I don’t see any inherent contention between the two examples you’ve given. Someone that is justice minded is looking for two things: 1) a system that punishes those who commit wrongs, and 2) a system that only punishes those that meet the criminal criteria.

It is a colorable argument that health insurance executives ought to have culpability for their decisions, yet the legal system allows them to skate. It is also a colorable argument that some/many/most prisoners sentenced to death in California were wrongfully convicted, or their trial/punishment was swayed by improper bias (ie racism), and thus such an imperfect system ought to not result in irreversible error (ie execution of someone who didn’t meet the criteria).

So killing is not okay except when its internet-approved vigilantism?

Please do not reduce nuance into nullity. There are vanishingly few people that will assert that killing (even self defense) should always be prohibited; this is a strawman. And “internet vigilantism” is more than just words on a screen, but actions undertaken that happen to be online. Take, for example, the good work of DDoSecrets, which is unquestionably a form of vigilantism, yet daylight is the best antiseptic for corruption. The world is not black and white; rather, it is complicated.

I would point to construction cranes as a case study in favor of mechs. At its core, a crane lifts loads heavier than humans or even teams of humans can manage. But as they are, they’re kinda slow and are finicky, requiring great care and slow operation.

If you had a mech, moving the raw materials up would be no big deal. Although one could argue that outfitting a crane operator with equivalent dexterous control of a crane would enable similar improvements, but in a smaller, stationary footprint.

For this analysis to make sense, we need to deconstruct “auto insurance” into its various parts, because this will matter. Note that some jurisdictions have no insurance requirements (eg New Hampshire) and others have a thing that splits bodily injury across all parties, meaning that the liability component is harder to apportion. The point is that the analysis will vary slightly based on where you are.

Typical auto insurance can include: third-party liability (the component mandated by most US States), collision, comprehensive, medical, and uninsured/underinsured motorist. These are all insurances that you buy, but they might not necessarily pay out to you.

Third-party liability covers damage or injuries that you cause to some other party, payable to that other party on your behalf. Crashing into a lamp post, a pedestrian, or an occupied car all will be paid from the third-party liability coverage limits. A state like California mandates a minimum coverage, but it’s not been updated for inflation and stands at a paltry $30,000 per person injured and $15,000 for damaged property.

Collision insurance covers your automobile as it is being driven. So if you wrap your car around a telephone pole, this insurance pays to replace your car for you. Generally, this insurance follows the car, so if you lend the car to a friend and they crash it, the policy will still pay out so you can replace your wrecked car.

Comprehensive insurance is similar to collision, in that it covers your car. But notably, it covers the car when not in operation. So if a tree falls on the parked car, or someone keys your car, then comprehensive insurance will pay out. A rule of thumb is that collision applies if someone is in the driver’s seat, and if not, then comprehensive would apply. Note that some states (eg California) explicitly exclude collision/comprehensive coverage for instances of hit-and-run where the assailant remains unidentified; this is a public policy choice, so that insurance prices don’t skyrocket if anyone can claim that their mailbox-sized dent was due to a hit-and-run.

Medical insurance covers you and your passengers in the event of a collision for any reason. If you crash into a tree and it injures a passenger, your medical insurance pays out for their injuries. If a big rig pushes your car off the highway, then both your medical or their third-party liability can pay for your injuries. The oddity is that if you have health insurance, then auto medical insurance only pays for your deductible. That is, health insurance pays first, and anything that still remains can be paid by someone else’s third-party liability (if available) or your own auto medical insurance. For this reason, some people omit auto medical if they already have health insurance, and can manage their deductible.

Finally, UM/UIM is a policy that, oddly, covers other people but pays to you. Imagine being struck as a pedestrian by a teenager riding a e-moto without a license or insurance. If you were struck by a motorist, their third-party insurance would have paid out. But here is an underage motorcyclist that doesn’t have any insurance at all, despite a legal requirement to have insurance. To prevent you from being SOL, your UM/UIM stands in for their lack of third-party insurance, meaning it will pay you for all your injuries and damages.

With all that background, let’s return to the titular question. Supposing a ludicrously expensive car is now on the road, and the owner has purchased every policy above for themselves, there really shouldn’t be an impact to other people’s insurance rates.

Third-party liability is based on one’s propensity to incur damage or injury to other people. The motorist driving in a sea of econoboxes is not somehow more disposed to causing a collision if they’re instead driving in a sea of expensive cars. The amount of damage might go up, but third-party liability is always written with a max coverage limit anyway.

For collision and comprehensive, these are based on the value of your car, not other people’s. So it really shouldn’t go up, at least directly. Of course, there are second-order effects, such as if billion-dollar cars cause mechanics to move away from servicing normie cars and towards servicing only these luxury cars, causing reduce supply of mechanics and thus inflation of the cost to repair all cars. That would indeed increase the payout for collision and comprehensive insurance, which would increase everyone’s rates.

