How much automobile insurance coverage is enough?
Most people do not have enough automobile insurance.
Everyone makes mistakes. Your liability insurance coverage compensates those persons injured by your mistakes while driving and protects you against having to pay for someone else’s injuries from your own pocket.
Uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage is intended to provide compensation to you and, generally, your passengers for injuries caused by others who do have enough (or any) liability coverage. If you have purchased this coverage under your own policy, it will generally follow you and your household family members while riding as passengers in someone else’s vehicle.
An individual injured in an auto accident is entitled to recover for his medical expense (which may be hundreds of thousands of dollars if the injuries are serious), physical pain and lost income.
Ideally, we should all have as much liability and uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage as we can reasonably afford. $1 million of each type of coverage is not too much. $100,000 in coverage will often be insufficient to provide fair compensation to individuals who suffer substantial injuries. Umbrella or excess coverage policies can usually be obtained at reasonable cost to provide additional coverage beyond that available under a primary automobile policy.