By using us, they take themselves off the hook. In gambling terms, they're reducing their variance. If this all sounds eerily like casino talk, there's a reason. When you scrape away the pretty pictures about marketing and promoting and budgeting, Bob Hamman's business is an utterly ingenious, perfectly legal way to book bets. Probably because an insurance company thought of it first.
Insurance companies are society's most successful bookies.
Insurance companies are betting you it won't happen. Of course, a significant portion of most insurance companies' profits come from reinvesting the premiums while they are awaiting the outcome of the bet. So they may make money off of you even if you do eventually have an accident, etc. The biggest difference between insurance companies and the guy who lets you lay 11 to win 10 on the Giants is that insurance companies are legal. And the difference between the guy who bets the Giants and the guy who bets he'll have an accident is that the insurance buyer doesn't mind losing.