Medical insurance is also fairly unchanged, because it either covers your bodily injuries (which could be high but not infinity) or is capped by your health insruance’s deductible (which post-ACA is indeed limited). A billion-dollar car causes injury under the same physics as a normally-priced Honda Civic. It’s not like the billion-dollar car weighs 30,000 kg, right?

And finally, UM/UIM is about uninsured motorists or motorists with not enough insurance. Rich people have deep pockets to cover any injuries or damages which their third-party insurance doesn’t cover. So all else equal, ludicrously expensive cars on the road doesn’t move the needle for other people here.

Overall, auto insurance tends to internalize the individual costs of automobile risks, so that there is no direct spillover onto other parties. But even while the auto insurance market is efficient, the market of new and used car parts is not. The market of healthcare in the USA is not. The market of feasible alternatives to driving is not. While a billion-dollar car doesn’t disrupt this careful balance within auto insurance, so many other things will.

In California, proof of payment for a vehicle registration renewal is allowed as proof of registration, specifically to cover the period after the payment is sent but before the DMV has issued the registration and corresponding sticker. So even if the DMV hasn’t received the payment in the mail, if a motorist can show some sort of proof (eg a bill pay transaction on their phone), that is acceptable.

Also, the DMV here will issue one-day registrations, in order to allow a vehicle to be driven from one storage location to another. If a motorist has a proper one-day registration, that won’t necessarily show up on the police computer, but is nevertheless legit.

Ah, I see. American English seems to use trail for almost any path that isn’t meant for vehicular traffic. Note that some historic routes through the West were inconsistently named in the 1800s, so the Oregon Trail was indeed through unpaved wilderness, but the Mormon Road was also unimproved.

I did say “pavement markings or signs”, and this was meant to cover both types: here in California, a “trail” can refer to anything from a minimally-improved dirt route through the forest no wider than a person, to an asphalt-paved multi-use facility with smaller versions of the familiar traffic control signs.

In the context of OP’s question, I didn’t specifically discuss narrow, single-track trails because there’s no possibility of a bicyclist squeezing past a pedestrian without it being a very obvious negotiation of space.

But there are plenty of regional trails which reuse the alignment of an old fire road or railroad. So the prospect of riding a bicycle on dirt in a 3-meter wide dirt corridor is not unheard of. So to come across a pedestrian is also not abnormal. If the weather is good, all walks [no pun intended] of life will make their way to enjoy the outdoors here.

Regional recreation areas will post their trail rules at the trailhead, and periodically along the trails. Some rules are obvious, like not littering. Others are not: horses sometimes get priority over both cyclists and pedestrians, because in areas with lots of horse riding, the horses could get spooked and bolt.

Yep! Though other jurisdictions in California might have everyone on the right. It’s not consistent at all, but basically every trail will have pavement markings or signs at the entrances to announce what the policy is.

The idea with walking on left is to give pedestrians a fighting chance, when all other traffic is right-hand traffic. If a pedestrian is walking on right and is struck from behind, they stand no chance whatsoever to avoid serious injury. This advice only applies to pedestrians because humans only walk at 5 km/h.

And to be abundant clear, it’s never a pedestrian’s job to dodge negligent traffic. But if the worse comes to be, it’s a final opportunity to save their own skin, when every other procedural safety layer has failed them. It’s a safety net, not a support beam.

I’ve seen this only once or twice, so I think it’s exceptionally rare. My hypothesis is that it relates to which leg they happen to standing on, at the time that they hear your call: if they’re on their left, making their next step farther to the right is perfectly natural and fluid. But if they’re already on their right leg, the startle response might lead them to undo their step, meaning they now step to the left.

But in any case, the distance that you call out to another trail user should be enough so that even if they make a mistake, there is sufficient time to avoid a close shave. If this means riding slower as you approach, then that’s what is necessary.

Around me, the trails are marked according to the state guidelines for pedestrians, which is to walk on the left, against traffic, so they can see oncoming cyclists. But even when they choose not to, that doesn’t excuse a lack of caution when riding nearby pedestrians. In the end, everyone just wants to get where they’re going, without externalized risks, safely. If a single mistake would jeopardize someone’s bodily safety, that’s a problem.

but electricity will always run the path of least resistance, which will invariably be the metal gazebo if they’re close enough.

Not according to the USA National Weather Service:

The presence of metal makes absolutely no difference on where lightning strikes. Natural objects that are tall and isolated, but are made of little to no metal, like trees and mountains get struck by lightning many times a year.