Being one of the most popular and most sought after insurances in the world, car insurance is definitely one of the most talked about insurance policies as well. Be it the Us, Europe or Asia, it is mandatory by law, for people driving cars on public roads to own car insurance.
According to the history books, the very first documented proof of car insurance (in fact,vehicular insurance) can be found in ancient China. During the times when the west had started establishing trade colonies all along the Chinese border, instances of cargo ships being hijacked or lost were reported to be on a rise.
British traders had established a number of trade colonies in coastal Chinese regions and a lot of cargo was transferred on ships, to and from this coast into the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans. At times, these ships went berserk and lost track and some were even looted. It was after these incidents that they traders and investors of that era brought forward the idea of marine insurance, thus giving birth to an all new class of insurance policies.
Policy makers in the US were strictly bent towards the idea that if you own a vehicle and drive it on public roads, you ought to have car insurance in order to prevent damage to any third parties. It was this thought process that made the ownership of car insurance mandatory in the US and in the rest of the world as well.
While car insurance policies in the US can be traced back to the early 19th century, he first law, making car insurance policy mandatory for people owning cars and driving them on public roads, came into effect in 1927 in Massachusetts. Right after this law was passed, its acceptance was widespread, not only in the US, but also In the rest of the developed and developing world. With the number of cars (and consequently, the number of accidents) on the rise, such laws have been welcomed with open arms all over the world.
Although, the first law making making car insurance mandatory for car owners in the US came as late as 1927, a lot had been done in this field. Policies pertaining to vehicular insurance came into being in the early 18th century and it was in 1898, that Dr. Truman J Martin rolled out the first car insurance policy that covered liabilities as well. This was not the first such policy in the world, though. In 1895, a British insurance company had done the same. With the number of cars in the world rising at a staggering rate, the number of road accidents has also increased manifold and laws pertaining to making car policies have been accepted all over the world with arms wide open.