The biggest thing with auto insurance isn't covering your car, it's covering the cost of whatever you hit sueing you.

Your car may only be worth $3,000, but if you hit a pedestrian and they require a dozen surgeries and are wheelchair bound for life, you bet you're ass you're getting sued for a few million in medical costs.

In a reasonable country, those medical costs would be free, but since they're not you need some sort of protection against once accident bankrupting you in civil suits.

I don't mind paying for auto insurance, but I also get more out than I pay :(

I probably pay in 5-6k before my car gets totaled and I get a payout higher than that before I start the process again.

Just once I want to be able to keep a car to the point where it's actually paid off .....

The difference is that (in theory at least), insurance will pay your full costs, regardless of how much you've already paid in. You can sign an auto insurance on one day, pay in 100$, then get into a 20k$ crash the next, and get the entire costs covered.

A retirement savings fund is capped by how much money you've put in it. You can never take out more money than you've put in (+interest/portfolio growth).

That's kinda the whole point of insurance. If you want an insurance model like described in the post, well nothing is stopping you from opening an ETF or other savings fund, and dedicating it to auto payments. It's not like you need a dedicated industry/service for that.

One car insurance company where I live operates kinda like this. USAA.

Every subscriber is a member. Every year, after they pay operating costs, they take the money left over from premiums and put it into accounts distributed across all the members. When you reach a certain age you can withdraw the money accumulated in your account.

Then if you are in an accident or something happens to your car, they'll try not to pay out and even if they do, they'll make you pay even more every month, regardless of whether the accident was your fault or not. Oh and you have to have it where I live or you're breaking the law.

All insurance companies and lotteries take in huge amounts of cash and pay relatively little back. The whole economy is a scam if everyone needs "insurance".

A lot of people can afford an insurance premium, and perhaps a deductible, but won't have enough for a $40,000 liability even if they saved for years.

What is suggested in this post is not much different from the past where poor people simply went on not having coverage and ended up in indentured servitude working off debts with manual labor like picking rocks. It's also just a thread away from Health Sharing Ministries, which is just a catastrophic failure whose nuance cannot be accurately depicted in a short comment.

In Germany this is usually pretty well handled, you paid a bit more for full coverage and they cover all costs of repair etc. But if you're in lots of accidents each time your insurance cost rises. If you have little to no accidents for a few years, the insurance cost sinks. It is also mandetory for your vehicle to have insurance, avoiding sudden private insolvency.

My bicycle theft insurance also pays for regular checks, and routine repairs.