Do You Have Enough Uninsured Motorist Insurance?

It's a good idea to make the time to check your insurance policy, or call your insurance agent, to ensure you have enough coverage in case you are involved in an accident. You certainly don't want to learn that you don't have sufficient coverage after the fact, when it's too late. As an accident lawyer specializing in personal injury, it's not uncommon in my practice to be limited as to what I can do for a client and only because of insurance coverage issues.

Bottom line, I urge you to ensure that your uninsured motorist limits match your bodily injury limits. It's in your best interest to do so.

Let's say, for example, that your policy has bodily injury limits of $100,000 per person. This means that if you caused a collision resulting in injuries to another person, your insurance would pay up to $100,000 for that person's injuries, depending, of course, on the value of the injured person's case.

At the same time, with that same policy, let's say you have uninsured motorist limits of $30,000 per person. This means that if you were involved in a collision caused by an uninsured motorist, you would be covered up to only $30,000 through your policy for your personal injuries sustained in the collision.

Think about it this way: through this example, you are offering more coverage to a person who you injured, and less coverage for yourself and your passengers through your uninsured motorist limits. The injured person has $100,000, but you avail yourself only $30,000 if you and/or your passengers were injured by an uninsured motorist.

Your uninsured motorist limits also cover you when you are involved in a collision caused by a motorist who has insurance, but not enough coverage to cover you for the full value of your claim. If that driver only has $30,000 bodily injury limits, and you only have $30,000 uninsured motorist coverage, there would be nothing more available to you through your policy - because your uninsured motorist limits do not exceed the defending driver's limits. However, if you increased your uninsured motorist limits to match your $100,000 bodily injury limits, then you would have $70,000 more available to you, which is the difference between the defendant's bodily injury limits and your uninsured motorist limits.

I don't believe that the increased coverage would cost all that much more for the value it offers to protect you. In fact, according to a local agent, to increase your uninsured motorist limits from $15,000 to $100,000 would probably not cost more than $60 a year.

Taking a moment to confer with your agent is well worth the time when you consider the value it can offer if you ever have the misfortune of being involved in a motor vehicle accident caused by an uninsured or underinsured driver.

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