Insurance policy

[rgbeard]

A friend of mine thought he was good with his insurance (typical 100/300 style) but he didn't pay close attn to the uninsured/underinsured portion.

So a welfare-asswipe in an S10 head-ons his wife while she's driving home from work in her relatively new Jaguar S-type.

Welfare-asswipe's insurance immediately wrote a check for the policy limits ($30,000) and walked away, as their role was now finished.

My friend's uninsured/underinsured portion was (If I recall) $40,000.   So the company immediately wrote a check for $10,000 (the difference between the policy limit and the amount already recovered) and walked away, as they too had exhausted policy limits.

So my friend has just enough money to pay off the car, and maybe $2,000 left over.  Wife gets 8 months off work, a couple of surgeries.

The lesson for my friend, as well as those of us who watched:  Boost the uninsured/underinsured to match your other liability level.  Would have cost very little to jack it to $100k or so, and have a better resource for providing funds for lost wages.

After my friend's experience, you can bet my policy declaration pages were pulled from the files, and carefully reviewed.  

[Oxblood]

Thanks for that post, zer0.  It explains a lot.


Ya know, I've often complained about this exact thing.  Insurance is tied to the vehicle here in Canada, too...each vehicle needs a separate policy, when really what should be insured is the driver.

It is especially egregious the way ICBC does it with respect to motorcycles. Look at how much more you have to spend if your bike is over 1000cc. They justify it by arguing that the m/c is so much more powerful, will cause more damage, goes faster and is therefor more dangerous, etc. Yet, when you examine motorcycle accident statistics, it clearly shows the largest category of serious m/c accidents fall to riders of mid sized motorcycles in the 600 and 650 range. Go figure.

And do not get me started about the outrageous difference in optional insurance fees. My privately supplied coverage is less than half what ICBC would charge for the same coverage. Why? I am buying the same product. How does ICBC justify their much higher premiums for full coverage optional policies? They cannot, and they don't.

I think it is high time insurance went back to the private sector here. The government can set guidelines as to what is acceptable minimum coverage, and then let the market dictate what each individual pays.

[Oxblood]

That was my quote used to start this thread, and to make matters worse for those that are victims of people with bare minimum insurance is that, despite South Carolina having a law that everyone has to carry insurance, it is often reported that about 1/3 of the state's drivers don't even have insurance. Those people know that they don't have anything worth losing, so they simply don't care. There are no debtor's prisons, so everyone seems to think it's no big deal. You wind up with bad credit scores, but most of them have bad credit already. Not to mention you throw in all the people with low incomes or are on welfare, and they know that there are no reprecussions for their actions, so not only do they drive without insurance....and often without licenses....they generally seem to drive like idiots and with cars that aren't even safe to drive.

I try to carry enough insurance to make sure that my retirement portfolio and home are protected from a law suit. I was actually thinking a couple of days ago about bumping up my insurance just to have more peace of mind.

And that is why I always have uninsured/underinsured coverage on  my bike and car.

[Kootenanny]

And do not get me started about the outrageous difference in optional insurance fees. My privately supplied coverage is less than half what ICBC would charge for the same coverage. Why? I am buying the same product. How does ICBC justify their much higher premiums for full coverage optional policies? They cannot, and they don't.

I think it is high time insurance went back to the private sector here. The government can set guidelines as to what is acceptable minimum coverage, and then let the market dictate what each individual pays.

I don't know this for a fact, but I believe the difference here is that ICBC doesn't use criteria such as age or gender in their rating system, while private insurers do.  Try to get that private optional coverage if you're a 29 year old guy...

And that's one problem with private insurance.  

I've seen studies that show we're actually not too bad off with ICBC.  Talk to motorcyclists in Quebec or Ontario about insurance rates...