...that goes for health too. You can't put a price on your health? ....I'm sorry but you can. The cost of protection against dying is how much you can afford before it starts to overtake your ability to live happily. You can do the best things for your health but sooner or later, you're gonna end up with a pile of shit no matter what. Use the money you have to make you happy. Some people are happy to trust in insurance companies and I can't knock 'em. I'm just not that way. I never grew up that way and I mean through early adulthood to now. If the risk outweighs the benefit, I don't do it.

...except my marriage. Next time, I WOULD have marriage insurance.

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Rook, it looks like you have put a lot of thought into this.

My experience with insurance has been sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn't.

With perfect 20/20 hindsight I could have fully insured my new V4 Ducati but in this case, without a road hazard addition to my policy, my insurance wouldn't have paid it anyway.

When you purchase full coverage insurance, you're betting you will have a problem, the insurer is betting you won't and in the long run they typically win.

I've alway heard to insure only against catastrophic loss like your house burns down and self-insure for everything else.

On bikes, it only makes sense to fully cover for a few years until the bike depreciates and then drop to liability only.

My VTX1300C is 21 years old and worth maybe $3000, it gets liability only, if I wad it up, it gets sold off as parts or salvage.

At the end of the day, none of us can predict when we are going to have an accident, if we could, they wouldn't be called accidents.

This thing with my brand new V4 was a freak, a million to 1 but I choose to look at the good side, it could have been so much worse if I had gone down, hit a guardrail or another vehicle head on when I lost the back end.

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I've alway heard to insure only against catastrophic loss like your house burns down and self-insure for everything else.

It makes much more sense to insure something that appreciates in value like a home. Even then, I'd rather play the odds if I could. As for driving and riding, it depends on my age. There will probably be a point in my life when I still want to drive but don't feel I have the ability to do it as safely as I once did. That will be the time for heavy coverage and probably, I'll restrict my driving to safer routes. The bikes will be in the house on pedestals.

On bikes, it only makes sense to fully cover for a few years until the bike depreciates and then drop to liability only.

I would consider full coverage on a brand new bike. LOL Mine will be a year old and I only went on a handful of rides with it though. ...and I'm too scared to go fast on it. ...there's some self insurance. If full coverage seems to be worth the future market value after I get the turbo on it, I might do that for a couple years. I think it's going to be mostly a drag racing bike though. It might never get more than a thousand miles.

This thing with my brand new V4 was a freak, a million to 1 but I choose to look at the good side, it could have been so much worse if I had gone down, hit a guardrail or another vehicle head on when I lost the back end.

I can only remember running over one thing in my 17 years of riding and it was just a flat sheet of plywood in the freeway. Other than that, jumped a curb once and rode through an eight inch deep pothole.

I'm really glad you didn't go down too. There is a lot to chance but keeping in practice really does help in these situations a lot more than most give credit for. When bad things have happened in the past, I know my reaction to them saved me. ...even the damn deer...I knew I could brake hard enough to stop but I chose not too because I hadn't been on the bike in 5 months. Instead, I left the decision to the deer. Wrong choice that time but that's just reality up here in the north.

* Last updated by: Rook on 3/18/2025 @ 5:08 AM *

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Yep stuff happens, sometimes not good stuff but we're still here....

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