The state of California requires that you get automobile liability insurance for all of the drivers in your household. If someone in your home gets in an accident and they don’t have car insurance, your insurance company will turn down their claim.
California requires that every driver have liability insurance. The minimum level of coverage to be legal is $15,000 for medical expenses for one occupant and $30,000 for 2 or more occupants of the other vehicle, and $5000 for property damage including car repair. Note that these figures pertain only to the other car. If you want to protect your own assets, you will need additional coverage.
If you don’t carry liability insurance, the California Department of Motor Vehicles will suspend your license for up to a year. If you don’t pay the damages you are liable for, they can suspend the license until you do. If you do not have liability insurance, you are personally responsible for all damage done.
If the person in your household has their own vehicle and their own insurance, you will not have to put them on your insurance. However, if they get into an accident in your car, their own insurance policy will have to cover them.
Additional driver insurance covers only your car or cars. The covered person has no protection when they drive other people’s cars.
Your insurance premiums will go up when you add an additional driver to your policy. The amount of the increase depends on several factors including the age of the driver, their driving record, and increasingly their credit score.
Parents are often shocked to find out how much their premiums skyrocket when they add a new teenaged driver to their insurance. Their student’s good grades can help with the price though. If the additional driver has one or more accidents or traffic tickets, the rates are higher as well. The reason insurance companies are looking at credit scores more and more has to do with actuarial tables that show that bad credit equals bad driving.
Every person in the household should be covered by liability insurance. It can be yours or their own. But, if you don’t make sure that this occurs, lending your car to a relative or roommate could turn out to be more expensive than you ever realized.
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