The Purpose of Having Car Insurance

1. The Purpose of Having Car Insurance Many of us see car insurance as a bureaucratic requirement put up by the government establishment, and as something we would do readily do without if we had a chance to without breaking the law. Evidence for this assertion can be found in the fact that most people take the very minimum levels of car insurance they can get away with, and only renew their policies on the very last day of their expiry, with some even going for some time after the expiry of their car insurance policies before renewing them. And listening to many motorist conversations, it emerges that the reason for renewing the car insurance (even when it is being renewed on the very last day before expiry) is to avoid possible prosecution by the authorities, rather than for the intrinsic value of the insurance - adding weight to the assertion that we tend to see car insurance as a bureaucratic requirement, rather than as a something meant for our own good. Yet an auto insurance is a very important tool, something meant for your own benefit and therefore something that you should try to have as much of as necessary, rather than as little of as you can get away with. Now in many jurisdictions, the statutory requirements for car insurance are those simply aimed at protecting others whose bodies, lives or properties might suffer damage due to an accident involving your car. The law in many of such jurisdictions assumes that you are wise enough to take up adequate car

2. insurance cover to take care of your own interests in the event of such an accident. And therefore, in a bid not to encumber motorists with too heavy insurance requirements, the law only demands that you take the level of coverage to protect others whose bodies, lives, or property you might injure with your car, leaving the level of insurance coverage to take care of your interests up to you to decide upon. What this means then is that if you see car insurance simply as a statutory requirement rather than as a tool you can use to protect your well being (and therefore take up only the minimum statutory coverage), you run the risk of finding yourself in those kinds of situations where you are involved in an accident that also injures other people or their property, only to be told that your car insurance cover (the minimum coverage that you took) only protects the interests of the others who come to suffer harm as a result of your car, and not you yourself. This could leave you with a heavy medical bill in case you were injured, or leave you having to repay the rest of the car loan on a car that has already been written off, simply because you chose to take up the minimum car insurance renewal coverage, which only covers damages against others, and not yourself. The moral here then is that we need to change our perception of auto insurance, from viewing it as a statutory requirement put in place to squeeze money out of us, and start viewing it as something meant for our own good, and something that we are better off taking as much of as really necessary. [Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Purpose-of-Having-Car- Insurance&id=2571021]