Car Insurance Policies: What You Need to Know
Look at that dent in your car! It looks like someone hit it with your mailbox! Mailboxes can pop up out of nowhere. Maybe the guy isn’t really at fault, especially because, well…that guy is you.
Now what?
Of course, you didn’t intend to hit your mailbox, but if the mailbox would have just alerted you that it was standing in your way, this would be a lot less complicated. Do you have to drive around forever now, with a constant reminder of what has happened? Let’s look into that, shall we?
The first place you will want to look is at your auto insurance policy. You are hoping to find the words “collision coverage”.
What you gotta have
There are laws in most states about the minimum insurance coverage you can have on your car. The minimum in most states is “liability insurance”. Liability insurance is insurance that covers the cost of damages that you cause to others that are driving. This could include the cost of damage you’ve done to someone else’s vehicle as well as their medical care, should it be necessary. (Hopefully not.)
As you may have deduced from the term, liability insurance covers damages you are liable for. Check your state’s insurance laws and be sure that your current policy is in line with the state you live in.
But, the mailbox. Even though we know the mailbox was really at fault, you have no witnesses and the box isn’t’ talking. So that leaves the onus on you. This is where we look at that insurance policy and hope we see “collision coverage”.
What you wanna have
Most states do not have laws on the books that include verbiage on collision insurance requirements. It is usually an elective coverage that will take care of any damage you do to your own vehicle. (That will never happen.)
Many people elect not to have collision coverage in an effort to keep their insurance premiums to a minimum. But those drivers may not have realized that they are the owners of one very aggressive mailbox. You may find that collision coverage is necessary only after you’ve damaged your vehicle, and that is, unfortunately too late.
When adding a vehicle to your auto insurance policy, you’ll really want to consider including collision coverage. Banging into your garage door, hitting one of your vehicles with another, crashing into the tree that stepped right into the street, are all incidents that will only be covered if you have collision already on your policy.
When your car hits your wallet
While you most likely will want to erase all evidence of the mailbox incident, without collision coverage on your policy, you are going to have to pay for the damage to your car out of pocket. Should you have been wise enough to have included collision coverage on your auto insurance policy, cruise on down to your skilled auto-body friends at Tropical Collision and they can help you with filing an insurance claim. Don’t fret, this is nothing that they haven’t heard before and will be sure to help your car look like this never happened. Simply give us a call at (305) 908-5548 or request an appointment with us online.