In this video, Personal Injury Attorney Ben Schwartz talks about uninsured drivers and what you should do if you are injured in a car accident.

Hey Folks, I’m Ben Schwartz,

Today I’m going to answer a viewer question from Alonzo in Chichester, Pennsylvania. Alonzo wrote in he said, “what would happen if you were in an accident, and you find out that the driver that caused the accident didn’t have any insurance?” I just want to say, Alonzo, thank you so much for writing in with this question. It’s a great question. It’s a situation that happens constantly.

Folks constantly get injured in car accidents due to the fault of some negligent or careless motorist and then later come to find out that that negligent careless motorist had no insurance. It’s very common and I think that if you are the type of person that is careless and cause an accident, you’re also going to be the type of person that’s careless and don’t pay for your insurance premium. And so we see this scenario happen all the time.

The direct answer is, you look to your own auto insurance for what’s called uninsured motorist coverage.

So, the concept is if you are injured in an accident, let’s say that we are driving along are going to lunch we stop at a red light, and WHAM another driver runs into the back of us because he was not paying attention. We later find out that the other driver had no insurance. Instead of suing that other driver, we look to our own insurance policy to see if we had uninsured motorist coverage. The uninsured motorist coverage pays us what we would have gotten in the settlement or award for our personal injury claim against the at-fault driver had that driver been appropriately insured.

So this raises the topic of, do you have uninsured motorist coverage? And if so, how much-uninsured motorist coverage do you have?

If you are watching this video, you should think about this… What is the percentage of people that are driving around that have no insurance whatsoever? And if they cause a crash and they injure you on the roadway, what are you going to do?  You are going to go to an attorney.

The attorney is going to find out the at-fault driver had no insurance. The attorney is going to say, ‘we will contact your insurance company and hopefully, you had UM or uninsured motorist coverage on your policy, and hopefully, you had adequate uninsured motorist coverage. Just because you have the coverage doesn’t mean you have enough to pay you a fair settlement.

So now is a great time before you get in that crash caused by a negligent driver, who didn’t pay their premium, now is a great time to look at your insurance policy and see how much UM coverage you have. Call your insurance agent, if you have an insurance agent. Call the direct 800 number or the toll-free number for your insurance company if you don’t have an agent and find out, do I have UM coverage and how much do I have?

Make sure that you max it out to the maximum extent possible given your ability to cover that premium and given your financial wherewithal. You have got to maintain the coverage and it’s got to be a reasonable amount of coverage because there are so many people that have no insurance and those uninsured drivers are out driving around smashing into people and causing injuries.

Folks, I’m attorney Ben Schwartz, this is a great question. I think it is a good piece of information for me to put out into the internet universe. It’s something that I hope you learned something new today. I hope it’s something that you found interesting. If you have a topic like this about personal injury litigation or car accidents, or anything that you think would make a good video, send me an email, ben.schwartz@schwartzandschwartz.com. I would love to hear from you. I would love to see if we can collaborate, if you can give me a good idea for a video and I will be sure to mention you in my recording.

Thanks for watching!