GAP Auto Insurance Coverage

Reader’s Question:

For some misfortune event, I was involved in a car accident last week. It was my first ever car accident in my entire life. What’s even worse is that it was a hit and run. It was totally not my fault. I have comprehensive coverage on that vehicle. However, I don’t have collision. Will my GAP coverage be able to pay for the damage on my vehicle? I am from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Val

Sioux Falls, SD

This is really a very unfortunate event in your life and I’m really sorry to hear what had happened to you.

I am assuming that the reason why you’re asking that is because your primary auto insurance did not cover for the damages incurred on your vehicle. If that is the case with you, then you GAP insurance would not be able to pay for the damages also.

For a GAP auto insurance to cover you, your primary auto insurance company should pay for the actual cash value (ACV) of your car first. However, since you’ve already mentioned you don’t have collision coverage then, it’s only expected that you insurer would not pay for your claims. Because, this kind of accident falls under the collision coverage.

For more information about auto insurance claims, feel free to ask your auto insurance agent in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Quality Connecticut car insurance

In Connecticut, there is a standard for driving with car insurance, and drivers who have vehicles registered in the state must have a minimum liability coverage. This type of coverage exists to protect other drivers as well as to protect your own assets in the event of an accident. Liability coverage takes care of the injuries or damages that you cause to another driver or their property, and helps to make sure that people aren’t getting smashed into and then left alone holding the pieces, and that drivers take financial responsibility for their cars. The minimum liability in Connecticut is:

• Injury/death for a single person–$20,000
• Injury/death for multiple people–$40,000
• Property damage–$10,000

Although this is what is required, most insurance agents suggest that you get more than this, because if you are taken to court for a lawsuit, you only get backed by the insurance company for the amount of liability coverage that you have. If you don’t have enough, you could end up thousands of dollars in debt and legal fees. The more money you have to begin with, the more vulnerable you are to lawsuits, which is some food for thought.

The DMV in the state of Connecticut is doing its best to make sure that people drive with insurance, so you have to carry proof of it not only when your register your vehicle, but everywhere you drive. If you get pulled over and don’t have your insurance card, you’ll get an extra ticket just for that. And even if you don’t get pulled over, the DMV is notified when you no longer have a policy, so if you can’t prove that you have one you are fined two hundred dollars. There’s a good reason right there to never throw mail from the DMV away.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

basis for car insurance premium charges

Here are the determining factors that affects premium on car insurance:

AGE- Teenagers have high insurance premiums especially those without driving records. They can avail of the discounts if they undertake driving courses. They are also entitled to “good grade discount” if they have good academic records. Generally, these discounts are offered to those blow the age of 25. On the other hand, those senior drivers, above 55 years of age may avail of the retirement discounts since they have less miles driven per year. Some insurance company offer refresher course to get discounts also.

DISTANCE- This determines how much the car is being used. Discounts usually benefits to drivers who do not drive frequently.

TYPE OF CAR- If you are driving a very expensive car, definitely cost you more to insure it due to expensive cost for repairs and replacement.

GENDER- Gender may also be a determining factor since men usually drive more than women do. Men also have a higher accident involvement at all ages.

Check your local insurance company for other basis of premium charges.

Goodluck!

-MariCAR

What to think of before letting your child go with just car insurance for the student driver

Reader question:

I’ve already added my 17 year old, Mike, to our car insurance policy, but I’m still worried that this won’t keep him safe. What do I do?

Greg

That’s a normal concern.

A lot of parents get really worried when it’s time for their teenager to get out on the road, and just purchasing car insurance for the student driver won’t make that worry go away. However, there is another way to make sure that you can feel comfortable with your child driving and making the most out of owning the car insurance policy, and that is by creating a parent-teen driving contract before purchasing a car and insurance.

Draw something up on a piece of paper and have your teenager sign it before you are willing to add your kid to your insurance or even just let them take the car around the block. It sould be understood that accidents can happen anywhere, and nobody should continue in the mindset that there’s no way that they could get into a car wreck, because even though it can be avoided in many ways, there are plenty of situations where it is chance.

