Auto Insurance ....

[apostate]

I have been driving a few years now and I always understood full coverage to be in contrast to liability-only coverage. Liability insurance protects other people from me, and is required by many states. To me, full coverage means liability plus insuring my vehicle against hazards such as theft, collision, and nature. In other words, it protects me, in addition to protecting others from me.

[gemini]

It's hard to imagine people being so ignorant of the world that they haven't figured out that, as The Old Rancher often taught, "the cheapest oats have already been run through the horse."

Insurance rates vary, of course, and insurance companies, naturally enough, prefer to insure the safest drivers for the highest rates they can, an impulse thwarted by competition. But a rate significantly below what others are charging for the same risk profile is suspect, unless you are confident you are in the preferred class of drivers, or a member of USAA, of course.

Insurance policies are not uniform, fungible, alike. A few companies still have agents but for the most part, competition has forced them to go to sales people, whose job it is to sell you on buying, as differentiated from the independent agent which is many respects was YOUR agent, not the company's.

If Texas requires drivers to carry liability insurance, and this driver did not, then the penalties ought to be imposed. They can sue their company, or agent, as the case may be for misrepresenting the coverages, if indeed that is what happened.

These companies target group are often "ethnic minorities". They tend to step in the cheapest oats, after they've been run through the horse, buying into these cheaper than most policies. Texas does require Liability Ins. Texas requires proof of insurance to get your car safety inspected, to get license plates etc. and minimum liability coverage is supposed to be in place, always. I certainly won't defend the at-fault driver, but, I honestly believe the husband and the wife were convinced they had bought a full coverage policy that would cover them (either person). They will probably read any future policies much more carefully.

BTW, I have had USAA coverage for years.

[gemini]

I have been driving a few years now and I always understood full coverage to be in contrast to liability-only coverage. Liability insurance protects other people from me, and is required by many states. To me, full coverage means liability plus insuring my vehicle against hazards such as theft, collision, and nature. In other words, it protects me, in addition to protecting others from me.

Correct. But, even in full coverage there are options like: limits, PIP, amounts of coverage, towing, rental etc etc.
The issue with the at-fault driver in this instance was the insurance companies full coverage policy excluded
anyone but the owner of the car, the husband. You might want to check your own policy and see if it covers
only you, or does it cover others if given permission to drive your vehicle.

[Syntyr]

I really wish we had no fault insurance. Then we could insure ourselves and be done with it. But I guess the era of personal responsability is long gone...

No fault is the very OPPOSITE of personal responsibility. If you hit my car, why should my insurance pay? Why should my rates go up because someone else did something stupid?

Rates generally go UP in no fault states because no one is now accountable for their behavior.

Very good point. Hadn't thought about it that way. 3 times someone including me has been involved in an accident and the person who hit us had no insurance. So I was stuck paying my own repairs. Twice they jacked my rates up and one time they canceled my mothers insurance even though she was not at fault.

[JALLEN]

And another thing.....

This business of people claiming ignorance even though the pertinent documents have been provided prior to them signing has got to stop.

When I was a young lawyer, a residential real estate transaction here in California would involve fewer than 100 pages at most, including the usual title report. Now, the loan documents alone run more than that, the standard form real estate contract runs 10 pages or more plus additional disclosure forms, every one of them because someone tried to back out of a deal, or enforce one because they didn't know what they were signing.

I've had to sign forms disclosing, or perhaps acknowledging, that my name was what it is, what I freely admit it is. It is truly absurd, but that's how most banks do business these days.

I concede that reading insurance policies is not as exciting as, say, watching American Idol, or Dancing with the Stars, or weeding up. It is not a matter of standardizing coverages either, because these people didn't have coverage for one driver. She should either have had coverage or not been driving.

Maybe the secret is to tie insurance coverage to Drivers licenses. When the policy that covers you lapses for whatever reason, your license turns blue. DPS or whoever issues licenses must get the green light from an admitted insurance carrier to issue a license, and if the coverage ends, so does the license. Maybe sends a twitter, or is it a tweet?, to the driver to pull over right then and there!