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Insurance may not cover all losses after a car crash

On Behalf of | Jul 18, 2017 | Blog

Most people who drive do so under the assumption that their car insurance will cover any expenses caused by a car crash. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. Many other people who are on the roads in Illinois choose to drive without car insurance or only carry the lowest amount of insurance required by law.

While the state of Illinois does require that everyone who owns a vehicle obtain liability insurance, those policies can leave the victims of serious car crashes without coverage that reflects the actual expenses related to a serious accident, including replacing a vehicle and medical care.

You never know when an accident could occur. Some drivers, worried about the impact of uninsured drivers and underinsured drivers on their finances, choose to buy supplemental policies. In the event that a crash is caused by someone without adequate insurance, these special policies can offer extra coverage for property damage losses and medical expenses.

When someone else causes a serious car wreck, you shouldn’t have to experience financial hardship on top of all the other problems that the driver has caused you. You may need to consider a civil lawsuit to recover the amount of money you’ve lost after a collision.

Illinois minimum insurance won’t cover much

While the law does help to protect drivers from those without insurance, the minimum required insurance isn’t very much. In order to legally drive on Illinois roadways, a vehicle owner may purchase a vehicular insurance policy that covers at least $25,000 for a single person injured or killed in an accident and $50,000 for if more than one person is hurt. For property damage, the law only requires $20,000 in coverage. It is easy to see how a policy that only offers the lowest coverage allowed by law could leave the victims of a serious accident without proper compensation.

The newer and nicer your vehicle is, the easier it will be to exceed that $20,000 in property damage. If you need to have your car replaced, you could end up paying the difference. That $20,000 also goes toward any other damages, like broken guard rails or other vehicles that also got hit. As far as medical coverage goes, well, a single surgery and trauma care could max out what a car insurance policy will cover. Serious accidents could require multiple surgeries, an extended hospital stay and ongoing physical therapy after the accident. Victims shouldn’t have to pay for that out of pocket.

If you don’t have medical insurance or if your policy has high co-insurance, deductibles or co-pays, the care you need after an accident can be quite costly. You should consider all these expenses over time and determine from there what your best option will be for compensation.

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