Some important issues should be struck on in your parent-teen car insurance/driving contract, mainly:

• Drinking and driving. It should be part of the contract that your kid if not only unable to drink and drive, but not allowed to drive while there are drunk people in his car. Many traffic accidents happen because of the antics of drunk passengers who aren’t alert enough to understand the consequences of their actions distracting or interfering with the sober driver in some way.
• Attention. Being aware of your surroundings is especially important for new drivers, so special emphasis should be placed on this. That means no cell phones while your foot’s on the gas and no music so loud that you can’t hear the sounds of traffic.
• Obeying the law. It might seem okay to speed just once when you think there are no cops around, but there’s always one hiding. Your child keeping their driving record in good standing is important, both for you because you’re paying for his car insurance, and for him later on while he’s stll young and not making a lot of money and won’t be able to afford the higher rates for people with bad records.

When drawing up a contract like this, your teenager might not like the idea because they think they are responsible. That’s great, but if they’re responsible enough to follow these standards anyway, then it couldn’t hurt to sign off on it. It should be stressed at all times that driving is a privelege for your teenager, not a right. If they don’t want to practice safe driving behaviour, especially to the point where you can’t afford to insure them, then there is always he bicycle.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Theft and student cars with cheap driver insurance

Reader question:

My son is in high school and he is buying his first car with the money he makes from his part time after school job. However, he doesn’t make enough to pay for both the car note and the insurance, so his dad and I will be paying for that and we are trying to find out good ways to save. I know that if a car is likely to be stolen, then it costs more to get car insurance. How do we find out that if the car he is buying is one of these?

Jan

Great question.

It looks like you have been doing your research, but even if you spend hour after hour looking up information online or anywhere else, sometimes there are gaps that you can’t seem to find anywhere. I’m glad you came here to ask, because I can help you. You’re right that car insurance companies will take a look how a car does on theft rates when you’re trying to get a cheap student car with cheap driver insurance. This is one of the main factors that will affect your rates, because if a car gets stolen the insurance company will be putting out a whole lot more money to replace the whole thing than to just fix it up a bit if it gets dinged.

There are several ways to find out about how your car rates on theft rates. There are some ways to tell if a car insurance company will charge you more due to theft possibility on a certain kind of car just by looking at it, although this is obviously the most unreliable method. Take a look at your kid’s car and think to yourself–is it flashy, expensive, does it have a convertible top, does it have lots of expensive equipment?

The answer to all or most of that is probably no, considering that your son is paying for his car with the money he makes from a part time job, which usually won’t get you an expensive car, especially if you don’t have credit history. However, what might surprise some people is that flashy cars aren’t the ones that are most likely to get stolen.

Actually, some of the cars that get stolen the most are the Jeep Wrangler and the Acura Integra. Now, there are a lot of cars that get stolen and it’s hard to take in all of that information at once, so I’ll give you a better way to figure it out and all you need to know is the make, model, and year of the cars that your son is thinking about buying. The Naional Highway Traffic Safety Administration offers this simple way to figure out how your car rates when it comes to theft rates. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

How to get a student car with cheap driver insurance based on crash tests

Reader question:

I’m a junior in high school and have been driving my parents’ car for the last year. Now I’ve saved up enough money for a down payment on a used car. I’ll be making both car payments and insurance payments on my own policy, so obviously I want to get my car insurance as cheap as possible. What does the safety of the car have to do with how much I will be paying on my auto insurance?

Greg

You sound responsible.

It’s very refreshing to see a high school student who is taking his future into his hands as much as you are. It’s great that you’re both able to handle school while learning how to handle your own finances, because starting small with just a couple of things like car notes and car insurance will teach you a lot about budgeting and finances and you will need to draw on what you learn now in the future when your bills aren’t quite so few in number. The skills that you need to get a cheap student car with cheap driver insurance are the same ones that will help you save money for the rest of your life.

The base skill that all of this stems from is making yourself knowledgable. Whenever you make a purchase, you should know as much about it as possible. This extends to all kinds of purchases, even down to a candy bar–you should know what the nutrition facts are so that you can take care of your health. When buying a student car, it will cost you a lot to get it insured, although it being a used car will help a bit. But the one main thing that car insurance companiesare worried about is the safety of the car.

One problem with buying a used car is that, if it’s too old, it might not have all of the new safety features that many cars these days come equipped with. Things such as stability control can help you avoid bad situations and prevent accidents or lessen their effect even when you yourself are in a panic and don’t know how to react. However, if you do need to get a used car, you can still check out its ratings on the car crash tests at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website. It’s really hard for a car to be bad enough to get less than five stars, so try to get one of the cars that this site lists.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Safe driver insurance means having a safe car

Reader question:

I’m looking for a new car and I want to get car insurance, but I want to get cheaper safe driver insurance. How do I make sure my car lives up to their demands?

Fred

Great question.

