Hey guys! I’m here to talk about Uninsured and Under-insured Motorist Coverage, which is a super important tool that you need to get in order to protect yourself in case you’re hit or hurt by somebody who has pretty bad insurance.
For example, I had a client who was in a San Francisco motorcycle accident. He got side-swiped by this woman who tried to flee the scene. She was crazy. Ended up being a felon. We found out she had zero insurance. No income. Tons of debt. He was out of luck trying to make a claim against her, and so he had to look at his own motorcycle insurance policy, which only had $15,000 of Uninsured/Under-insured Motorist Coverage. He was in the hospital over a week; got multiple surgeries; had $300,000-plus in medical expenses; and had to cover that with 15 grand! It’s not going to work.
We’ve got multiple clients with serious personal injuries injured by these people who cruise around with very little insurance. The state of California only requires that you have $15,000 a coverage. So, that’s why a lot of people do it. They just don’t know any better. They’re never told they should get something more, or they just want it to be as affordable as possible, so they just get the bare minimum. You might also be like that. Maybe you didn’t know any different. Maybe you just thought, “Hey! I want the cheapest insurance I can get.” But, you know what? You’re not doing yourself any favors.
You want to take a look at your declarations page, which is an itemization. Although, you may have gotten one when you signed up for insurance. It’ll list out Liability Coverage, which is coverage that you have in the event you hurt someone else. So, if your liability coverage is really low and you hurt someone, but you’ve got some assets. You might own your own house, have a pretty good paying job, that person could come after you personally. You want to make sure your liability coverage is nice and high.
Under liability you’ve got Property Damage Coverage, and what that means is it takes care of your car and/or takes care of the car of anyone you may cause a car accident with. Then under that you’ve got Uninsured or Under-insured Motorist Coverage, and what that is that helps protect you in the event you’re hit by somebody who has very low insurance limits. In order for you to increase your Uninsured/Under-insured Motorist Coverage, you also have to increase your liability limit.
For instance, if you had the bare minimum. You’ve got $15,000 of Liability. You’ve got probably $5,000 of Property Damage, and then you’ve got $15,000 of Uninsured Motorist. If you want to get that Uninsured Motorist up to the bare minimum that I recommend, which is $100,000, you’ve got to also get your Liability Coverage up. Okay?
A lot of people think this is super pricey. It’s not that expensive. Might be 50 or 60 bucks for six months, and I totally recommend it. The problem is that there’s just so many people out there that are uninformed or trying to save a buck, and if you get hit by them, you’re out of luck. You may think, “Oh! I’ve got medical insurance. That should cover things.” Well, it will cover medical costs, but what’s going to cover your loss of earnings when you miss out on work? I’ve got personal injury clients who can’t walk for months, or people who can’t do their normal activities, and you’re entitled to compensation for that, and $15,000 is not going to do it. It goes towards your medical bills first, even if you have health insurance. You have to pay that health insurance back, so we can talk about that forever.
But, I want you to go out and get more Uninsured Motorist Coverage to protect yourself. You just got to do it! All right. You want to learn more about this, I’ve got tons of this stuff in my personal injury FAQs and my traffic accident blog. I can keep posting videos about this topic as well. Thanks so much!
For protection beyond Uninsured Motorist Coverage, you may also want to look into an Umbrella Insurance Policy.
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