While it’s natural to have this passing thought, acting on it can prove highly detrimental. Unfortunately, there are some people who try and get away with not buying car insurance.
The thought of going without car insurance is completely unnecessary. You can get the lowest possible rates from companies like www.acceptanceinsurance.com. So it’s not an unreasonable expense. What’s more important to consider is that car insurance helps protect you from all kinds of financial disasters.
You need insurance for three primary reasons: it satisfies a legal requirement; it offers personal liability protection, and it covers expensive car repairs after an accident.
A Legal Requirement
When it comes to car insurance, you really don’t have a choice. You have to carry it by law. Your state will require you to carry a minimum amount of car insurance on your vehicle. How much depends from one state to another.
Naturally, if you want to be smart about it, you should buy more than the minimum. You should buy as much insurance as you can afford to get the maximum amount of protection. There are some things that it is not wise to skimp on, and insurance is one of those things.
What happens if you don’t carry car insurance?
If you get pulled over for any reason at all by the police, the first thing they ask you is for your car insurance papers.
If you don’t have insurance, you will be in a lot of trouble. For one thing, you may not even be allowed to drive away once the police know that you are driving without car insurance. For another thing, you may have your car impounded.
However, it gets even worse. You will be forced to go to court and pay heavy fines. Then, on top of all this, your license may either be suspended or revoked for a particular period of time.
Liability Protection
Even if there were no laws requiring car owners to get car insurance, it would still be a good idea to have it.
If you are involved in an accident, your car insurance gives you liability protection.
If you cause an accident, you can be held responsible for all the costs associated with it. You must pay the medical expenses of those who were injured. If the accident results in a fatality, you have to pay the family a monetary award.
These are extremely high costs, and can literally ruin your life for years to come. You may have to sell everything you own, including liquidating your financial investments and selling your home.
If you don’t have enough assets to liquidate, then you could spend the rest of your working life paying off the expenses caused by the car accident.
If you did not cause the accident, but were hit by a car driven by someone who did not have insurance, you may have high medical expenses.
While you might be able to sue the other person, the chances of them having enough money to pay you are slim, especially if they cannot even afford to buy car insurance.
However, in a case like this, your car insurance company will pay for your medical expenses.
In addition, your insurer may also pay for repair or replacement for your damaged car.
How much your insurance company will pay for your medical costs and car repair or replacement costs depends on the type of insurance you are carrying.
Vehicle Repairs
Another expense associated with causing an accident is repairing the other person’s car. This can be very expensive.
As the at fault driver in the accident, you may either have to pay for car repairs or if the cost of repair exceeds the value of the car, you may have to buy them a new car. Without insurance, you would have to pay for this out of your own pocket.
You are also liable to pay even if you don’t hit another person. If, for example, you drive into a wall, a store, a house, an electric pole, or a street sign, you have to pay for the property.
Insurance Protects You
When people think of insurance, they view their premiums as a waste of money. This is an entirely wrong way of thinking about insurance. Your small premiums are protecting you from all sorts of exorbitant costs—medical costs, monetary awards, property damage—that you might not be able to pay for out of your own pocket. In fact, a single accident could force you to go into bankruptcy.
There is a reason the law is so strict about car insurance. It protects everyone from costs that they might find unaffordable. Despite this, one in seven drivers don't have car insurance. So you even need car insurance to protect yourself from people too dumb to buy it.
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