Alexis & Mark Breyer

As Phoenix Personal Injury Attorneys We Are Reminding Everyone to Check Your Insurance Policy!

By Alexis Breyer on June 12, 2009

As Phoenix personal injury attorneys, we recently represented a young boy who was riding his bike across the road when he was hit by a truck. The driver of the pickup truck had close to minimal coverage. In Arizona, many people are surpised to hear that minimal coverage is $15,000 for liabilty and $10,000 for property damage. A huge percentage of people in Arizona carry NO insurance whatsoever. Other people tell me all the time that they have “full” coverage when in reality they have minimal coverage on most of their coverages and don’t even have coverage in areas that are important like medical, underinsured, uninsured, etc.

Many parents of teenagers get them a junk car and then put minimal limits on the vehicle. There is no problem with the junk car part. In fact, that is probably a good idea since teenagers are involved in a number of accidents after just getting their driver’s license. The amount of limits though does not make sense. Don’t get your teenagers low limits. Do the opposite.

Imagine your teenager is in a car accident. If the other driver has no insurance and you are relying on the insurance you bought for your teenager and only bought minimal insurance, the effects of this minimal coverage could be devastating.

We have many teenage clients who have been seriously injured - some paralyzed - some killed. This is a reminder that parents should look at thier policy to review all their coverages. When you are looking at your policy for your teenage driver or even yourself ask yourself what would happen if you were to be hit by someone who had no insurance and were to incur a significant amount of medical bills. Insurance is meant not just to protect yourself against others but also to protect yourself if others do not have adequate insurance.

We recommend that parents have at least $100,000 in coverage for their teenage drivers. By coverage this includes liability, underinsured and uninsured. In a perfect world people would carry even higher limits. Also, if you do have higher limits you can look into obtaining an umbrella policy for $1,000.000 that will protect you against others if your teenage driver does cause an accident, and an umbrella policy is usually only a few hundred dollars.

Remember without adequate coverage, you may not be able to get the medical care you need and the help you need, and if you are the cause of the accident it may cause financial ruin within one split second.

As Phoenix injury attorneys, we offer to review insurance policies to help people get the coverage that they need. If you would like us to review your auto policy feel free to e-mail our office or call and we will review your policy with you.