I generally don’t think of mandatory auto insurance as one of the worst things about the American republic, but it has long bothered me that owning such is a requirement of law when I most certainly would never buy it otherwise. I’ve never been in an accident, I’ve never made a claim, and it does sort of gall me to simply pour money into some mystical bad driver fund.

Several days ago I received via e-mail a description of the way in which I’d be supporting that fund in 2016. It was several dollars higher per month than that to which I’d become accustomed. Again, I never make a claim, and my wife and I really don’t drive that much anyway. It was time to be “that guy” and make a call.

To be fair my customer service representative was polite and understanding on the phone. But I still wanted to wring his neck. He explained that it really had nothing to do with me, just unusually high number of claims in my neighborhood.

Hmm.

I thought for a moment about the way people drive around here.

And I shook my head and hung up the phone, knowing I’d been beat.