Special Insurance Systems for Motor Vehicle Liability

The fact that automobile insurance is compulsory for most drivers in Europe and the United States raises concerns about its affordability and availability. In most legal systems, to mitigate such problems, special facilities have been created, either by policymakers or by insurance companies, to deal with risks that are very difficult to insure or are even considered uninsurable on the commercial market. In this article we (1) provide an overview of special schemes in several European countries, (2) examine the potential advantages of reducing the number of uninsured drivers and investigate the influence of the special schemes on the decision of individuals to drive (un)insured, (3) examine the consequences of these schemes for the incentives of drivers and (4) discuss the social costs of the special schemes.