My car is worth less than my recurring 6-month mandatory minimum insurance bill. I contribute to the pool from which those discovered "rights" are claimed, and yet I will not benefit from those rights.

The mandatory minimum includes 20 grand for the property of others. If my car gets totaled I'd like to pocket $19,600 in cash from the other guy's insurance company. An equitable alternative would be to reward me with a lower bill because by driving a cheap car I impose less of a financial burden on others -- and the pool -- when someone else smacks me.

The guy who drives a Mercedes Benz surely gets a break on his comprehensive coverage because I pay into the pool that disproportionately benefits such yuppies and their fancy cars, though surely bought on credit with the requirement to carry comprehensive coverage.

My car was totaled several years ago with a dent/gouge in a Safeway parking lot, and the scoundrel did not even leave a note.

If your car is totaled because of the negligence of another driver, pdxnag, you will or could benefit from those new rights.

My property benefit is capped at the value of my car, or 20 grand, whichever is lower. My potential property benefit is therefor capped at 400 to 500 dollars.

I suspect that the auto lenders benefit most, as an organized special interest group, and are the wise folks behind inserting the property coverage into legislation that was sold as a way to cover the problem of unexpected, uncompensated medical bills.

I say strip out the property component, as it is not equitable to the poor. Replace it with higher medical coverage, so as to leave the current bill I pay unchanged. This would be more likely to benefit me.

If the state raised the property coverage to 35 grand would it be hailed as an increase in "rights"? I suspect so. (And result in an increase in my bill, for my aging car that I drive less the 2,000 miles a year. My insurance cost per mile is greater than for gas and maintenance.)

If the state can affix point-oh-eight to the level of alcohol in someone's blood stream as a fact of intoxication they can affix a value of 20 grand for a car, irrespective of individual variations. I can hear the guy in a fancy car whining now about some poor schmuck with a crummy car getting a check for $20,000 after plowing into him. Now, in litigation, let's exclude the fact of whether someone is or is not insured. How pissed would the guy in the fancy car be if the damages he caused to the poor schmuck is set at a fixed 20 grand, irrespective of actual property damages? He would protest that such a reward results in a windfall gain, and he would be right. A poor schmuck that contributes to a property insurance pool when they have little or no property to protect is a windfall for folks with wealth and property to protect.

I guess that one could assert that I make a choice not to buy a $20,000 car and thus voluntarily opt out of the available property coverage of my own free will, and extrapolate that this argument alone is satisfactory to overcome all other arguments. Such stunted reasoning is the norm. Was it your reasoning, Sally? To make it less subtle consider an increase in property coverage to $250,000, to match nominal savings deposit coverage as an example, and then sell me on the notion that it represents an increase in rights for me, and the poor. But review Animal Farm first.

I cannot fathom what would be equitable about receiving a payment of $20,000 for the loss of property worth $500.

Your rights are "expanded" by this law only insofar as they would allow you to establish a fair value for the property you lost for which you or a negligent party carry insurance.

Seems to me that even with some ingrown problems, auto insurance does function AS insurance. This differentiates it from what we call medical "insurance," which really isn't "insurance" at all.

If you applied your logic to that system, you would receive some automatic payment of $100,000 for a hangnail because some other poor sap got $100,000 worth of cancer treatment.