Hanover Car Accident Lawyers, York County, PA

Why does my insurance coverage matter, since I didn’t cause a collision?

When you buy automobile insurance coverage in Pennsylvania, you’re required to carry minimum amounts of coverage for bodily injury liability, property damage liability, and medical expense coverage.  You’re required to carry $15,000 per person up $30,000 per accident in bodily injury liability coverage, $5,000 in property damage liability coverage, and $5,000 in medical expense coverage. (The limits were set in the 1980s and haven’t been increased since then.) By default, your policy provides for full tort option – which is a fancy way of saying that you retain all of your rights under the law to seek compensation for all of the injuries that you suffer, without limitation. Your insurance company may offer you more coverage and options to reduce your coverages – but you cannot carry less than the state minimum requirements. Your options and optional coverage under the law includes the following:

• Limited Tort Option. You can lower your premium costs by giving up some of your rights. The rights you give up if you opt for limited tort option are the rights that allow you to collect compensation for your physical injuries (compensation for pain, suffering, loss of life’s enjoyment, embarrassment and humiliation) regardless of how seriously injured you are in a collision. If you elect limited tort option, you must prove that you’ve suffered a “serious injury” in order to collect such compensation. A serious injury is defined as a “serious impairment of bodily function” and what that means has been the subject of much litigation. Suffice it to say that unless you have an injury that is objective (you can see it), permanent, required invasive treatment (e.g, surgery or injections), and impairs your ability to earn a living or participate in activities of daily living (take care of yourself), you probably haven’t suffered a serious injury and won’t be able to collect compensation for you physical injuries, just your economic losses (such as medical expenses, wage loss, impairment of earning capacity, property damage), unless you fall within an exception to the limited tort rule because the collision was (1) caused by a drunk driver, (2) caused by an uninsured driver, (3) occurred while you were a pedestrian or operating a bicycle, (4) occurred while you were occupying a commercial vehicle, or the vehicle you were riding in at the time of the collision was registered outside of Pennsylvania.
• First-party or PIP coverage. You are permitted to buy up to $1,000,000 in medical coverage and as much wage loss coverage as your insurer will offer. Most injured drivers are surprised to learn that, in Pennsylvania, the first place you look to for payment of your own accident-related medical expenses and wage losses are your own insurance company.
• Collision / Comprehensive coverage. This is coverage you can buy to pay for damage to your own vehicle, regardless of who damaged it or how it got damaged.
• Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Coverage. This is coverage that you can buy to protect yourself in the even that you’re injured by someone who doesn’t have insurance coverage or doesn’t have enough insurance coverage to compensate you fully – so that you have some source of compensation for your injuries.

In short, your insurance will likely determine how your medical bills get paid, whether you can collect compensation for your physical injuries, and how much compensation you may be able to collect.