An insurance company isn’t looking at a flat factor when it comes to issuing cheaper safe driver insurance. There are several factors of safety about a car that will qualify or disqualify it from being considered safe. Things from test scores to the material it is made of can have an effect, and this is he reason that every car that you buy should be researched thoroughly before you go through with the final purchase. You don’t even necessarily have to get a car that is equiped with so many safet features and precautions, because there are some that you can have installed even after you have driven the car off the lot, and it might even be cheaper than paying for the option on your new vehicle.

Here are things that you should condsider about the safety of your car when you are buying a new one and want to get cheap safe driver insurance.

• Performance in accidents. Cars are tested both by the government and by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to determine if they can be considered safe. They are tested in many ways, such as frontal and side impact, driver and passenger protection, and so on. The tests are not the be all end all of car safety because of the materials used, but insurance companies give them weight and it’s a good idea to take a look at them.
• Bumpers. One of the things that makes SUVs unsafe is that their bumper is positioned higher up than the bumpers of other cars, so that in a head on accident, instead ofthe force being diminished by the bumpers, the SUV’s bumper tears straight through the smaller ar and is often at body level with the passengers and driver.
• Blind spots. Some cars have more than others, so when you are doing a test drive on your new car make sure you check this out. Some cars come with rearview cameras, which can help diminish the problem of blind spots, but most blind spots tend to be on the sides.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Safe driving insurance plan sometimes means being sneaky

Reader question:

Okay, I know you can avoid a speeding ticket by going whatever everyone else is, but sometimes you just have to speed. I mean, I’m at a new job where if I’m even one minute late that’s automatic termination. Sometimes I have to speed. How do I not get a traffic ticket and get hiked up car insurance rates?

Georgia

Be sneaky!

Sorry to hear about your job. I had one like that before, and it can drive people to do crazy things. One guy wrecked his car across the street on the way to work–it was visible through the windows and everything–and he came running right to work to explain. He still got fired, though. Even if you’re in a situation like that, you still have to maintain some form of responsility like keeping a Safe Driving Insurance Plan to keep you from doing something that’s going to get you ridiculous rates.

That doesn’t mean you have to always avoid speeding when you have little other choice, but you have to know when, where, and how to do it. For one thing, if you find that most of the other drivers are going the speed limit, then you can pick out a driver that’s going the speed that you need to go and basically tail them from about a hundred yards back. There’s only going to be one cop on your average stretch of road, so if that other guy is in front of you, his speed is going to come up on the radar first and get him in trouble while you pass innocently by.

Another thing to do is hide yourself. It helps to be going in the opposite direction as a patrol car, but that isn’t something you can control. You can stick to the middle lane so that you’re pretty much lost among the pack of cars and it’s harder to get at you or determine that you are the one who’s been speeding. If you’re up front, you’re going to be radared first. If you’re in back of a pack of cars, then you’ll be the first in line when a patrol car catches up to you.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Those in a safe driver insurance plan should moderate their speeding

We’ve already gone over a couple of ways to avoid getting speeding tickets, but the more I think about it, the more I realise that there are just so many ways to avoid his problem besides ‘don’t speed’ and that I should definitely share them all. For anybody who wants to be part of a safe driver insurance plan, there is a need to be able to avoid getting a ticket for moving violations, period. And sometimes you just have to speed. Other times you forget yourself. Whatever the case, you don’t want to be paying for the next five years for going ten miles over the speed limit because you weren’t watching your driving etiquette.

The easiest way to get stuck with a speeding ticket is to drive in the left lane, also known as the fast lane. That doesn’t mean that you should stick to the right lane, where you will be especially conspicuous if you are going over the speed limit. Rather, you should understand that you need to keep away from extremes, and that the best idea is to stick to the middle lanes. The first place that a cop points his radar gun is straight at the fast lane, so if you think you want to be right in the line of fire, go for it; but I advise you to stick to the middle.

If you are driving down the highway, you’ll notice that there are cutouts in the part that’s separating the cars going your direction from the cars going the other way. These are great because they’re there for you to turn around. Except that that isn’t their only purpose. They are also a great resting spot for patrol cars, so when you get near to a cutout be especially careful.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Safe Female Driver – Her Car Insurance Company Would Be Proud

Dont you just hate it when you get behind a TOTALLY PARANOID first time teen driver like this? OK, I am all for being a safe driver and all……but how long do you think she stayed at that light before she took off? And I bet you she pulled right out in front of someone when she finally decided to go…….am I talking about you?

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