All around the world, people who own cars are compelled to have a car insurance. Moreover, whenever a car is bought an insurance is attached, with the insurance company associated by default with the company to which you buy the car. If you want to choose for another insurance, you have to run all the errance necessary, fill in forms, go from one place to another, get to find the responsible of each step of the process. This doesn’t mean that the default insurance company that the car seller gives you is of bad quality, it just means that you are not able to choose, at least at first time.

There are several types of insurance: the one that covers only your car, the one that covers the person, and the one that covers both, third parties and vehicle. Your car can also be insured against theft, damage, crashes, fire damage, etc.

What most car insurances do is give you a basic insurance in which you pay certain amount of money for a standard insurance, and then they add you posssibilities with which you can count on to add to your car. For instance: you insure your car against damages and thefts. But if you want that the insurance cover glass breaking you have to pay extra, if you want the insurance to cover tire stealing, you have to pay extra. If you want to be entitled to an insurance against violent storms, then you have to pay much more money. This is the business of car insurance: assure against things that are not prone to happen. But after what happened in Argentina, for example, some years ago, who would deny insuring their car against storms and precipitations. Surely very few people. The business of car insurance has grown rapidly all through over the world, and it is guaranteed by a figure that is terrifying: only in Argentina, in one year, car sales went up 650 per cent in one year! What do we have to expect from the next one or two years, only in one country? As this continues to go on, car insurance companies try to hold the insured, as there are lots of companies on the market. Some new policies have been amplied: for example, the scoring system. The better you drive, the less you pay. Sounds coherent, at least, to give points to the better drivers and deduct them from the careless ones.

Where is the business, apart from terrible installments that you are compelled to pay? It is very clear with a simple explanation: you pay, say, three hundred dollars a month for you car insurance. You have it five years, without suffering any problem. Nothing. A perfect car, no scratches, no thefts. So you will have paid, in that time, 60 installments of three hundred dollars each. that is eighteen thousand dollars. It sounds creepy. Suppose then your car is stolen. How is its price determined? According to the market, according to its value compared to other cars? Well, it is more likely to say that the price will be fixed more by your insurance company than any other. Of course, they will not give you an extremely low price, but be sure that it won’t be the best you can get. Is it fair to ask for a compulsory car insurance? Is it fair also, that everyone pays for that, without varying proportionally the quotes in more expensive cars?

In Nova Scottia, Canada, a program was applied to make car insurance much more fair. As referred on its official website, http://www.gov.ns.ca/news/details.asp?id=20040316004, the plan applied for Nova Scottians wants to bring fairness, equity and lower auto

insurance rates. With that as an aim, the provincial government has

amended the Risk Classification Regulations.

"We're very concerned about today's reports that insurance

company profits are rising once again. On one hand, it's

important to know that the industry is improving, but that's only

good if consumers see some benefit from these profits," said Ron

Russell, the minister responsible. "Over the long term, as the

insurance industry recovers in Nova Scotia, competition should

follow, meaning more choice and stabilized rates for consumers."

These words are very illustrative of what the present is for insurance companies: they are growing bigger and bigger, and they plan to keep the market alive, and in very tight competition. At least, if there is too much offer, the rates will go down as for the costs of having your car insured.

Obviously, there are many matters to discuss around the topic of insurances. It is a business that has brought many conflicts, specially with those regarding people with bad records in driving: many times, insurance policies don’t take that into account, and they pay the same price that someone who has had perfect and exemplary conduct. Where’s the fairness there? Where’s the point in which car insurance is worth the same for a careful driver than for a careless one that likes and enjoys speeding, regardless fees and any other punishments that he may be suffering from exceeding speed limits? It is obviously not fair, and in that, we have to say, business is improving, trying to offer to the customers the best conditions possible, so as to feel treated with equity enough.

There should be much more programs as the one applied in Canada, probably one of the most developed countries in all the world. The planning, the organization, and the aim of having the population happy, made the Prime Minister take some measures regarding this topic. It should happen everywhere, moreover when we are facing terrible industrial figures in what concerns to car industry and manufacturing. As citizens, we are obliged to conduct ourselves properly. As insurers, companies should be compelled to bring us the better prices, as offer continue to raise and we are able to choose among many different options. It will be our merit to fight for this right. Only then, we could proudly say that we are paying fair car insurance.