The High Price of Auto Insurance in California
The more people that are born, the more traffic there is, and the more necessary having auto insurance in California among all of the crazy insured or uninsured drivers become necessary. In order to get a good price on your car insurance in CA, though, you must have a safe car. And car safety is determined most often through safety crash tests. It’s important to understand what these crash tests mean when determining which car to buy, and the test results from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have been a large force behind the movement of manufacturers to making safer and safer cars.
Car crash tests determine how safe a car is, and those how low your auto insurance will be, by adhering to several different manners of testing.
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Crash test dummies.
Everybody has seen the commercial with the yellow mannequins, claiming that the car in question is the safest around. These are more than just over sized dolls, though. As a matter of fact, they are very high tech and can react in much the same way people do and sense things. The IIHS examines the mannequins to determine how safe a car is against injuries and death. A vehicle that is safe in this area will get you a good rate on personal injury protection auto insurance.
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Parts of the whole.
The IIHS also tests to see how the vehicle works in a crash, such as how its wheels skid and how its air bags deploy. These results can be used to determine how well a certain car protects against rollovers and other losses of control, as well as the bumper’s strength. Good results in this area can get you a discount for your collision auto insurance.
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Speed and angle.
IIHS doesn’t test just one kind of crash, but crashes the cars at different speeds as well as different angles. Side impact crashes are different from front impact crashes.
Understanding California Car Insurance Rules and Terminology
When you’re buying your California car insurance online, you will usually come across a lot more car insurance terms than you would if you were buying them in an office or with an agent over the phone. The good thing about having an agent is that they will be there to explain rules and terms to you. However, more and more people are realizing that they don’t need an agent, and can in fact get all of their car insurance online. As a result, more confusion can happen because the only person there to explain car insurance terms to you is you yourself. I’ve made a list of common terms that you will encounter while buying your car insurance online. Hopefully it will make the process much easier.
- Actual cash value: This is the amount that your car is worth, after depreciation, and is what you receive after your vehicle is totaled in a car accident.
- Benefit: this is what you get when you file a claim, paid by the car insurance online company.
- Bodily injury liability: this is for if you get into an accident that you cause, to take care of the medical coverage for the injured people in the other vehicle.
- Claim: when you get into a car accident and you ask to get money for your coverage based on damages.
- Collision: This is coverage for whenever you get into an at fault accident to cover the damages on your own property.
- Comprehensive: coverage for things such as vandalism, theft, and damages due to natural disaster.
- Deductible: the part of the expenses that you have to pay before your car insurance coverage kicks in.
- Exclusion: something that is not covered by the CA car insurance online policy.
- Full coverage: liability plus comprehensive and collision.
- Indemnity: a predetermined sum paid for loss.
- Limits: the highest the car insurance online company will pay for losses.
- No fault insurance: car insurance claims dealt with in each person’s own company. No blame involved or required.
- Personal injury protection: covers medical expenses for the at fault driver, including long term and wage loss for serious injuries.
- SR22 form that must be filed for three years or more as proof of insurance after DUI.
- Tort: when you sue someone for damages after a car insurance accident.
- Uninsured motorist coverage: when you get into an accident with an uninsured or underinsured motorist and they are at fault, then you will need this coverage for your own damages.
California Auto Insurance Question
Reader’s question:
I live in California and My car is registered in California but my sister uses it in Arizona. Should I get an insurance in Arizona if my sister is authorized to drive my car?
Ether
Thank you for asking Ether.
You should insure the car in the state where you registered it. It would be difficult to insure your car in Arizona since your car is registered in California. Almost all insurance companies would not allow to insure the car if the owner living in the one place and the car is residing or garaged in another state. That means they do not allow insuring vehicles from more than one household.
One more thing is that there are different required insurance in different states. In California the mandatory minimum liability insurance is 15/30/5. This means that the personal injury protection is $15000 per one person per accident, $30000 per 2 or more persons per accident and the property damage liability is $5000. The state of Arizona, however, requires 15/30/10. It also required in Arizona for all motor vehicles that will be continuously on their roadways to be covered by the insurance providers that is authorized to do business in the state.
For your car to be insured in Arizona, you will need to register it in Arizona. You may contact the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles on how to go about insuring your car in that state.
Goodluck!
MariCAR
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