If there is one insurance policy that is one everybody’s lips these days, then its got to be car insurance! Never in the history of insurance has one single policy been so widely accepted, used, abused and talked about. What is it that made car insurance spring up from nowhere and become the most popular policy in the world today? Where did it all start? What were the circumstances that forced policy makers to make it mandatory for car owners to get car insurance done? In this write up, we tty and explore the answers to all these questions.
The oldest documented proof of vehicular insurance can be traced back to the time when the west had started opening its doors to the Chinese. During the times when new colonies were being established along the Chinese coastal areas. A lot of transportation was done along the Pacific and Atlantic oceans from these areas through ships. These ships, containing cargo, would go haywire once in a while. In order to safeguard their ships against untoward incidents, the traders of those times rolled out insurance policies, thus giving air to the concept of vehicular insurance. The concept spread its wings in the coming years and today, the most important form of vehicular insurance is car insurance, as we know it today.
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.
During the time when various car insurance policies were being drafted, policy makers from all over the world felt that driving a car was not a luxury, since the car owner not only put himself at risk when driving on roads (which are public properties by law), but also third parties who are using the roads for their own reasons. Thus, the policy makers from all over the world started pushing forward laws to make car insurance mandatory for car owners.
While car insurance policies in the US can be traced back to the early 19th century, he first law, making car insurance policy mandatory for people owning cars and driving them on public roads, came into effect in 1927 in Massachusetts. Right after this law was passed, its acceptance was widespread, not only in the US, but also In the rest of the developed and developing world. With the number of cars (and consequently, the number of accidents) on the rise, such laws have been welcomed with open arms all over the world.
While the first law, making car insurance mandatory in 1927 in Massachusetts, real ground work had already been started in this field in the early 19th century. A number of car insurance policies were written and the first policy giving a full liability cover was written in 1895 in England. Soon, three years later, America saw its first such policy, penned down by Dr. Truman in 1898. Policies offering a full liability cover are the most popular and preferred of all car insurance policies because of the fact that they not only insure the vehicle, they also reimburse the vehicle owner for any damage that he might have caused to others.
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