Friday, February 27, 2009

Do you have to buy Car Insurance?

By Samantha A. Bow

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.

In the case of an accident, both your insurance company and the other person's insurance company have to get the accident figured out and arrange payments. Who pays what will depend on who's fault it was. If you don't have any insurance, it will cost you quite a bit of money.

You will save money if you have insurance. Even if you think you are just throwing away money, if you get into an accident, you won't be wasting money. For example, if you are paying $100 a month to insure your car, over the course of 2 years you will have paid $2,400. No let's say you total your car in an accident.

If you were at fault and both cars were totaled, you would have to pay the entire value of both cars. This will depend on the age of the car and type of the car. If the value of both cars put together was $10,000 and you were covered under insurance, you would only have to pay a deductible, which you decide on when you set up the policy. It's usually just a few hundred dollars.

Let's say you do have to pay a $500 deductible. Over two years, you pay $2,400 plus the $500 deductible. If you didn't have insurance, you wouldn't have paid the $2,400, but you would have had to pay the $10,000 and you would pay $7,100 more. That is a huge savings if you had insurance.

You might argue that you are a great driver and will never get into an accident. Well, the fact is, even if you are a great driver, other people still do stupid things and there's still a chance you could get into an accident. Even if you never get into an accident, the insurance you pay will give you peace of mind and, let's face it, it's the law!

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