I personally am glad to see the minimums raised, as I believe they were way too low.
I have had two accidents on my policy in the last couple of years, both were the other driver's fault clearly and police report and tickets were issued to prove that.
In both cases, the driver of the other vehicle had the minimum coverage.
In the first case, I had to exercise my underinsured policy to cover the damage to the vehicle. Fortunately, Geico was quite good during it all and it was not too difficult to deal with.
The second included and injury to the other driver on my policy, and once again the minimum was not nearly enough to cover the costs. So again, I had to exercise the underinsured part of my policy.
In the last case, we are going after the driver's assets as well. And the sad thing is you really have no choice but to hire an attorney, even to deal with your own insurance company at times but especially the opposing insurance company. There is just no other way to make progress without one.
I am not sure what the solution is. All I know is because of a very bad situation with my parents and minimum coverage issues, I not only have mine now maxed out I also have a large umbrella policy on top of it.
Like my opinions on drug driving, driving without insurance should carry a much steeper penalty than it does.
Drive drunk, lose the car you were driving regardless of whose it is, in my opinion.
Drive without insurance or the means to cover damages YOU caused, not sure how steep the penalty should be but what we have now is not enough nor is it enough of a deterrent to stop it from happening.
Bulleteater, I can understand your position to a degree, but honestly I cannot accept that the current minimums are enough. The new ones that go in to effect July 1, 2018 are better and should help so I guess in the end I am all for them being raised.
And by the way, both accidents mentioned above? Rear ended while sitting at a stop light. In both cases, I nor the other driver on my policy was even moving. Just sitting at a red light and wham!
And in both cases the hit was hard enough for the at fault driver's airbags to go off.