Uninsured Driver Car Accidents

Answer:

Frequently, I have clients come to see me and say, “We don’t think the other person had any car insurance. What are our rights to recover if the other person has no car insurance?” We call these case in Virginia “uninsured motorist cases.” They apply both to cases where you know the other party did not have insurance, but they also apply in cases of hit-and-run where you don’t even know who the other party was and have no way of finding them to determine if they had insurance or not.

In both of those cases, Virginia has a special statute for uninsured motorist coverage that requires that you be provided the opportunity to purchase that insurance at a reasonable cost to add onto your own car insurance policy. In the event that you have a claim that involves someone who had no insurance, or you don’t know who the other party was, you can make a claim against your own policy’s uninsured motorist coverage for that benefit.There’s another part to that statute that allows you to recover extra money from your own policy, if your policy exceeds the coverage limit on the other person’s policy. Even if they had insurance, just not enough insurance to pay the value of your full case, you can make additional claims against your own insurance for what’s called under-insured motorist coverage. It’s often the case, in the most severe crashes, that the injuries are bad enough to have to tap into that additional coverage. In that case, you must see an attorney because there are many technicalities that could bar you from making that claim and getting the most value out of your case for your injuries.