Automobile insurance, or car insurance as most people refer to this type of insurance coverage, is an essential component of most American’s financial plan. One simply has to have it in order to protect one’s personal assets in case something bad happens. Since most Americans love their cars, and spend quite a bit of time driving those cars to and fro, the likelihood of being part of an car accident is quite high.

According to most car insurance experts, your automobile or car is the single most dangerous thing you own, unless you’re a wild-west cowboy, or cowgirl, running around with your guns blazin’. Running around with a loaded gun might be the only thing more dangerous than driving you car around, especially driving your car while texting your friends, adjusting the volume on your iPod, fiddling with the GPS, and typing out your latest twitter message on your netbook, and I know you try to do all that stuff at the same time cause you can, like, multitask and stuff.

The use of your car can, from one second-to-the-next, place you in danger of experiencing expensive lawsuits, huge medical or healthcare costs, long-term disability and costly property damage liability. Not to mention the emotional toll that those situations and types of expenses bring, the dangers that driving your car expose you too are quite numerous.

Most of us do not think of the what exactly we are protecting ourselves from when we shop for car insurance. Most of us just shop on price looking for the lowest rate, and that may not be the best way to go about buying car insurance.

Most people spend more time thinking about what they’re having for lunch, than what they are buying when they shop for car insurance. When you buy car insurance, you are actually buying protection from huge expensive lawsuits which can cost you tens of thousands of dollars for just a simple car accident. In worse cases, these lawsuits can result in amounts so large that they severely impact your lifestyle, and endanger your personal assets.

Do you think I’m exaggerating? Look at this way, if you have a car accident and hit another vehicle as you’re driving to work because you were distracted by a phone call, and this vehicle belongs to a teacher, the claim can be anywhere from tens-of-thousands of dollars to hundreds-of-thousands of dollars because you’ll have to pay for medical bills, property damages, lost wages, plus pain and suffering. The claim can add up and become quite large even though teachers do not make a lot of money. Suppose that instead of a teacher however, the car you broadside belongs to a doctor, or a celebrity, or an professional athlete? You’re still liable for medical bills, property damages, lost wages, as well as pain and suffering. The size of the claim against you of you hit one of these people could easily go into the millions. Will that have an effect on your lifestyle and personal assets? I think it just might, don’t you? Bottom line, car insurance is important, and should receive more consideration than what you’re having for lunch today.

Some recommendations:

Use a local agent, and choose your agent wisely. A good agent will provide you with advice that will make sense for your own specific situation. He or she will look for any gaps in your insurance policy where your coverage is insufficient to deal with the potential liability, and expose you to lawsuits or situations where you could lose more than you can afford. A good place to start looking for a good agent is Allstate. They have local agents in just about any town, and they are all trained to help you by looking at your individual needs – no cookie cutter solutions to your auto insurance needs. They also make it easy to shop online, and get help online or on the phone, so you get the best of both worlds.

If you are at least 50 years old, you might want to try AARP’s Auto  Insurance  from The Hartford. They have some great programs that are specifically designed for the needs of older Americans, and they specialize in providing auto insurance to this segment of the population, so they might be a good fit for your needs.

Tags: Auto Insurance, car insurance, Insurance, insurance coverage, insurance quotes, Property damage, Traffic collision, Vehicle insurance

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 11th, 2010 at 4:23 PM and is filed under Auto Insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.