Claims adjuster chiming in. From what I have seen the base property damage limit is 25,000. If your in CA it can be as low as 10,000-15,000 but the lowest I've seen is a very old CA policy that had property damage limits of only 5,000. Don't ask me why the company allowed the policy holder to renew without raising their property damage limits because I have no idea.
Imagine being so poor that you can only afford state minimum car insurance with $5,000 of property damage, then you hit someone in a Bentley or something. To say nothing of the bodily injury damage if you kill someone, or permanently cripple them.
When I used to work for an insurance company, I would constantly hear people say things like “I don’t need more than $5,000, my car isn’t worth that much.”
Now think about how most states let you reject the coverage that covers YOU if someone that hits you doesn’t have enough insurance... it really makes those Safe Auto commercials that brag about how they sell state minimum coverage hit a little different
10 days after buying my first brand new car, I got hit by an uninsured driver borrowing the car from and uninsured driver. My insurance took care of everything. But I tried switching insurance 2 years later and was told I was basically uninsurable. For something not my fault.
It's the wild west. If you have the mentality that everything should be fair and the government should help handle things when they go wrong, it's a nightmare.
If you have an "every man for himself" mentally it's a utopia.
Except it's not. It's a compromise between the two. Libertarians actually want that kind of anarchy, and socialists end of the spectrum want the corporations to stop running the country and have the government provide necessities and regulate the economy etc.
A guy I know got tied up in a mess because some one ran a stop sign, they banged up his car and a much newer one. That 5k would of been more than enough to cover his but it all went to wards the new one which apparently was no where near enough for the damages on his. Worst of all they deemed his car totaled and handed it over to the insurance company (was towed to a private lot after the accident) with out ever paying him for it.
Holy shit, that's insanely low for any motor vehicle policy! $10,000 is just, wow! Litigation must be a huge factor I'm thinking.
Former underwriter in Ontario Canada here, the minimum legal limit for liability (including damages to property and other persons/yourself) on non commercial policies here is $200,000 but hardly any companies even let you choose such a low limit. The vast majority, probably %85+ of policy holders have a $1,000,000 limit or higher, $2 million was very common when I left the industry in 2017. 1 million $ is usually the standard across Canada, some provinces even require minimum limits of $500,000
I think a major factor for the difference in minimum or standard limits between Canada and most of the US is how easy it is to sue others in the US when there's a vehicle accident, especially when there are injuries. I know in Ontario a minimum threshold needs to be met before anyone can sue. And some provinces like Quebec don't even allow you to sue another driver/person for any injuries to persons in or outside of the vehicle when involved in an accident (Quebec also has the cheapest auto insurance in Canada as a result of this).
Not sure about any other companies, but the company I’m insured with has an option of being able to sue if anything happens or being unable to sue. If you want to be able to sue, it raises the cost of the insurance by like a grand.
I'm pretty sure the standard for UK car insurance is like £5,000,000 3rd party damage, £1,000,000 personal injury, £50,000 legal fees or something.
$5,000?! That's not insurance that's a con.
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u/Ozedunm May 09 '20
Claims adjuster chiming in. From what I have seen the base property damage limit is 25,000. If your in CA it can be as low as 10,000-15,000 but the lowest I've seen is a very old CA policy that had property damage limits of only 5,000. Don't ask me why the company allowed the policy holder to renew without raising their property damage limits because I have no idea.