The Ins and Outs of Uninsured Motorist Coverage

Protection Against the Unprotected

Do You Want Fries With That Insurance?

Although UM insurance coverage is considered to be fairly expensive, it can be had for just about the same amount a family would spend eating out at a typical fast-food restaurant twice a week. (You just don’t realize how those Big Macs add up, do you?) Everyone knows it can be difficult weighing such priorities as burgers versus insurance premiums, but you can do it if you try it when you're not hungry.

Pros, Cons, and Everything in Between

A UM policy covers you, your family, passengers in your car, and anybody else who drives your car as long as they do so with your permission against property damage and bodily injury. Property damage coverage pays for auto repairs, total losses, rental cars, and even personal items damaged in your car. However, in Texas, for example, there is an automatic $250 deductible, also known as the Surprise Out-of-Pocket Expense. Bodily injury coverage pays (without any deductible, thank goodness) for medical bills, funeral expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, disfigurement and permanent or partial disability.

With UM coverage, the responsibility of reporting the accident promptly to the authorities if the at-fault driver did a hit-and-run sits squarely on your shoulders, and your very own insurer plays the role of the other driver’s auto liability company, meaning it can refuse to pay if it decides you, and not other driver was, at fault.

UM coverage may overlap some of your other insurance, such as health insurance, so you need to weigh out just how tight your personal budget is and whether or not squeezing in the extra expense is worth it or possible for you. There are a great deal of situations, however, in which health care coverage can not help, such as not applying to a non-family member riding in or driving your car in the event of a wreck. Other things to consider are lost wages, possible job retraining expenses after a serious accident, remodeling of a home to make it wheelchair-accessible, maybe having to buy or renovate a van to make it usable by the injured person and/or to transport a wheelchair, payment for someone to do yard work, housework, or other things around the home the injured can no longer do, possible home-health aid . . . the list can go on and on. All these things would be covered by UM insurance, but not by health care coverage.

Personal Injury Protection (PIP) carried by many drivers will pay for medical and funeral expenses arising from accidents in your car, but collecting from both PIP and UM coverages is a double-dipping no-no for the same expenses. Also, PIP coverage is, in general, less than that of UM coverage.

The Big Decision

That’s the long and short of the UM coverage controversy, so have you come to a conclusion? True, it's a bite to the budget, but until we learn how to milk blood from a turnip, UM protection may be the only way to recover our expenses if the person causing the collision disappears like Houdini in a magic act or is without insurance, because this almost always means they’re flat broke. If you find them, you could sue them, but the last I heard, no matter how hard one was squeezed, that poor turnip still did nothing but turn to mush, and no matter where you are now, you might wind up in the garden patch yourself someday.

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