Will Using My Car Insurance After a Wreck Raise My Rates?
Why you should use the insurance coverage you have been paying for after a crash, instead of letting fear of a rate hike stop you.
You were hit by another driver. You are hurting, your car is in a shop, and someone has told you that filing a claim on your own policy will make your premium jump. So you sit on it. You skip the doctor visit. You pay out of pocket for a rental. You quietly absorb a loss you never caused, because you are afraid of what your insurance company might do to you for asking.
That fear is the most expensive thing in your life right now, and it was sold to you on purpose.
You Already Paid for This Coverage
Insurance is not charity, and it is not a favor. It is a product you bought. You have been sending a company money every single month, year after year, for one reason: so that when something goes wrong, they cover it. That is the entire transaction.
Think about what you would never do anywhere else. You would not sit down at a restaurant, order a meal, ask for the check before the food comes out, pay it, and walk out hungry. That would be absurd. You are there to eat. You paid to eat. Yet people do exactly that with insurance every day after a wreck. They pay for fifteen years and then talk themselves out of using the one thing they were paying for.
If you have coverage, use it. That is what it is for.
Rates Go Up Either Way
The most common thing that stops people is the warning that filing a claim will raise their premium. Look at your own history. Premiums do not go down. They go up. They go up when you never file a claim at all. They go up when you have a clean record for a decade.
So the threat, spoken or implied, that you will be punished for using your policy is really just a tool to keep you from collecting what you are owed. Do not let it bully you into eating the cost of someone else’s mistake. If your rate is going to move, it is going to move regardless. The question is whether you get anything in return for all those years of payments.
Who Is Actually Working Against You
There is a strange story out there about personal injury lawyers being the bad guys. Some of that is earned by bad actors, and that is fair. But step back and look at who is doing what.
An injury lawyer’s job is to get you paid after you have been hurt by someone else. Every dollar recovered is a dollar going to your treatment, your lost income, your family, and your recovery. The incentives point in the same direction as yours.
Now look at the other side of the table. The insurance company collected your money for years. When the moment comes to pay it back out, their financial interest is in paying as little as possible, as slowly as possible, or ideally not at all. The cheapest claim of all is the one that never gets filed because the customer talked themselves out of it. That is why the fear you are feeling exists.
What to Do Instead of Nothing
Report the wreck. Do not decide on your own that your injuries are too small or your damage is not worth the trouble. You are not the one who evaluates your claim, and injuries have a way of getting worse before they get better.
Get medical care. Waiting because you are worried about the bill does two things at once. It hurts your body, and it hands the other side an argument that you were not really hurt.
Find out what coverage you actually have. Most people have never read their own policy and do not know what benefits they are sitting on.
Do not negotiate alone with someone whose paycheck depends on paying you less. An adjuster is friendly, professional, and trained. That is not the same thing as being on your side.
You bought the protection. Claim it.
Full Transcript
People are very distrustworthy of lawyers. I get it, there’s a lot of bad lawyers out there, but at the same time, it’s like, how did we become the bad guys, especially in the personal injury world? We’re the ones trying to help people. Your insurance companies are the ones taking your money, and then they have people scared to want to use it.
I had to tell somebody today, like, yo, you have insurance, use it. It’s what you’ve been paying on for 15 years. Why would you not use it? Would you go to a restaurant, order a nice meal, before it comes out, you say, hey, let me get the check, and you pay for it and leave? Like, no, you’re gonna eat your meal. It’s what you’re there for. It’s why you’re there. It’s what you paid for.
Same thing with insurance. Don’t let them bully you into thinking that they’re gonna raise your rates because you’re using it. They’re gonna do that anyway. Like, insurance doesn’t go down, it goes up.