#Cheap auto insurance florida
Getting cheap car insurance in Florida doesn’t have to be difficult. If you are new to the state, you will find that the car insurance laws in Florida differ in many ways from other states in the country.
Florida is one of the few states that does not have accident insurance laws. Accident insurance laws significantly reduce driver liability for errors. Insurance companies pay out quickly to crash victims on behalf of the perpetrators and avoid costly litigation most of the time.
This, in turn, allows insurance companies to keep premiums low without error; Florida auto insurance companies offer premiums lower than the national average.
First, consider the required coverage amount
Florida requires all drivers to have a minimum policy with two types of coverage:
Property Damage Liability (PDL)
Personal Injury Protection (PIP)
Each of these types of coverage must have a minimum payment of US $ 10,000 each. Buying insurance that meets the requirements for bare bones will always be your cheapest option. However, many drivers are not satisfied with just PDL and PIP coverage given what they offer:
Personal injury liability
Personal injury liability or PDL insurance only covers other people’s property that you have caused with your vehicle. Insurance protects you from potential lawsuits if you are the culprit in the accident, but if your car is damaged, you will receive zero money from your insurance company for repairs.
Personal Injury Protection or PIP insurance covers you, your family, and other qualified people who ride your vehicle in the event of an accident resulting in the accident, regardless of who caused the accident. PIP also protects cyclists, pedestrians, and even children riding school buses, and is also known as Florida accident insurance.
Bodly injury liablity
While $ 10,000 PDL and PIP coverage is the minimum set by the state, drivers must acknowledge its limitations. While the minimum coverage is very affordable, the basic policy will not cover any repairs to your vehicle or any major medical bills. A small crash could return you thousands of repair costs, and the Major could leave you stranded without a car. Likewise, health care costs are prohibitive, and the major crash with injuries far exceeds government-set PIP minimums.
Uninsured motorist
Consider adding more than the minimum state coverage
Florida auto insurance buyers should consider sufficient PDL and PIP coverage to meet their needs and peace of mind. Many Florida drivers add:
Personal Injury Liability Insurance, or BILDrivers with high dollar assets in their name should consider adding Personal Injury Liability or BIL insurance to their policy. by you, a family member or someone else in your vehicle. High payout highs are a good idea for drivers with valuable assets. If there is a major crash and you are wrong, the maximum payout of the PIP victim policy will quickly be exceeded, and surviving victims or victims can sue your personal assets to recover their losses if you do not carry BIL coverage.
Physical DamageCover A cover that protects damage from their vehicle so they are not left without the ability to work in the event of an accident.
Tips for Finding the Cheapest Insurance in Florida
Keep Your Driving Record CleanHaving a random, free, free record is the best way to ensure that your premiums stay low. Going from place to place when you’re in a rush is never worth the risk of an expensive ticket and possible higher insurance premiums.
Shop AroundThere are many companies that sell auto insurance in Florida and this is a competitive industry. Use websites to compare multiple quotes, check reviews for customer service and claim response times, and call the companies themselves to see if they can offer you any discounts or promotions.
Making Insurance Companies Competitive for Your BusinessYou may find that an insurance company that receives poor customer service reviews may offer you a lower premium than companies with better reviews. If so, call the more rated company and tell them about your competitor’s quote and see if they can match it. It never hurts to try this tactic, and customer service is an important factor when choosing auto insurance.
Everything that will be described in the article in relation to the state of California, in other states there may be significant differences.
Types of policies
In principle, everything becomes clear here if you say two words: OSAGO and CASCO.
The principle of operation of Russian OSAGO and CASCO is taken entirely from the insurance system in the USA.
California requires minimum owner liability insurance in case of accidents, and this minimum insurance will not cover damage to your car, only the minimum liability of you as the culprit is liability. Immediately remember the CTP. This is one of the cheapest insurance that all car owners are required to have. But, unfortunately, its coverage is often not enough when some kind of accident occurs. Even a tourist who bought a car here in order to simply drive it for a month across the United States should have it (you can ride up to 14 days without a fine for lack of insurance, otherwise it is either a fine or a fine parking lot).
