Sometimes you may hear people say that you don’t need car insurance in VA. But while many drivers in Virginia do not have insurance, they need it just as much as any driver in any other state does.
If those drivers are in an accident they are just as liable and may be sued for damage just like insured drivers, but they have no insurance policy to pay the damages and so it must come right out of their own pockets. So, if they are in an accident where two other people are injured and some property damage occurs, the resulting lawsuits could easily cost those drivers their savings, their vehicle, or in some cases perhaps even their home.
Of course, nobody expects to be in an accident. The very nature of accidents is that they are unexpected and unforeseeable. We all like to think that we drive carefully; that our vehicle is in a proper state of repair to be on the road, and that other drivers will be as careful as we are. That can seem all fine and well until the day the car ahead of you on the road has a tire blow out and goes out of control, you can’t react fast enough to avoid hitting their vehicle and one or both of your vehicles are perhaps also hit by oncoming traffic from the other direction. No matter how careful you may be, accidents can still happen.
If you have no Virginia car insurance and something like that happens, by the time you total up the cost for a lawyer, fines, time lost from work, repair or replacement of your own vehicle, your doctor bills, and then whatever amount you may be successfully by other drivers or property owners that are involved, it can add up to many times what a year’s worth of insurance premiums would have cost.
When you consider that the $500 fee for driving at your own risk without insurance would pay almost half of the average yearly insurance premium in Virginia, opting out on the insurance doesn’t seem like such a good deal. The Commonwealth of Virginia is far from the most expensive place for auto insurance. The average yearly premium there is about $1240, which is below the national average. Even one minor accident could easily cost many times that. It’s much better to be safe than sorry so get car insurance in VA today if you don’t already have it.
So while it is possible for drivers in Virginia to legally drive their vehicles without insurance so long as they are willing to pay $500 just for that rather questionable privilege, it may not be wise to actually do so. Drivers in Virginia need protection in case of an accident just as much as any other driver, and for the same reasons. When you consider that the $500 fee would cover a large part of a year’s worth of insurance premium, opting out on insurance can look a lot more like just throwing money away than saving any money in the long run. To get a comparison of car insurance in VA policies, please enter your zip code above to find out how much money you can save.
