Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The Reasons Behind The History of Car Insurance

By Marcus Worthon

Being one of the most popular and most sought after insurances in the world, car insurance is definitely one of the most talked about insurance policies as well. Be it the Us, Europe or Asia, it is mandatory by law, for people driving cars on public roads to own car insurance.

According to the history books, the very first documented proof of car insurance (in fact,vehicular insurance) can be found in ancient China. During the times when the west had started establishing trade colonies all along the Chinese border, instances of cargo ships being hijacked or lost were reported to be on a rise.

Most of the cargo that was shipped in these cargo ships belonged to wealthy traders of England and it is the clan of these traders only who rolled out insurance policies to safeguard their ships against potential maritime dangers.

Policy makers in the US were strictly bent towards the idea that if you own a vehicle and drive it on public roads, you ought to have car insurance in order to prevent damage to any third parties. It was this thought process that made the ownership of car insurance mandatory in the US and in the rest of the world as well.

Policy makers from all over the world (especially those from the US) were bent on the fact that owning a vehicle and driving it on public property (roads are, by law, property of the public) is not a right, but a luxury and therefore, it became all the more important for car owners to get their vehicles insured. Car insurance was also deemed elementary to safeguard the interests of third parties who might get incur losses during an accident on the road.

Although, the first law making making car insurance mandatory for car owners in the US came as late as 1927, a lot had been done in this field. Policies pertaining to vehicular insurance came into being in the early 18th century and it was in 1898, that Dr. Truman J Martin rolled out the first car insurance policy that covered liabilities as well. This was not the first such policy in the world, though. In 1895, a British insurance company had done the same. With the number of cars in the world rising at a staggering rate, the number of road accidents has also increased manifold and laws pertaining to making car policies have been accepted all over the world with arms wide open.

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