad drivers are involved in accidents. Apart from the fact that everyone is capable of making a mistake, so-called good drivers are often the victims of bad drivers and perhaps bad drivers would be less likely to take out insurance. Where does that leave the good driver who is injured by the bad driver? Again, because you don't seem to be able to understand. CTP covers all victims of traffic accidents, whether they cause the accident or are merely victims of someone else's bad driving. I don't know how many times I can say this. You do get something; you get some protection from being sued, and you also get some level of financial protection should you yourself be injured. I can't understand why you can't comprehend how insurance works. Perhaps you don't understand that the money paid out to claimants IS from premiums paid by people who do not claim. To use the example of a raffle, I recently bought tickets from a charity. The price is a campervan worth 165k. This vehicle is paid for by all of the ticket purchases. If all the people who did not win were to be refunded, how would they pay for the prize? At this point, you are going to say that the difference is that buying a raffle ticket is not compulsory, and that is true. Let's consider this. You employ an electrician to do some work on your house. They screw up, and your house burns down. My understanding is that electricians have mandatory Public Liability Insurance. This would pay to rebuild YOUR house, and I suspect you would be here whinging (again) if your house burnt down and there was no insurance. How are you not getting this or is it a case of your usual modus operandi being to whinge about everything? When I was flying, I understood that I had obligations. I accepted this like a grown-up. These obligations were onerous, and for many years I accepted them. The last thing I would do is cry on my friend's shoulder and say, "Oh, it is so unfair," because to me, that is a loser move. Driving a car is not necessarily cheap. Some people can't afford to replace worn tyres, sad but tough luck. If you want to operate a machine, you have to ensure that you are not endangering people either physically or financially. I assume you are struggling financially. As an act of charity, I am happy to donate $50 towards your CTP if you are genuinely struggling.

Lots of engines used CI Pistons, including the Wartime JEEP. Nev

Muslims come in all skin colours and nationalities.

Get value then, Crash away. Insurance is to avoid risk of being exposed to a cost liability you can't cover. You are buying Peace of Mind. You CAN'T HAVE that and then say "I want a refund". Insurance Companies DO have No Claim Bonuses. You should be able to work this out for yourself if you weren't so determined to be the "Greatest Whinger on the Planet" Nev

look back with kindness Nev

You are an irresponsible IDIOT GON. This is NOT your forum to destroy. Use your brain, for Once. IF Iran is threatened with" Bombing Back to the Stone AGE where they belong" Unquote then what would any sane Person expect them to do? Just sit there and cop a Turkey shoot without any response? Nev

once again GON, you always display your racism

But they will return soon and they Know that. They are NOT fools. What Trump does is NOT Rocket Science and HE doesn't read Books. Maybe that explains a lot? Nev

I can't see any racism or anti-woke in what you wrote in your first paragraph. In fact I nod my head in agreement. I see no reason in what you wrote to be offended. Actually, I see what you wrote as a lamentation for lost opportunities. A cry of despair for any sort of recovery. "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani" translating to "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

Run off to the USA and be Happy. GON . Is Far-sighted Bringing on the end of the World? That's what Ted Hegseth said .GOD put Trump there to do. That idea doesn't grab Me in the Slightest, and I'm Not alone. Nev

We learned in Vietnam and Iraq, and in most wars since WWII is that the average Yank infrantryman is poorly trained and lead by poorly trained leaders in the field. If the Yanks try to put feet on the ground, it will be an unholy slaughter of the innocents. Basically, you can't invade a country whose countrymen are fighting to defend it. And you can't win if your troops have no experience fighting in terrain they have no experience of. I have not learned what the terrain is in Iran becasue I have never been exposed to it. Have you any idea what it is like?

Have you thought about running yourself, GON?