Your liability coverage on your car insurance policy generally only covers the victims of the accidents you cause. The basic California car insurance policy with liability coverage wouldn’t cover you for your own injuries or car damage in an accident you were found at-fault for.
Your policy would be called on to cover the costs for medical care for any victims in a collision you are to blame for. It would usually cover the time victims must miss from their jobs and the cost of car repairs.
What Does My Liability Car Insurance Cover?
California’s minimum requirement for car owners is a car insurance policy that provides $30,000 in protection per person. I must carry up to $60,000 for bodily injury or death per accident. It must also cover up to $15,000 for property damage.
What many don’t realize is that this coverage is for anyone injured by the policyholder. It’s for the repair of any vehicle damaged by the policyholder.
With minimum coverage, the at-fault driver’s policy usually wouldn’t cover the following:
- Injury recovery costs for the driver at fault.
- Injury recovery costs for passengers in the at-fault driver’s car.
- Car damage repairs for the at-fault driver’s vehicle.
Drivers with minimum coverage who cause a pile-up couldn’t get help from their own insurance to recover. For injuries, they would hopefully be able to turn to their health insurance policies for help. Getting help in replacing a car may be harder.
Fortunately, there are other types of coverage available that can protect motorists, even if their mistakes lead to crashes.
How to Protect Yourself Financially for Traffic Accidents You Cause?
Imagine driving in the unpredictable traffic of a California freeway or boulevard and realizing that you aren’t covered for certain types of collisions. Yet, many people are not aware of how their insurance policies work, especially if they have the bare minimum in coverage.
That is, they may not realize until they are unfortunate enough to make a mistake on the road and cause an accident. The California car insurance that most drivers carry (the insurance with the lowest premiums) is generally for the benefit of the victims of the policyholder’s accidents, not for the policyholder.
There are other types of coverage that can be added on to offer drivers more insurance against a bad crash. One of the additional coverages may already be on your policy.
Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Coverage: You may already have this coverage and not know it. Generally, UM and UIM coverage is on your policy unless you make a written request to ask that it be removed. It covers you if you are struck by someone who doesn’t have car insurance. It covers you if you are struck by someone with the minimum insurance, and your injury treatment ends up going over the other driver’s limits. Another important protection with UM/UIM insurance is when you are struck by a hit-and-run driver. If the suspect is never identified, you can seek help with your recovery costs from Uninsured motorist coverage.
Collision Insurance – Helps pay to get your car fixed, no matter who was at fault.
Comprehensive Insurance – Helps you pay for other types of damage to your vehicle, such as weather damage and tree damage.
Medical Payments — Med-Pay insurance helps pay your medical bills and your passengers’ expenses, no matter who caused the accident.
Support for California Traffic Accident Victims
If you’ve caused an accident or if your accident only involves minor injuries and/or vehicle damage, you probably won’t benefit from a lawyer’s help.
But if you or a loved one is seriously injured due to the carelessness of another driver, discuss your options with a real California car accident lawyer. We provide a free, no-obligation consultation to all traffic accident victims.
We can help if another driver’s car insurance provider or your own attempts to falsely blame you for an accident you didn’t cause or tries to question how badly you are hurt. These are often tactics meant to rob you of support or get you to accept less in a settlement check. We fight back on your behalf. We seek the most possible for your claim while giving you a stress-free time to focus on getting better.
If you do feel we can help you earn more, you won’t need to find any money to hire us. We don’t get paid unless we win your case for you. Then our fee comes out of the money a car insurance company is forced to pay you.
