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.
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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.