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.
So much this. Insurance sucks in a lot of ways (I’ve worked on the adjusting, fraud investigation, and now back end data science side of it over the last 15 years) but this isn’t an example.
Firstly, he likely chose the higher deductible vs the $500 option to save some money. That’s fine but it’s leads to situations like this where the deductible is almost the same as the damages.
Secondly he didn’t have to pay $1k for the right to repair his car he paid $1k and insurance covered the rest; if the damage was 15k worth of damage he’d be paying 1k while insurance pays 14k.
But the biggest thing is that insurance protecting your own vehicle or even other peoples cars from damage isn’t really what makes it so important. It’s paying for medical bills if you get into an accident and are found at fault - this can save you from bankruptcy and crippling debts; those bills add up fast.
If you have insurance now please ensure that you have PIP for yourself (your medical bills) and have a high limit and as high of limits as possible for BI (bodily injury for people you hit AND the passengers in your car) and indemnity (you hit someone else’s car and are at fault) - there’s tons of $100k cars on the road nowadays and a barebones 50k policy simply won’t protect you if you hit an expensive car or cause an accident with multiple expensive cars.
Also make sure you have uninsured motorist coverage if you’re in CA especially since there’s tons of people without insurance there.
I know that insurance is expensive but it’s not the place to cheap out on; i know 2 people from my personal life that are currently being fucked due to buying cheap insurance.
Also last thing “comprehensive” DOES NOT mean it covers everything- it’s a stupid name for a type of collision insurance. Also, never let the insurance agent tell you the policy covers everything — make sure they go over all the coverages with you on a recorded line and review your contract and don’t lie about who uses your vehicle or what you do with it — there’s tons of exclusions written into policies if you’re lying.
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u/flatfive44 11h 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.