Is Car Insurance Required?
18-Feb-2009
In an ideal world, nobody would get into car accidents because everyone would follow the traffic laws and nobody would make mistakes. Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. We do get into accidents and we do have to pay for the damages they cause. In order to pay for the damages of these accidents, we buy car insurance.
When it comes time to get car insurance, don’t just get the first one you see or the cheapest one you can find. You need to look for two main qualities, price and coverage. You need them both to be good, not just one or the other. You could get lucky and end up with the cheapest policy having the best coverage for you, but that is unlikely. No matter what, when you get a car and want to drive it, get insurance.
If you live in the U.S., you do have to buy car insurance. You can’t have your car on the road if it’s not insured. If get into an accident and have no insurance, you will cause many problems for both yourself and the other person involved in the accident.
When you get into a car accident with another vehicle involved, both insurance companies, or the same one if you both have the same insurance company, have to communicate and arrange payments. Without insurance, you will have to pay a lot of money and you will get into a lot of trouble.
Insurance will save you money over time. Let’s say you are paying $100 a month to insure one car. Over the course of two years you pay $2,400. Then, let’s say you get into a car accident, and your car and the other car are totaled.
If the accident was your fault, you’ll have to pay for the value of the totaled cars. Let’s say the total value of both cars combined was $10,000. That’s a lot of money to pay. If you were covered under insurance, you would only have to pay a deductible. You choose the deductible when you set up your insurance.
If your deductible was $300 and you had insurance, you’d pay that plus it would cost you altogether that and the $2,400 from the policy for a total cost of $2,700. If you had no insurance, you would have saved the $2,400 in insurance and would have to pay the entire $10,000. That is a difference of $7,300.
You might think you’ll never get into an accident, but accidents aren’t planned. You never know when they might happen. Your only other option would be to walk or ride your bike around. Get insurance and pay the fees. It makes life much easier and isn’t that expensive anyway.
