Should I purchase uninsured motorist coverage?

Hello. I’m Roger Ghai and sometimes I get questions from clients about whether they should even purchase what we call uninsured motorist coverage. So to begin with, uninsured motorist coverage protects you in two situations. The first situation is if you are involved in an accident and it’s later found out that the other driver did not have car insurance, then even though it’s not your insurance company’s fault, but you’ve been paying premiums to them for this exact situation, then you can file the claim actually against your own insurance company. And what they will do is they will file a lawsuit against the negligent driver to collect any monies that they paid out to you. And the good part of this is, is that because you did not cause the car accident, your insurance premiums do not go up.
Now the second situation in which you might want to use uninsured motorist coverage is the situation where you’ve been involved in a significant accident. It’s caused significant injuries and damages to you, but the other driver only has limited amount of money, limited amount of coverage. So they may have only had the minimum in the state of Georgia. Maybe they only had $25,000.00 in the state of Georgia, but maybe you were smart enough to purchase what we call, and this is very important, add on uninsured motorist coverage.
So what can happen in that situation is that you can collect the $25,000.00 from the person who caused the accident and you can also collect the $100,000.00, if that’s what the amount of your policy was from your own insurance company and get a total of $125,000.00. Again, your premium doesn’t go up because of this, because you were not negligent. You didn’t cause the accident. But your insurance company, if they have to pay you $100,000.00, they will go ahead and sue the other driver to collect that $100,000.00.
So those are two good reasons why you do want to purchase uninsured motorist coverage and you want to make sure that you purchase add on uninsured motorist coverage. If you have questions about the type of coverage you have or whether the amount of the coverage that you have is actually adequate, feel free to call me at 770-792-1000.