Car Insurance in California – Liability for Additional Drivers
In California, you must have liability insurance for all of the drivers in the household. If you don’t and someone gets in an accident, the 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.
Sometimes people in the household have their own car and insurance. In this case, you don’t have to put them on yours. But, if they get into an accident using your car, their insurance policy will be the one covering the damage, not yours.
You should know that additional driver insurance protects someone only when they are driving your cars. They don’t have insurance to cover them in other people’s cars.
Adding an additional driver to your car insurance in California will increase your policy’s cost. The price difference depends on the age of the driver, their driving record, and quite possibly their credit score.
Adding a teenaged driver will make the family’s insurance premiums skyrocket, much to many parent’s dismay. However, if the student has good grades, it helps. If an additional driver has tickets or an accident, it will increase the policy rates as well. Finally, insurance companies are increasingly looking at credit scores as their actuaries have found a correlation between bad credit and high risk 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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This article is very helpful in explaining the California insurance law and how exactly it works regarding family members or people living in your home. For more help with insurance repairs, contact Carrera’s Auto Body.
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