Ancien Maestro

Generally, I carry liability from my insurance of 3 vehicles from home. The insurance company has me pay a $1 premium per vehicle I own, and covers me for liability in a rental car. Did you check whether the liability of insurance you carry (if you do own a car in your home state) extends liability to rental vehicles you drive? If so, just refer the claim to your insurance company.

So if you exhaust the rental collision on cc, and liability insurance extending to rental vehicle, from the vehicle you drive at home.. I wouldn't even hire an attorney, and just pay out the $3,300 to Enterprise and balance to the person whom you caused the accident ($1,700).

Before paying the person whom you were in an accident, have them sign a waiver forever releasing you from further liability. You can get a template waiver from an attorney, or local legal aid. This will prevent the individual from attempting to claim further damages, that could go sky high in the case of injury.

$5,000 is a drop in the bucket, compared to getting sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars in the case of injury. If the person you hit is willing to sign a waiver, than I would pay the entire cost of repairs ($5,000) in a heartbeat.

And next time before you rent a vehicle, ensure you purchase rental vehicle liability insurance on your automobile insurance at home. This will save you lots of money purchasing liability insurance from the rental company, and in the case that you get sued for injury, will cover you for damages.

TWA884

obsdk

It's a bit old this thread, but may answer my question so I will post here.

I am going on a trip to California and will be renting a car from Avis. Being that it is in California, I am aware that there will be no liability insurance included in the rental.

One option is to buy the Additional Liability Insurance which I have been told by Avis would provide $1 million in liability coverage. Another option is to use the insurance coverage provided by my credit card company. This insurance covers liability up to $1.4 million, as well as $90,000 in damages to the rental car.

Since I already have insurance, do you see any need for me to get the additional liability insurance from Avis or would that just be a waste of money? I am thinking that $1.4 million will cover in most cases, and in case it doesn't I am not sure that $2.4 million will either.

Any input is appreciated.

jackal

Would you mind sharing which credit card you have that includes liability? To my knowledge, there's only one card in the world that includes liability: the Amex Plat IDC card. I've always been interested to known if there were others. (It's incredibly rare, though.)

$1.4m is plenty. You have to have a lot of assets and cause an incredibly massive accident to need more coverage than that, IMHO (although IANAL).

Again, though, be 100% sure that your credit card includes rental car liability as, again, it is exceedingly rare for that to be the case.

obsdk

The card is a Eurocard Platinum card. You are right in that it is rare to find cards that also provide liability coverage.

Reading the terms of the insurance, it lists coverage of personal injury and property damage up to $1.4 million, as well as up to $90.000 in full comprehensive insurance on the rental car.

jackal

Subject to the typical caveats of relying on credit card coverage, I think you're fine. That's larger than the vast majority of third-party liability auto insurance policies. Those with high net worths and assets they wish to protect would typically carry a third-party policy of ~$300,000-$500,000 aggregate or so and then usually get an umbrella policy for additional coverage above that.

jmastron

That's a common statement, but people need to beware that it's not as simple as that; your actualy liability isn't limited to your assets or insurance coverage -- it's not like the court will say "you caused $10M in damage, but only have $500k in assets, so that's the judgement. And oh, you have insurance for $500k, so all good". In that case they'll take the insurance AND the assets.

This is something the (I'll be nice) people who only carry the $15/30k state minimum liability don't really get, thinking their assets are protected -- if you have, say $20k in assets, those are up for grabs if you cause $50k in injuries. That's in addition to it being irresponsible to not be prepared to cover a plausible injury that you cause (which could easily be in the hundreds of thousands). Personally, I think people should be limited to collecting from others in a most crashes what *their* policy limits are (i.e. what they would have been prepared to cover if they had been at fault); would make them think twice about those limits, and provide extra incentive to the uninsured.

Having said all that, $1.4m is plenty to carry, as long as you're absolutely certain you are covered by the credit card.

jackal

Right, and I would never advocate carrying the state minimums (and I agree; it's irresponsible to do so). But it takes quite the accident to exhaust even a 100/300/100 policy--not absolutely impossible, of course, but an accident with a higher impact than that that is beyond anything that the vast majority of people will ever experience or even know someone personally who will ever experience.

That said, the relatively small additional cost of carrying high limits and even an umbrella policy beyond that is so small (relatively speaking) that it's really foolish not to protect yourself more than you ever think you would need to.

obsdk

Thanks for your input, jackal and jmastron.

cygnus

Just to add to this rather old thread, since it pops up when searching on google for rental car liability requirements: It is correct that most US credit cards do not provide liability insurance and often only provide coverage for damages to the rental car.

This is NOT the case for credit cards issued in Europe. Here, it is far more common that the higher level credit cards (gold/platinum level) also include liability insurance. This insurance is typically provided through an insurance company with which the card issuing bank has a contract, i.e., the insurance is not issued by the credit card. Often, but not always, the insurance is dependent on the credit card being used for the rental (I have one card where that is the case, one where it isn't).

For example, I have a master card platinum from Sparda. Here the card covers damage to the rental car for up to 50k Euros and it also provides worldwide liability insurance. Within the EU the minimum required liability amounts apply, while outside of the EU the German liability minimum applies. Contrary to the US these minima are typically very high in Europe. For example, the german liability is 2.5 Million Euros per person for bodily damages (for up to three people, otherwise limited to 7.5 Million Euros total) and 1.12 Million Eur for other damages.

idlingbye

So, to clarify:

If all of the following are true:

1) You don't have any sort of auto insurance (since you don't own a car)
2) You live in CA
3) You rent a car in CA

Then you'd be a fool to decline the Liability insurance offered to you at the rental counter for ~$13/day -- even if you have CDW coverage through Credit Cards (Chase Sapphire Preferred, in this case).

Is that correct?

OskiBear

Correct - CDW stands for Collision Damage Waiver, which is a first-party coverage. That means it covers you for damage to "your" car, i.e., the rental car. It is not a third-party liability coverage, meaning it doesn't offer you coverage in any way for damage to other people's cars or injuries to other people, for which you may be liable.

Need

Yes, but 1 out of 7 drivers is completely uninsured. So approximately 14% of the drivers out there are fools. But then if you really have no money, the insurance companies probably can't do much to you even if you are at fault. So the rest of the 86% are paying overpriced insurance to cover the uninsured. So who is the fool now...

TWA884

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Very bad advice.

A court judgment can be valid for upward of 10 years and can result in seizure of assets obtained in that period of time and garnishment of future wages.

Need

I didn't give any advice. I just pointed out the irony that who is the fool depends on point of view..