If you plan on renting a car for your business trip or for a vacation because your car just isn’t reliable enough to trust on a long trip you need to make sure that you, everyone else in the rental car, and also the rental car is adequately covered for any accidents or acts of nature that occur during your trip. First of all, you should contact your personal auto insurance agent or representative and go over your policy coverage thoroughly to see exactly what is covered and what is not covered while you are renting a vehicle. If this is a personal trip like a vacation, the other drivers are probably your family members who are already on your insurance policy as authorized drivers.
The most important issue to be addressed is who your auto insurance covers as a driver of the rented auto besides those already listed as authorized drivers on you policy. This is very important because even if you plan on doing all the driving on the trip something may occur that makes it impossible for you or another authorized driver to drive and necessary for someone else to take over that responsibility. For instance, what if you went skiing and you and your other authorized driver got injured in some way and therefore unable to drive. Can you and your authorized driver still drive? Probably not, so you need to know from your auto insurance company who they would cover to drive the rental car under a circumstance like this.
If you are using a major credit card for the rental of the car, you need to contact them before the trip to see if they provide any insurance coverage and what exactly they cover. Probably the credit card company would not cover anyone else to drive so you need to discuss this with them so that if you are using their auto insurance for the trip you know your limitations.
Insurance coverage by the rental car companies themselves can usually be provided for an extra fee but sometimes the coverage is very limited and may only protect their vehicle. They might cover other drivers if you paid extra for each individual person and those drivers are over the age of 25 years old. If this is a business trip and the car is rented under a business account, other co-workers that are traveling in the same rental car are usually allowed to drive if necessary.
When going on a personal trip in a rented car the best way to go is probably with your own personal insurance company. You will need to give them the other driver’s personal information such as driver’s license number, etc., before you leave on your trip so that they can put them on your insurance for the time you are traveling.
Otto Ingrid is an enthusiast of automobiles alike. He is determined to provide everyone with loads of information about auto insurance. If you’d like to find out more about this topic, please visit Fort Myers Mortgage or County Mortgage and find out everything you want to know.