Dave Franks wrote:some of which don't have any insurance what so ever, a bit naive one might say but it is coming to the point that to protect oneself from real or spurious claims from anywhere not just North America you've got to have some liability insurance
It's many, many years past that point I would suggest. I know many people do not look kindly on insurance companies, but they don't make the rules under which they operate. That is done by legislators, courts and doctors. The last might be a bit surprising, but medical advances mean that people may well now survive incidents which they would not have done in the past. This often comes at a financial cost for ongoing care, which can run to many hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Dave Franks wrote:Today I was looking at VW car parts on the internet, the parts I wanted were to come from Germany so I looked at the T&Cs and guess what, they don't send to the States....
I'm not surprised by this. Laving aside the different medical and legal backgrounds in the USA, which may substantially increase costs compared to Europe, the issue may also be punitive damages, a concept rare in European law [including the UK], but which can greatly inflate liability claims settlements in the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages