<< If he didn't, he self insured himself and failed to save for the risk. >>
I agree with self-responsibility, but it is difficult to protect yourself over and above HIGH insurance costs that are mandatory. I don't know why the trucker didn't go after his own insurance company instead, because clearly the other driver's insurance is not responsible for deliberate actions as you mention.
A different wrinkle on this: Does this also mean your own insurance company is not liable when you are the 'recipient' of a terrorist act?
Almost without doubt this would be excluded from coverage, just like acts of war, sabotage, etc.
Besides, what's Uncle Sugar for anyway? Isn't that where every victim goes when the insurance company ducks out the backdoor? ;>)
I think most policies issued these days exclude terrorism. That really is a different thing, though, because you can buy separate terrorism insurance, for an additional premium, and we've made a societal decision not to require mandatory insurance to cover that since it's so expensive to insure, and relatively unlikely.
I always thought that the suicide clause was intended to prevent someone from benefiting from their own suicide, or the suicide of a loved one, though. That's not what happened here.
Most insurance companies have an exclusions for damages caused by acts of war and terrorism. So that is right . You have to get special insurance for acts of terrorism since the catastrophic risk is too high. Since the probablities that a single individual would have property damaged from an act of terrorism is so low, most people would not opt for such an expensive coverage. Companies may do so for premises and business interruptions and that certainly would have been activated in NYC on 9/11/01
The truck driver was insured by the carrier's blanket policy insurance he was working for.
The carrier(employer) is the one who should try to extract some damage pay in his behalf if they want to. He has no jurisdiction whatsoever to force them to do so.
My brother in law is a truck driver and he has his own extra insurance just in case a scenario like this will take place.