Named Non-Owner Liability Car Insurance in California
blog CA life without a car other personal
Ok- obviously not art related at all, but I’ve looked all over the internet and couldn’t find anything helpful so I thought it might be useful information to put out there.
As some of you know, we are using the car crash as a cue and trying out life without owning a car. Unfortunately, we are not people who don’t need a car at all and so we have been using City Car Share as well as renting cars about 3 days a month. We’re also renting a car for 5 weeks to drive to and around Utah.
We also just learned a couple things about renting a car in California:
1. It’s illegal to drive a car without liability insurance
2. Car rental companies here do not include any state-required liability insurance into the base price of their rental cars. Apparently, California, from what I have read, is the only state where this does not happen. So, if you live in another state and have been buying liability insurance through your rental company, you should know that what you are buying replaces and adds on to what is already included in your rate. I would still check with your specific company to find out if this is true, but it seems to be. We use our credit card for our collision insurance. Again, you still need to check with your credit card to find out what your terms are because they vary a lot. We use Amex Blue (which we specifically got for it’s good rental car coverage)
So- 5 weeks of buying insurance at $13 a day is a lot. What other options are out there, you ask? Well, there are Named Non-Owner policies. These policies are for people who drive either rentals or other people’s cars. It is an insurance plan for the person, not the car. However, you can only do this for cars that you do not own.