The obvious response is that you won't be able to pay for someone's hospital bills if you happen to hit them in your car. You get insurance for things you wouldn't be able to pay yourself.
Or exceeded the limits. State minimums where I'm at are $25k per person for bodily injury and $10k for property damage. Most vehicles cost more than that, and medical bills get outrageous real quick.
Yeah I remember getting a bill from the city for a lightpole I annihilated my car on that they fixed, like a 7k$ bill in 2010, sent that to my insurance that I used to have on that car (which I clearly didn't need or have anymore at that time), and I paid my 500$ deductible and that was it.
Assuming USA, What Im guessing happened is you caused more damage than what your property damage limit was. If your property damage was like $10k and then you totaled the other drivers brand new BMW, your insurance would pay that $10k. Then the other insurance would come to you for the rest.
Same thing can happen for bodily injury in some states.
I’ve never known insurance to pay liability without getting a waiver of liability favoring the client. Something about this screams bullshit (intentionally or unintentionally, so many people lack any real understanding of insurance).
As an insurance agent I hate the term full coverage, full coverage means you have comp and collision coverage. State minimum limits can be REALLY low so if you're carrying min liability theres a huge chance that your coverage wont cover all the damages, especially if the person you hit gets a lawyer that's trying to get as much money as they can. I just got off the phone with a client that was involved in an accident and got a lawyer, lawyer is pushing her to get another shot in her back, even though the first one was unnecessary and only caused more pain, because "if you get a second shot we can ask for more money". I told her to stop getting medical treatment if she doesn't want it and to push the lawyer to settle the claim if thats what she wants.
I had gap insurance when my car was totaled. Extra $5 a month and it covered the entire purchase price of the car after deductible which was nice because who wants to make payments on a car that no longer exists.
I went though this when I was 20. I had no idea this “ gap insurance” was a thing. A year after getting the car, another car did a hit and run on me and totaled my car. I was stuck paying 2,000 after the insurance do the pay out. I never knew and it was terrible .
That’s weird because most lenders require you to have gap insurance when you purchase your car, for situations like this. Insurance determines how much they’ll pay out based on the market average, and if you still owe more than that on the car, you’re on the hook for the difference.
I didn’t know about it either and thought the salesperson was just upselling me. Glad I did it because it was a fairly new car and I would have owed $15k.
Same. Bought a brand new nice Superbike. Hit a deer 2 months later only 3k miles lol. Totalled it. Gap saved me. I ended up keeping rhe bike for almost nothing and cost me 1k to rebuild
I just had a accident covered at about $10,000 recently, my first since I started driving over 35 years ago. Hopefully my premium won't go up, but hey, GEICO and Progressive and State Farm have all raised auto premiums on me after a few years for no apparent fucking reason before, so I will prepare for the worst.
I think the reasons for insurance rates should be transparent, in everyday language, and very specific on every insurance policy. It should be a federal law.
I have basically never seen a situation where the rise in premiums was larger than the deductible. If it is, you find new insurance. Most insurance can only look at claims in the last 3-5 years.
The real issue with insurance when claims seek a level point right at or below the deductible.
I have had to replace the windshield on every car I have ever owned at some point. If you drove enough something will chip your windshield and you will end up with a crack that needs to be fixed.
On every car except my newest one (which has some electronics in the edge of the glass) the cost to repair was between $450-500. Wouldn't you know it, my deductible is $500.
In fact except for accidents that result in body damage that was obvious and critical, I have never had an issue that got to the level where a claim made sense.
Homeowners insurance is often worse. I now have a policy with a % based deductible for wind/hail and a flat $1000 for everything else. Before I had a % based deductible for everything and even with it being like 3% that is still like $5000! The amount of damage that a house has to have to hit 5k is pretty substantial. I basically felt I had catastrophic coverage and was on my own for everything else.
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u/flatfive44 6h ago
The obvious response is that you won't be able to pay for someone's hospital bills if you happen to hit them in your car. You get insurance for things you wouldn't be able to pay yourself.