Extended insurance already includes high coverage limits, coverage in both directions (both your liability and your car) - liability, coverage for a car if it just stands parked and something happens to it - comprehensive, coverage of the liability of an uninsured person who either drove your car, or flew into your car - unisured motorist liability, well, such a trifle as paying for a rented car for the period of repair after an accident or roadside assistance along with paying for a tow truck. That is, such a good CASCO, which is already significantly more expensive, but also less problematic.
Further, for the sake of simplicity, I will call these insurances with our familiar words CTP and CASCO.
At the same time, the comprehensive part in CASCO is optional in some states, but in California it must be included.
- Parameters affecting the cost of the policy.
What parameters are taken into account when calculating the cost of the policy for you personally:
age (up to 25 years old insurance is much more expensive, since the insured in the category of young driver and according to statistics, most accidents are committed by people under 26 years old, therefore, the coefficients are increased for this category of persons)
availability of local rights (if you are a resident of the state, then you must have local rights, plus insurance is much cheaper with them)
driving experience (even one that was in another country is counted, it is enough to send a copy of the license)
higher education (discounts up to 10% if there is a higher education (especially if you are an engineer)
stable job and high income
family status and having children
type of the insured car, its age and price, the presence of a collateral for the car (loan / leasing - more expensive by 10-30%)
the presence of anti-theft systems
the presence of a garage (insurance can be cheaper with it)
credit history
driving history (were there any fines in the last year, how many points were removed for violations, this item affects the most, as it characterizes you as a driver)
the presence of a certificate of the school of counter-emergency driving (in fact, online reread the brochure with the rules can help to knock out a discount of a couple of dollars)
the state where you live and will use the car (here the accident rate by state is taken into account)
the county you live in (again county accident rate, median income of people living in the county, and other less obvious parameters)
insurance premiums from the previous year, for example due to hurricanes on the East Coast in the winter of 2016 and a large number of payments, insurance companies have increased policy rates since June 2016 for all states.
Next, let’s talk about coverage limits.
- Limits and conditions of payments.
California established the following minimum limits for driver liability coverage in 2017 (California Insurance Code §11580.1b):
$ 15,000 - damage / death of one person
$ 30,000 - injury / death of two or more persons
$ 5,000 - property damage
But! Of course, these minimum values are not enough, since only one appeal of a victim with a small fracture will amount to more than $ 15,000, and payments for pain and suffering are also required (moral damage can be 3 times higher than the hospital bill), physical disability payment (sick leave, calculated by days based on the victim’s daily salary). Plus payment of lawyers, fines, payment of damage to the victim’s property, etc. Naturally, the minimum coverage will not be enough for this and the person will owe a huge amount of money. And then either sell everything or take out a loan. Plus, your car will also be broken and you will have to either dispose of it at your own expense, or sell it without repair. Therefore, it is better not to save on this and find a good CASCO with high limits.
With hull insurance it is easier, the most optimal is the limits of $ 150,000 / $ 300,000 (damage to one person / damage to several people), unisured motorist liability for $ 150,000, property damage for the same amount, comprehensive for $ 50,000.
In addition to the limits on the amount of coverage, you also need to pay attention to how much you will pay out of your pocket before the insurance begins to pay out its main part. This amount is called deductible. It can be either fixed ($ 100, $ 250, $ 500 $ 1000, etc.), or as a percentage of the final payment amount (much cheaper when paying for insurance, but in the end it can turn against you).
