What Protects You After an Uninsured Driver Causes a Wreck?

Insurance is a necessary expense if you want to drive your own vehicle. Unless you want to depend on Rideshare apps or public transportation for everything you and your family need, you will need to register a vehicle and carry liability coverage on it.

If you get into a crash, the police officer responding to the collision will evaluate the situation carefully. Their police report will usually include an allocation of fault. They will decide, based on the circumstances, who they think is to blame for the wreck.

If the other driver is the one at fault, then you should be able to make a claim against their insurance coverage. What happened to you if there isn’t a policy to make a claim against?

Maryland Has Quite a Few Uninsured Drivers

Maryland is sixteenth in the nation for its rate of uninsured drivers, at least based on 2019 data. Roughly 14.1% of drivers in Maryland continue operating their vehicles after canceling their policies or allowing them to lapse due to non-payment.

While that isn’t nearly as bad as the rates in states where more than one in five drivers don’t have coverage, there is still a noteworthy risk of someone without insurance hurting you or totally your vehicle. What protects you when the driver who hurts you doesn’t have insurance?

Your Policy Can Help

Although some drivers don’t carry insurance at all and others just carry the least that they can to legally drive, others carry insurance to protect themselves from financial risk. They will have better coverage, including higher coverage amounts and more types of insurance. If you have collision coverage or uninsured motorist protection on your policy, you can potentially make a claim against your own insurance even though you are not the one at fault for the crash.

If you don’t want to make a claim against your insurance or did not have that coverage at the time of a wreck, then the civil courts can offer you recourse. Provided that you can reasonably claim that negligence or misconduct caused the crash, you could bring a lawsuit against the other driver asking for compensation for costs not covered by insurance.

Holding an uninsured driver accountable for their irresponsible decisions can give you financial justice after a motor vehicle collision.