Views on Finance

In the state of Florida, US, as in almost every state now, in order to put yourcar on the road legally, you must carry at least motor trade liability insurance to be legal. This is the bare amount of insurance you can have and although you might think it would be a cheap way to go, it is not. Not anymore anyway. Motor trade liability insurance typically covers what is known as 10 and 20 thousand. 10 thousand per injury per accident, 20 thousand property damage per accident. Withthecost of medical treatment being what it is, in a country where more than half the population has no medical insurance at all (because of the high premiums) it doesn't need to be said that you can buzz through 10 thousand dollars in no time flat, believe that. The same is to be said about the cost of property damage. 20 thousand dollars would not take long to spend if there were extensive damage and then where are you? You are left to pay the rest yourself, where. Years ago, the rates for this motor trade liability insurance were very reasonable. Today you are talking about at least 1000.00 per year, forno coverage at all, to speak of.

If your car is stolen, burned in a fire, or seriously damaged in a collision, this insurance pays no mind to any of that. Again, the costs of repair, if repair is possible, would be your problem, not theirs.

Recently, I was involved in an accident between a commercial vehicle (city bus on which I was riding)and a private party who was carrying motor trade liability insurance only. The bus was traveling along at about 35 mph when a little car pulled right out from a side street and tried to beat the bus to get across the main drag. Well needless to say, he did not make it in time and the bus hit him hard. My friend and I were both thrown to the floor and I hurt my back and she, her neck and back. We were transported to the hospital via ambulance and checked out. Luckily, for both of us, nothing was broken but we both had a lot of pain which to this day still bothers me. My xrays showed that one of the disks in my back got pushed over and is now permanently out of line. I lost a lot of work and in the end, had to leave that job as it required standing for most of the day, something I can no longer do. Of course, I had no idea of what kind of coverage, if any, the man was carrying and when my lawyer found out that it was motor trade liability insurance only, he was no longer interested in the case.

It worked like this. Six other people came forward with a law suit against the defendant. We were informed at the mediation that when this happens, if the man is in fact found guilty, which he was, police charged him with the accident, all parties involved would have to split the insurance money that was available . As I stated before, most of these policies cover 10 and 20 thousand, as did this one, so all there was was 10k between six people. Not a lot of money considering I was really hurt and have had to change many things in my life because of my back. Also,my hospital bills had to be paid out of my share and there was absolutely no recovery of lost wages and inevitably loss of job. I was just barely able to pay the hospital and that was that. I have no medical insurance of my own, like most people in this country as I cannot afford the premiums. Its a sad state of affairs what Americans go through. You just cant afford to get sick or injured without insurance and if you are, it can be the beginning offinancial ruin for the non wealthy.

Another big problem with motor trade liability insurance is that many folksopt to buy it just to get their vehicle legally on the road and then 2 months into it stop making the monthly payments which of course leads to cancellation of policy and no insurance. I guess I should consider myself very lucky that the man had thiscoverage. As lousy as it is, its certainly better than nothing.

I personally would never choose to go that way. In actuality, I can't anyway as I have an outstanding loan from a bank for my car and when the bank owns the car you must carry full coverage including fire,theft an collision. If you don't take care of it yourself, they (the bank) automatically put insurance on itand believe me, they don't shop around for the "best price". They go with one of the big boys and the big price comes with that so you definitely want to be sure not to let your coverage lapse.

In these difficult times and the obvious recession we are in, motor trade liability insurance is the only way most peoplecan afford to go. You just have to pray hard every night that you don't have an accident, especially one with injuries to multiple parties.