Auto Insurance Coverage Options Which Protect Us Against Uninsured Drivers

Uninsured motorists can be a real pain in the bumper for those of us who have never gone a day without insurance. Most of us are responsible about this kind of thing, and we do not let our coverage lapse if we want to keep on driving. Even with insurance most of us drive carefully, and we do not go out joy riding with no insurance, then top it all off by having a crash landing into someone else's car!

Here in Ohio and many other states as well, there are uninsured motorist laws which help protect those of us who are legally insured from financial and legal issues that can arise from having an incident with an uninsured motorist. In fact, we are paying for uninsured motorists each time we pay our premiums!

The phrase uninsured implies that the other driver has no coverage at all but this may be misleading. There are situations where the other driver may be simply under-insured and they are not carrying the minimum coverage required by law. This to me is ridiculous because the insurance company who wrote their policy should know the laws on this and should not be allowed to write a policy for less than the legal limits! One example of this is if someone opts to have collision only insurance and does not have any liability insurance.

There are other situations where a uninsured motorist claim could be made and the most prevalent of those would be a hit and run driver. In this situation the uninsured motorist coverage program takes care of you even if the other driver does not have the decency to stand up and take their punishment like a man. What kind of coward runs away from an accident that they caused?

The funny thing about uninsured motorist insurance is that those of us who carry insurance are paying for this program when we send in our premiums every month. The insurance industry lobbied our legislative body and as a result a set of laws were enacted which provides relief for those of us who have altercations with uninsured drivers.

They were also clever enough to set it up where the insurance companies did not have to pay for this process but instead we do. What a great plan this was! I am not sure exactly what motivates the uninsured motorist to go and get coverage? Is it the threat of impounding their car and taking them to jail? This plan does not seem very productive to me either.

What most insurance agents suggest you do if there is ever an incident with an uninsured motorist is to get a lawyer before submitting your insurance claim to make sure that you are getting everything that is available for your situation. Once the claim is made then the terms are pretty much set and you cannot change things later.

The best thing we can all do is figure out some way to get through the day without having to deal with people who do not have sufficient insurance levels. The cat and mouse game of having police uncover these drivers is even more random than playing the lottery.

I think that the place to deal with this is at the Department of Motor Vehicles where if you cannot show proof of insurance then you don't get license plates or a drivers license. Probably cannot do this because somehow it violates the offenders personal rights so instead we say to heck with my rights as an innocent and insured driver!

Don't we all wish this was an easier thing to fix? It costs us a lot of money every day yet no one says anything!!