Dangers Linked To Not Reporting An Accident To Your Car Insurance Company

If you buy automobile insurance, then you expect to be covered, in the event that you suffer damages, as the result of an accident. Yet someone that fails to report an accident jeopardizes his or her chance to obtain that coverage.

A policy holder has signed a contract with the insurance company.

The policy holder has agreed to report any accident. If the insurance company were to learn that one its policy holders had been involved in a collision, and had not reported that incident, then it would have a reason for refusing to pay any of the damages that resulted from that same collision.

How a policy holder might get tempted to dispense with reporting an accident?

Anyone that has purchased automobile insurance knows that involvement in an accident could cause his or her premiums to increase. For that reason, the same person might make an oral agreement with the other driver. The other driver might go along with that agreement, because he or she thought that it had been just a tiny fender-bender.

Suppose, though that the driver that had agreed to the proposal from the other driver suddenly started feeling pains in the neck and shoulders. Those pains would suggest the existence of an injury. Perhaps the injured driver would decide to sue the driver that had suggested forgetting about reporting the accident. The filing of a lawsuit would cause the insurance company that knew nothing about the accident to suddenly learn about that specific collision. It would realize that the policy holder had not fulfilled his or her contract. For that reason, the insurance company would have grounds for refusing the supply the sued driver with a defense counsel.

Are there any accidents that do not need to be reported?

Injury Lawyer in Waterloo knows that if you are in an accident and you are not injured, and if the same incident does not damage anyone else’s property, then there is no reason to report that particular incident. That would be most apt to happen to a single driver. The driver might hit the corner of the home’s garage when driving into that area of the home.

Yet it is possible for two or more family members to play a part in an accident that damages only the family’s property. For instance, suppose that a father asks his young daughter to try pushing his own vehicle. She does get it moved from a large street onto a smaller one, but she also hits the brake too late. Consequently, she puts a dent in her father ‘s car. He does not need to report that tiny dent; his daughter was not injured. No one is apt to sue him for any damage.