Those. when an insured event occurs, you will need to shell out, say, $ 200 from your pocket in order for your insurance to cover the rest. A simple situation, you parked your car on the street, a certain antisocial element decides to profit from something from your car and breaks the glass, opens the glove compartment, rummages there and hides. You come in a couple of hours and see this disgrace. Your actions: draw up a police report (a statement to the police, filed most often online), take a photo, file a claim online from the personal account of your insurance company (claim an insurance payment, describe the situation, attach a photo, the number of the statement to the police). If you have comprehensive coverage - you’re a fine fellow, your insurance will cover repairs to your car and valuables missing from the glove compartment / car. Next, you come to an authorized insurance repair center, where the service issues an invoice for, say, $ 1000, plus $ 500 worth of things were also missing. Under the terms of the policy, you have a deductible - $ 200. This means that you will now pay this $ 200 out of your pocket, and the remaining $ 1300 will be covered by the insurance company. Regarding the choice of auto repair shops, you can turn to your favorite service, but then all negotiations about what to repair and for how much, you will have to conduct with the insurance company yourself with the attachment of all bills and it is not a fact that the insurance will cover everything.
A similar calculation, if an accident occurs, your insurance indemnifies the damage to the injured party minus the deductible, and if there is also coverage for you and your car, then you will also be repaired.
There is also the concept of total damage, this is when the insurance company decides that it is inappropriate to restore the car and pays an amount equal to the value of the car on the market at the time of the accident. All expenses for the disposal, storage and transportation of such a car are covered by the insurance company (but it also depends on the company where the policy was purchased, not all insurance companies behave so well). If you decide to keep the car for yourself, then its status changes to salvaged and you must buy it from the insurance company for an amount equal to the residual value of this car after the accident. The insurance company will deduct this amount from the payment for your car. But there will be another question, what will you do with it … Not all salvaged cars can be registered after repair.
Where to buy car insurance?
You can go to aggregator sites (for example this one), drive in data, SSN and get quotas. Then, on the insurance website, issue a policy.
You can contact an agent who can find a suitable insurance with discounts and advise on issues related to it in the future. Word of mouth is already working here, since finding a good agent is easier through acquaintances.
Well, and an option on the forehead, ask friends who have what kind of insurance, impressions and go to the insurance website. But this is far from a guarantee that your price will be as low as everything is very individual. Discounts may even be for the fact that you also insured the house in the same company.
In any case, everything is done via telephone and regular email. Even if you are unlucky and an accident happened.
There are several main advantages of using our online service. Among them:
completely free access;
extremely simple registration procedure on the site;
an extensive database with offers from almost all prominent participants in the country’s insurance market;
its constant updating, thanks to which you are presented with only relevant data;
convenient search system for suitable insurance options, including several filters;
an online calculator that automatically calculates and displays the most affordable OSAGO policies available for a specific user;
About the “high cost” of auto insurance in the USA
I often hear about the high cost of insurance in the West, as an argument why it is better to live in Russia. And I decided to make a small comparison. So today I received a bill for my car insurance in Miami (far from the cheapest place to insure cars). For 2 cars I pay $ 853 for 6 months. It includes:
- OSAGO + DOSAGO, without restrictions on drivers, and given that there were insured events over the past 3 years. Liability limits are $ 100,000 for damage to property, $ 250,000 for damage to the health of one victim, and up to $ 500,000 for damage to the health of several victims.
- CASCO - from theft and damage with a deductible of $ 500 for one car and $ 1000. Again, there are restrictions on drivers, and in the USA I can give anyone a ride.
- Insurance of your life and health in case of an accident with an uninsured driver (I don’t know if there is an analogue in Russia).
- Payment for car rental up to 30 days in case of an accident due to my fault (if the fault of another driver, then his insurance company pays for renting a car during the repair).
Now let’s compare with the prices in Russia on the Sravni.ru website. Insurance for one car (Audi A4) with two drivers, with the worst conditions, costs from 89t. rubles up to 166t. rubles. That’s $ 1,630 a year for a Tinkoff company with questionable solvency and bad reviews, or $ 3,000 a year for another company. This is for one car, Karl!But maybe this is the case in the region (the default was Moscow). I also chose Krasnodar for comparison. There prices were from 90t. rubles to 479t. rubles per year. 479 thousand, Karl! For one car, Karl!Maybe in St. Petersburg people are more cultured and don’t steal cars? There, too, it costs from 91t. rubles up to 362t. rubles per year. For one car, Karl! For one!