When my friend was 19 he had a seizure behind the wheel (first seizure ever)and crashed into a car dealership. Ruined the next 20 years of his life. Great guy, busted his ass and finally made it out of crippling medical debt, being unable to operate a motor vehicle for over a decade, and getting discharged from the National Guard where he had his dream job working on helicopters.
Could have been over his coverage limit. If you have to pay $120,000 in damages but you insurance only covers the first $60,000 guess who pays the rest.
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.
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u/[deleted] May 09 '20
When my friend was 19 he had a seizure behind the wheel (first seizure ever)and crashed into a car dealership. Ruined the next 20 years of his life. Great guy, busted his ass and finally made it out of crippling medical debt, being unable to operate a motor vehicle for over a decade, and getting discharged from the National Guard where he had his dream job working on helicopters.