Car crashes are inconvenient and frequently very expensive. When someone else causes a crash that hurts you or causes cancel damage to your vehicle, you may need to file an insurance claim against their policy in order to repair your vehicle or pay for your medical care.
Sadly, some people don’t maintain active insurance policies on their vehicles. What happens if you get into a crash caused by an uninsured driver in New York?
Your insurance might protect you from uninsured drivers
The most straightforward way to receive compensation after an uninsured driver crashes into you probably involves filing a claim against your own insurance policy. Provided that you carry uninsured or underinsured driver coverage, your policy might cover the damages and costs that the policy the other driver would have paid if they had maintained the policy.
However, if you don’t have this coverage or if the costs you incur exceed the amount of coverage you have, your only option might be to file a civil lawsuit against the driver who didn’t have a policy at the time that they wrecked your vehicle.
How likely are you to encounter an uninsured driver in New York?
Believe it or not, New York is actually the best state in the country for drivers carrying Insurance. According to the Insurance Information Institute, only 6.1% of New York drivers on average don’t have insurance at any given time. That place is New York is 50th out of 50 states, meaning that there are fewer uninsured drivers in New York than in every other state of the country.
However, that figure does mean that roughly one out of twenty drivers you encounter won’t have a policy. Getting protection through your insurance or taking legal action soon after a crash can help you recover from the impact of someone else’s bad choices.