Short Term Car Insurance Policy

Short term car insurance is, in many cases unnecessary. You are probably looking for a temporary auto insurance policy because you are going on some trip and renting a car, you are borrowing someone’s car for whatever reason, or you need a short term policy for some other reason…

Renting a Car

Rental companies may offer your 4 types of insurance coverage. They will offer you liability coverage, a Loss Damage Waiver, personal accident insurance (covers medical expenses in the event of an accident), and/or personal effects coverage (covers your belongings inside the rental car). For each of these 4 options, you probably already have a matching policy, making anything else superfluous and unnecessary. The liability coverage they may offer you is already available as part of the liability coverage you have on your own car. The Loss Damage Waiver (LDW) is not needed if you have both comprehensive and collision insurance (full coverage). Personal accident insurance is not necessary if you have Personal Injury Protection (PIP), health insurance, or Medical Payments Coverage. The personal effects coverage they may offer you is not needed if you have a homeowners or renters policy. The policy on your residence covers belongings on the inside and outside of your house. You just have to make sure that your car is always locked and closed if you expect your own house insurance to pay for the loss of the items.

To be on the safe side, check the specifications on your car insurance and homeowners policy by reading it or by calling the company. If you use a credit card to pay for a rental company, there’s a good possibility that the insurance expenses are covered by the credit card. Call the company to see if this is the case.

Of course, if you don’t own a car, you have no car insurance that carries over to a rental vehicle. If this is the case, you’re going to have to bite the bullet and pay the rental company for the insurance.

Borrowing a car

If you often borrow cars from other people and don’t own a car yourself you can get a nonowners policy, which will cover you for any property or physical damage you cause to others.

What if you don’t own a car (thus having no coverage protecting you) and you damage the borrowed car? If they don’t have comprehensive and/or collision insurance to pay for it, then they are going to have to pay for it. Of course, you can chip in if you feel guilty.

Things are simplified a bit if you own a car and borrow someone else’s car. Your own insurance would pay for damage done to others and damage done to the car itself (assuming you have full coverage-collision & comprehensive insurance).

Now what about bodily injury to yourself and to your passengers if you borrow a car? If you have PIP or Medical Payments Coverage, you are covered. If you don’t own a car and you and the occupants of the car have health insurance, you’re covered as well.

Miscellaneous

Most auto insurance policies are sold in 6 month or year long intervals. If you are looking for a policy with less of a time commitment you best bet is to check out your local independent car insurance agents as they have connections with many companies and specialize in finding policies for “special cases”.

Whatever you do, don’t think that a form of short term car insurance is no coverage at all. Driving without auto insurance is illegal. If you are found to be guilty in an accident and don’t have any insurer to back you up there’s a good chance that you are going to be sued. If you happen to get into a serious accident, in which the expenses can go into hundreds of thousands of dollars, you are in very deep trouble if you are guilty and uninsured, to say the least.