Gone are the days when you could just count the cars that pass by in front of you. Each year, thousands of cars are being added to the already crowded metropolitan roads. For this reason, driving without insurance coverage is a serious offense and anyone caught without one could face serious penalties or possibly lose their driver’s license forever.
Authorities know that auto insurance coverage could protect you financially. Countless people have lost everything because they simply ignore the importance of insurance. Auto insurance protects your hard-earned money whether or not the accident is your fault or the other party. In this article, we are going to discuss the two common classes of insurance: personal injury and uninsured motorists’ insurance coverage.
Understanding Personal Injury Protection
Regular and full are the two flavors of personal injury protection. As of today, not all states in the U.S. implement or require personal injury protection to all of its drivers. In general, this insurance will cover your medical expenses, missed wages (due to the accident) and other unlisted damages. Since not all implementing states are mandated to implement personal injury protection, talk to your insurance agent if you’re planning to drive to a different state other than yours.
Personal injury protection is a “high performance” type of coverage. Not only it covers funeral expenses of the policyholder, any passengers needing medical attention during the accident could, likewise, use it. Additionally, if there are injured pedestrians, personal injury could cover them as well.
The above-mentioned scenarios are, of course, limited to a certain amount and time caps. However, in general, insurers are able to cover a range of expenses anywhere between $1,500 and $250,000. Personal injury protection indemnifies the policyholder, whether or not he’s the driver at fault or the other party.
Uninsured Motorists Insurance: Do You Need One?
Even though auto insurance coverage is mandatory for all drivers in the United States, still millions of them drive their cars each day without any forms of protection. The bad news is that when someone hits you having no insurance coverage at all or the insurance coverage isn’t enough to cover all possible costs, you get nothing or less in return.
Uninsured motorists insurance solves this problem by protecting already-insured individuals from uninsured motorists. This means that even if the at-fault driver has no insurance at all, but you have the uninsured motorists insurance, you could file a claim without difficulty. Though, keep in mind that this type of insurance only covers bodily injuries and not the other forms of expenses such as the cost of repairs, etc.
You cannot file a claim against uninsured motorists insurance if you’re the driver at fault. It has to be the other party causing the accident to take effect. Most states in the U.S. encouraged drivers to add this type of policy on top of their existing policies for more added coverage protection. Drivers carrying this policy will receive the same amount if the uninsured driver was, in fact, insured in the first place. Keep in mind that all additional policies, including this one, will increase your premiums. You may not find this option tempting if you’re on a tight budget. However, if you think that the benefits far outweigh the need to save, then by all means, take it.
