People ask us, “What should you get for insurance coverage?” And we say, “Look, you can’t bank on the idea that the someone who hit you is going to take care of things for you.” A lot of times the people that hit you really don’t have their lives together. They’re on the phone; they’re texting. I was driving down here this morning, and I saw some woman putting her makeup on while driving the car and she was right on the tail of someone else. Don’t count on that person to get their insurance right for you.
Of course, the first thing that we’re going to do is to get in and find out what their insurance is; it’s called liability insurance. So we’ll get in touch with their carrier and figure that out. But we also want to look at two things for you. First is what they call PIP benefits – personal injury protection benefits. Those benefits, if you have not waived them (and I will tell you please don’t waive those), are important because they will get you money, typically $2,500 sometime more, right out of pocket to take care of things, like your immediate unpaid medical bills and lost wages. The other thing that you really want is uninsured or underinsured coverage through your agent, and we would recommend to you that you get a substantially higher amount of that coverage. That just covers you, not for damage you might do to somebody else; it covers you for the extra damage that can be done that the defendant’s policy won’t cover. This is really important because a lot of our clients get very, very badly injured, and they turn around and say, “Oh my gosh! The defendant didn’t have any insurance, and I have the basic minimum! What are we going to do?” We can help you because we still do a lot on reducing liens and things, but we’re much, much more limited that way.
