An Uninsured Driver Wrecked Your Car. Your Deductible Depends on Which Coverage Pays.

Someone with no insurance runs a light and takes out your front end. You file a claim and write a check for your deductible.

Which deductible? That is not a rhetorical question, and the answer can be worth $750.

Two different coverages on the same policy can pay to fix that car. Collision is the one everybody knows, and it pays whether the crash was your fault or not. The other is uninsured motorist property damage, and it only shows up when the person who hit you had no coverage or not enough of it.

They buy the same repair. They don’t cost you the same money.

The Texas Department of Insurance puts the uninsured motorist deductible at $250. Illinois law requires insurers to offer the coverage with a deductible no higher than $250. A collision deductible is whatever you picked when you were shopping on price, and Progressive puts the range across states at $100 to $1,000.

Progressive says the rest out loud on its own site: if your collision deductible is higher than your uninsured motorist deductible, “you may benefit from filing a claim under your UMPD coverage.”

That’s the insurance company telling you there’s a cheaper door. It won’t tell you again when you’re on the phone with an adjuster.

The deductible isn’t the only gap. Texas describes its uninsured and underinsured coverage as paying for car repairs, the property inside your car, pain and suffering, and diminished value, the resale money you lose because the car now has a wreck on its history. Collision pays to fix the car. That’s the whole list.

So if your collision deductible is $1,000, running the claim through uninsured motorist coverage instead puts $750 back in your account and opens a diminished value claim you wouldn’t otherwise have. On one crash you didn’t cause.

Here’s the catch. You have to actually have the coverage. Progressive says it is required in a few states, optional in several, and not available in about half of them. Illinois writes it around an identified, at-fault, uninsured driver, so a phantom car that never stops may fall outside it. Texas is broader and covers hit-and-run.

And in Texas, insurers “must offer uninsured motorist coverage when you buy auto insurance.” If you don’t want it, “you have to turn it down in writing.” Translation: if your policy doesn’t have it, somebody slid you a rejection form and you signed it, probably while trying to get out of an office.

Do this today. Pull up your declarations page, the one-page summary of what you actually bought, and look for UMPD, UM property damage, or uninsured motorist property damage. Check the deductible printed next to it against your collision deductible.

If the line isn’t there, call your agent and ask what it costs to add. It only ever pays when the other driver is broke, so get the quote before you decide it isn’t worth it.

If you are in a claim right now, ask the adjuster by email which coverage your repair is being paid under. If both apply and the uninsured motorist deductible is lower, say so.

If you insure more than one car, there is a second move on the same coverage: stacking your uninsured motorist limits. That piece is about injuries. This one is about the car.

Worth asking. Our insurance estimator ballparks what a policy should run you, and the auto insurance hub covers what each line on the declarations page does.

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