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Re:Mercury Spill by mbroshi on Thursday October 08, 2015 @09:06PM (#10357502)
Insurance companies cannot credibly cover acts of god, aka correlated risks, because they happen to too many people all at once. It's not a simple matter of "fixing" insurance for those matters.

NPR's Planet Money had a good discussion: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/03/353030214/bedbu...

Re:Mercury Spill by jefftk on Thursday October 08, 2015 @09:14PM (#10357523)
We're talking about hail. Insurance companies cover hail damage all the time.

(Actually, hail claims have been going up: http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2014/05/02/248354... )

Re:Mercury Spill by hvidgaard on Friday October 09, 2015 @07:22AM (#10359320)
The entire reason we buy insurance is to cover events like that, that one would be unable to cover personally.

Of course they can cover. It's a matter of how much you pay for your insurance, and to a large degree how much they company saves up. In the case of a hailstorm it's not because they cannot pay, it's because they don't have proper savings to cover it. A hailstorm with fist size hails is not going to cover the entirety of California, so it's very manageable.

An example, when a fireworks factory in Denmark exploded the total claim of material damage was 750 million DKK (113 million USD). The vast majority was covered by insurance companies, even though that would fall under correlated risks. One of the way insurance companies handle this is to have a joint fund with other insurance companies (I think this is government mandated), where they can withdraw in cases like this.

Re:Mercury Spill by TimothyGee on Monday October 12, 2015 @11:10AM (#10374983)
This joint fund is called reinsurance- essentially insurance for insurance companies.
Re:Mercury Spill by jsprogrammer on Thursday October 08, 2015 @10:23PM (#10357772)
Someone drove his car into a hailstorm unprotected. That's not an act of god.
Re:Mercury Spill by jandrese on Thursday October 08, 2015 @11:03PM (#10357921)
If you're in the middle of Kansas and a big hailstorm comes up there isn't much you can do. There's nowhere to hide.
Re:Mercury Spill by duaneb on Friday October 09, 2015 @12:39AM (#10358212)
Kansas has trees and overpasses; it's not completely barren. I just drove through a ridiculous rain storm in Kansas two months ago and had to do exactly this.
Re:Mercury Spill by jessaustin on Friday October 09, 2015 @12:41AM (#10358218)
If you're driving cross-country you're on an interstate. Park under an overpass.
Re:Mercury Spill by Filligree on Friday October 09, 2015 @09:17AM (#10359763)
And get hit from behind? No, thanks.
Re:Mercury Spill by jsprogrammer on Friday October 09, 2015 @03:21PM (#10362650)
Interstates generally have a decent width shoulder to pull over on.

Also, it's not safe to drive during a massive hailstorm. You should be pulled over anyway.

Re:Mercury Spill by jessaustin on Friday October 09, 2015 @03:57PM (#10362880)
We're talking about a car-hauler. You could run into it from behind with a loaded dump truck and do no damage (to the car-hauler).