If you own a house, you need homeowners insurance. If you have dependents, you need life insurance. And if you own a car, you need … you guessed it, automobile insurance. Understanding auto insurance is the first step towards ensuring that you have the right coverage at the best price.
The cost of your individual coverage depends on many factors — factors that the insurance company calls risks. The lower risk you represent to the insurer, the lower your insurance will cost. The cost of your insurance will be impacted significantly by the type of car or truck you buy. Some of the factors that affect your risk include:
Safety features on your vehicle
Crash test results for your vehicle
Average repair cost for your vehicle
How many miles you drive each month
If in school, your grade-point-average (some companies give discounts to better students)
Your age (younger and very old driver statistically have more accidents)
Your gender (males typically have more accidents than females)
Your geographic location (premiums will be higher areas of where theft and accidents are more common)
Your driving record
Your marital status (married drivers typically pay less)
How you use your vehicle
The make and model of your vehicle (sportier and the most-stolen models carry higher premiums)
Your claim history
Reducing the Cost of Your Auto Insurance
You can often significantly reduce your auto insurance coverage costs by taking advantage of discounts offered by insurers. Discounts are available to drivers who seem like better risks to insurance companies. Look for the following types of discounts when pricing your insurance needs:
Insure all your vehicles with the same insurance company
Insure your home and car with the same insurer
Consider purchasing your life insurance coverage and car insurance from the same company
Take a driver’s education course
If a student, meet your insurance company’s minimum GPA standards
Buy a car with safety equipment like air bags, automatic seat belts, and antilock brakes, as well as built-in antitheft devices.
Invest in antitheft devices if the vehicle doesn’t already have them.
Keep your mileage low (the less you drive, the less risk you have of being in an accident
Drive safely (a good driving record is your most valuable cost cutting opportunity)
Coverage Options
Many features of your auto insurance coverage will be based on your state of residence, but many are the same across state lines. Here are a few coverage options you will have to consider:
1. Liability Insurance: This coverage protects the owner against losses from legal liability arising from bodily injury or property damages caused by an accident. This coverage can be in one single amount for each accident, or it can be broken down and “split” such as $50,000 / $100,000 / $25,000 (per person / per accident / per property damage).
2. Medical payment coverage: This provision covers medical and/or funeral expenses incurred though bodily injury resulting from an auto accident. The coverage is generally $5,000 to $10,000 per person per accident.
3. Physical Damage Coverage: This helps to cover the physical damage to the insured auto. Collision covers collision costs. Comprehensive covers losses from non-collision incidences. Some examples of this would be theft or storm damage. Policy limits for physical damage are generally based on the value of the insured automobile and are typically limited to the lesser of repair cost or actual cash value.
4. Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist: Although most states require car owners to have insurance, some motorists do not. Uninsured motorist coverage pays for injuries sustained in an accident with an uninsured (or hit and run) driver. Uninsured motorist insurance covers the difference between actual losses sustained and what an insured can collect from an at-fault driver, up to policy limits.
Endorsements Enhance Protection
In addition to standard coverages, you may want to consider additional coverages called endorsements. Two of the most common are:
1. Extended Liability: This insurance is used to cover automobiles that are not legally owned by the insured, such as an auto owned by the employer but furnished for the use of the insured, which would not generally be insured.
2. Miscellaneous Type Vehicle Endorsement: This insurance allows other vehicles to be covered such as motorcycles, campers, golf carts, snowmobiles, etc.
Other Considerations
When purchasing auto insurance or in reviewing your existing policies, keep these basic guidelines in mind. Make sure the policy provides as much protection as is necessary. Know the maximum dollar amount the insurance company will pay. Be aware of your deductible amount, which is the amount you must pay before your insurance company will pay anything. Know what your responsibilities are if an accident occurs. And above all, drive safely and defensively!
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to