With regards to your car insurance, two types exist – liability coverage and property damage. If the other party sustains injury in an accident that was your fault, then that coverage applies to the liability coverage. Most of these accidents should definitely be reported to your carrier, even if the damage was only minimal.
How do you know when it does not need to be reported? If the accident involves only property damage and no bodily injury, then it may be proper to not report it to your insurance company. You may just want to pay for the damage yourself to avoid having a claim on your insurance record.
If there is any potential for an injury however, the claim should at least be reported. For instance if you rear end another auto going only five miles an hour, you may not need to report a claim after speaking with the other driver. However, what is necessary is to at least tell your insurance company about the crash.
You should relay the accident specifics, give the location of the incident, the other driver’s vehicle information, along with the driver and passenger info. It may end up that you pay for some minor property damage and that’s all. It could be however, months afterwards the other driver or passenger claims back pain from the accident, and if you had notified your insurance about the accident it will be covered. If however you did not notify them, they may say they are not obligated to cover you.
You should also always report any claims involving accidents with pedestrians, minors, or cyclists. Let’s say you’re backing out of your driveway and you almost hit a child riding a bicycle in the neighborhood. You don’t actually hit the child, but let’s say you hit the tire and the bike is ruined, but he’s fine. The child has no scratch at all. Even if the child and his parents apologized profusely and say the child was at fault, it should still be reported.
This could resolve any legal problem in the future if documented so that you are protected from any potential legal issues. You may want to still buy the child a new bicycle, but you should also notify your insurance company. They wouldn’t be obligated to defend you if you didn’t and a claim for injury ever resulted.
The bottom line is you should have a low threshhold for reporting to your carrier. When it comes to liability, you can never be too careful and discussing with your carrier and notifying them of the accident can help with their need to defend you later.
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