I received an email from a friend of mine who’s a commercial underwriter with a local insurance brokerage. All three of their cars were struck by hail from Sunday night’s storm. Two of the three vehicles are total losses and she wanted to know their options so they could make a good financial decision that right for them.
One of my all-time favorite vehicles is the 1974 to 1976 Toyota Land Cruiser. It technically was a four-passenger vehicle although the rear seats folded down from the sides and faced the middle. It had two doors, funky curved windows in the back corners, nice ground clearance, and a very utilitarian design. I thought they were very cool, but it wasn’t very pretty. A friend of mine recently bought one and is restoring it, so I thought this would be a good time to discuss car insurance for classic cars.
State Farm reported a loss on car insurance of $7 billion in 2016. It’s a staggering number, and they aren’t alone either. Allstate, Geico, The Hartford, and Travelers also experienced losses last year. One of my carriers shared with me for every $1.00 they took in for car insurance premium, they paid out $!.10 in claim losses, and that didn’t include the catastrophic car losses caused by our recent tornadoes and hail storms.
I had an interesting conversation with a new client the other day. She leases her car and wanted to confirm whether the car insurance policy covers manufacturer parts, also known as original equipment manufacturer or OEM parts, or would they insist on using third-party parts to repair her car if she files a car insurance claim? No client or prospective client has ever asked that question and it told me she’d either experienced or seen a claim go sideways.
Imagine you’re riding in an autonomous or self-driving vehicle. The car is traveling 35 to 40 miles per hour and a pedestrian suddenly walks out in front of your vehicle. Complicating the issue there is a concrete barrier in the oncoming lane. Hitting the pedestrian may result in killing them while hitting the concrete barrier may result in the death of the vehicle passenger. What will the car do? Who will be liable?
The Takata airbag recall been going on for a couple of years now. It began to take off when the New York Times reported the company was aware of a dangerous defect with its airbags. 11 days later, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration called for the recall to be expanded nationally from states with high humidity such as Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and along the Gulf Coast states.
What was your first job? Aside from babysitting neighborhood kids for $1.00 an hour, mine was helping my uncle Jere sell women’s shoes at his store on the west side of Birmingham when I was 15. I didn’t have to worry its impact on my parent’s car insurance rate because I wasn’t a licensed driver and I rode the bus across town to Jere’s store.
I spoke to a group of people today about car insurance, specifically what a typical Texas policy includes and how to determine the right amount of coverage for each person. I enjoyed the interaction and questions that arose from the presentation and felt like everyone learned how to better evaluate their car insurance needs.
There are a number of options that go well beyond what most people think of when they want “full coverage” car insurance. Here are six options worth knowing about.
There are a lot of different options available on a Texas car insurance policy. As I’ve written in the last two posts, anything after liability coverage is strictly optional as far as Texas law is concerned. This week we’ll look at some of the more common coverage options in the third part of our series on car insurance coverage.
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