ALL THAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NON OWNER CAR INSURANCE AND ITS PRICES
If you thought that you can drive someone else’s car you would be automatically covered under that car’s insurance, your thought needs to be corrected. Even if you do not own your own car, as long as you drive a car, you would need to be covered by means of insurance. In cases where the driver does not won a car, he or she need to be covered by a non owner car insurance, which is specifically designed for drivers who do not own a car themselves. The evident question that would strike you now is that how much is non owner car insurance going to cost you. Well, before you get to the pricing details, you may want to understand about the insurance policy in a bit more detail.
Non owner car insurance is the insurance that covers drivers who do not drive their own cars. As long as an individual drives a car, regardless of the fact that whether the vehicle is owned by him or not, the non owner car insurance will cover the costs in case the car meets an accident. This is particularly beneficial if you rent a car on a regular basis or use a carpool to drive to work daily. While you can obviously get daily insurance coverage from the renting company, but that would cost you much more as compared to the annual charges of a non owner car insurance policy.
What does it cover?
The non owner car insurance policy covers the driver against any property damage liability as well as bodily injury liability. As a part of the property damage liability, the non owner policy would pay for the damage of the property or other vehicles which has been caused by an accident by the non owner driver. It would also cover the legal fees that would be required to be paid in case the other party files a lawsuit against the driver.
The bodily injury coverage would cover all the relevant medical fees that are to be paid in case you injure someone with your car that was driven by you, but not owned by you. This will, however, not cover any other payments (like loss of earning payment) that you might be required to make to the injured party.
Who cannot buy a non owner car insurance policy?
While it may sound very easy to get covered under the non owner car insurance policy if you do not own a car, there are certain checkpoints that have to be cleared first. If the insured person has a car in the same household which is not owned by him, the non owner car insurance policy will not be given to him, and he would be covered by the normal car owner’s policy only. The same is applicable if the spouse of the insured person owns a car.
If you drive someone else’s car regularly, the non owner car insurance policy will be denied to you. If someone drives one particular car regularly, that person is supposed to get added to the coverage of the standard policy as the driver of the car. Your application for non owner car insurance policy would also be turned down if you do not hold a valid driving license or even cannot produce it to the insurer within 30 days of the commencement of the coverage period of the non owner policy.
How much will it cost?
Now that you have learnt about the non owner car insurance policy quite a bit, you may want to get an answer to the question how much is non owner car insurance going to cost me. It is obvious that this type of car insurance is going to be cheaper than the standard owner’s insurance. Usually, it varies from insurer to insurer, and could range from about 10% to 95% of the cost of a standard car owner’s policy.
The cost of a non owner car policy also depends on some additional factors. The age and gender of the driver, how often the insured person will access a car, the driving records of the driver and the marital status of the driver are some of the important factors that play a pivotal role in deciding on the final cost of the non owner car insurance policy. As like the standard auto insurance policies, the price of non owner car insurance policy would go higher if the associated risks are higher.
Typically, if a standard owner’s policy for a 25 year old single man with clean driving records is $470, the same man would be required to pay anything in the range of $430 to $440 if he doesn’t own a car and opts for the non owner car insurance policy only. The variations would be higher if the insured person is a single female aged 40 and having a fairly clean record. Against a stand owner’s policy charge of $812, she would be required to pay anything in the range $700 to $725 if she doesn’t own the car.
The prices of the non owner car insurance policy will be even lesser if the driver is covered with SR22, which is basically a declaration by the insurance carrier that in the case of an accident, the driver and all potential damages caused by the driver would be covered by them. The average cost of a SR22 declaration is a maximum of $25. Hence, it is certainly beneficial to add the SR22 to the policy as that would save a huge amount of money.
You would never get a steady answer from the insurance companies when you ask them how much is non owner car insurance. This is so because the charges for non owner car insurance policies keep on varying from company to company, hence it is wise that you do fair bit of shopping before you buy any particular policy. As it is a non standard policy, many insurance companies may not have it on their platter as well. You would need to need to check with all the local insurance companies and get their quotes before you decide on any particular non owner car insurance policy that would cover you when you drive someone else’s car.