Hitting a $200,000 Bentley, $100,000 Porsche or even a modest $50,000 Infiniti with your car will be a headache that will make you wish you’d ridden the bus, especially if you have minimal car insurance.
Cheap car insurance policies get that way by providing the barest amount of coverage possible, dropping the extras like collision and comprehensive insurance that protect your car and reducing limits elsewhere to their legal liability minimums.
Most states require at least $10,000 to $25,000 in liability car insurance to cover property damage, with California and Pennsylvania demanding the least at $5,000. The unlucky driver who hits a Bentley, or any car worth more than his or her liability coverage, is on the hook for damages beyond the policy limits, says Penny Gusner, CarInsurance.com senior consumer analyst.
The average price of a new car
According to valuation analysts at Car and Driver, the average new car sold for $48,008 in March 2022.
That’s all cars, not just the fancy ones. There’s about a one in 12 chance that if you cause an accident, it will include a car that costs $56,000 or more new, according to Autodata Corp. figures.
Having the minimum liability coverage for property damage is only part of the hole you can dig yourself into if you hit an expensive car. There are also bodily injury liability limits that vary by state.
The minimum in California is $15,000 per person injured and $30,000 per accident. If the Bentley driver and a passenger are injured in our hypothetical accident, and the hospital bills are more than $30,000, you’re stuck paying the difference.
They can sue you, but will they?
Suppose you live in a state where the minimum property damage liability coverage is $10,000, and you carry that amount.
If you hit and total a $200,000 Bentley, your insurance company will write a check for $10,000 and walk away, leaving you to face the other driver’s insurer. (Of course, that assumes he has the collision coverage that would pay to repair his car when you don’t. Most Bentley drivers likely do.)
That insurance company could ask to have your wages garnisheed, or request a judge to order your assets seized to repay them, says Lynette Simmons Hoag, an insurance claim attorney in Chicago.
Insurance company lawyers realize they can’t squeeze blood from a turnip. If you have the minimum car insurance liability limits, you probably don’t have the money to pay them the difference owed for totaling a Porsche.
But some will still go to court to garnishee your wages, and an $80,000 judgment against you will affect your credit for years to come, Hoag says.
When name-brand car insurance matters
Some top-rated car insurance companies have agreements that they won’t pursue each other’s clients for payment so they can save on legal fees, Hoag says. However, they may sue more frequently in a bad economy, partly because they’re built to sue. Also, the potential for a significant judgment against a driver who hit an expensive car is enticing to lawyers, who may also ask the court for money for their client’s pain and suffering, and lost income from work.
“It’s worth it for them to pursue you, especially at larger levels,” Hoag says.
Drivers who thought their car insurance rates were great when they went with a substandard insurer are more likely to be sued because such insurers often don’t have arbitration agreements that larger insurers do to avoid lawsuits, Hoag says.
“You should be afraid that you’re going to have your house taken away,” she says of drivers with substandard insurance who hit expensive cars.
What will higher car insurance liability limits cost?
Gusner, the consumer analyst, advises getting as much liability coverage as you can afford, such as $100,000 per person in bodily injury liability coverage, $300,000 per accident, plus $100,000 in property damage liability (usually expressed as 100/300/100).
Increasing coverage beyond the minimum can be relatively inexpensive. Every driver will see different rates, of course, and your driving record will significantly affect the cost of liability insurance.
We compared auto insurance quotes for a 30-year-old male driver with a clean record. The average year cost for a bare-bones car insurance policy or state minimum liability limits was $574.
Raising those limits to 50/100/50 resulted in an average cost of $644; raising those liability limits even higher, to 100/300/100, cost $1,758.
That means to hike your coverage from state minimum to higher liability limits of 50/100/50 costs just $70 a year, so just $6 monthly. Increasing protection from bare-bones coverage to recommended full coverage of 100/300/100 costs $1,184, about $100 more a month.
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Laura Longero
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Laura is an award-winning editor with experience in content and communications covering auto insurance and personal finance. She has written for several media outlets, including the USA Today Network. She most recently worked in the public sector for the Nevada Department of Transportation.
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John McCormick
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Leslie Kasperowicz is an insurance educator and content creation professional with nearly two decades of experience first directly in the insurance industry at Farmers Insurance and then as a writer, researcher, and educator for insurance shoppers writing for sites like ExpertInsuranceReviews.com and InsuranceHotline.com and managing content, now at CarInsurance.com.
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