Auto insurance coverage should always be verified for safety’s sake. The last thing you want to do is get into an accident and find out your auto insurance doesn’t cover all the contingencies you expected. Car insurance policies can vary from policy to policy. In many states the only mandatory auto insurance coverage that a person must have is liability auto insurance, and many times the amount of liability car insurance required is much less that the amount recommended by most carriers.

With that in mind it is always a good idea to sit down with your agent and discuss your auto insurance coverage. Whether you use a full service car insurance agency, or a discount auto insurance agency, your agency should be knowledgeable of the amount and type of auto insurance coverage you have and be able and more than willing to discuss it with you. You are, after all, a valuable customer of this car insurance company, and their job is to make sure you have adequate auto insurance coverage to fit your needs.

A good example of a driver who made a mistake regarding their auto insurance coverage and later regretted it was driver…let’s call him Drive Smith. Driver Smith had a good driving record and a nice, two year old car that he was quite proud of. He babied that car in fact. The one mistake that Driver Smith made with his car and his car insurance however, was in not reading his policy carefully. He thought he had full coverage , but he only had liability. When an uninsured motorist hit his car and did several thousands of dollars in damage, he had very little recourse. He could sue the uninsured driver, but the other driver was unemployed, uninsured and intoxicated. The law would punish him with a DUI conviction, but that didn’t help Driver Smith at all. He had to pay for the repairs out of his own pocket. If he had paid attention to the type of auto insurance coverage he had, he would have been financially protected.

Another example of a mistake made by not paying proper attention to auto insurance is the case of the woman we will call Driver X. Driver X was a twenty year old college student. She made good grades and she was a careful driver. She had a ten year old car, but it was in good shape and she took care of it. When she bought her auto insurance coverage she was in a financial bind, and only took the minimum that the state she lived in required. Things were great for a while, but eventually bad luck occurred. Driver X was in an accident. She was driving and struck another car. Two people in the other car were injured, one of them seriously. The hospital bills for the two people injured in the accident quickly exceeded the $100.000 in minimum liability auto insurance coverage Driver X had and according to the laws of her state, she was financially responsible. It will take her years to pay off the medical bills of the other people.

These examples show the major importance of having the right auto insurance coverage, for safety’s sake.