How to Avoid A Nightmare Injury Claim in NC

This title is a little misleading in that I can’t tell you EVERYTHING you would need to eliminate the possibility of a nightmare injury claim scenario in NC, obviously, but I can only put so much in a title. Bear with me.

I’ve seen this so many times and its tragic each time: Person is driving along, minding their own beeswax, when out of nowhere BOOM some knucklehead rams into them, resulting in horrific injury. As knuckleheads are wont to do, this particular knucklehead only purchased the bare minimum insurance coverage required by the State of NC to operate a motor vehicle legally. That, by the way, is $30,000 per person/$60,000 per accident. That means if you’re the unfortunate victim here. The MOST their insurance company has to pay you, regardless of the extent of your injuries and the cost of your medical care and the time you missed from work and whatever disability you have now, is $30,000. That’s it.

Of course, you are welcome to sue the bad guy and try to get a judgment in excess of that $30,000. That’s totally within your rights. But how do you turn that into actual money? What you would have to do with your judgment is called “execution,” which means you send the Sheriff out to collect his personal belongings and sell them. What do you think are the odds of a person who has $30,000 in liability coverage also happening to have a significant dollar amount worth of personal property? Pretty low, I’m thinking. If someone were to empty the contents of a rando’s home in NC, there might be, what, $10,000 worth of stuff at an auction? Is that really going to help you?

This all sounds really depressing, right? I know. So you’re probably asking, “But Jeffrey, what can we do to avoid this scenario? We can’t make people get more insurance? Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves?” You’re totally right and I’m glad you asked. The first step is to call your insurance agent. What you need is as much “Underinsured Motorist Coverage” (UIM) as you can possibly afford. Some companies will let you purchase this increase independently of your own limits. Otherwise your UIM coverage will match your own liability coverage. But if you have to increase your liability to get some reasonably high UIM, I think it’s worth it. Obviously, don’t go bankrupt over-insuring yourself, but chances are you won’t. This sort of coverage is relatively inexpensive and if buying that stuff and never using it is the worst financial decision you make in your life, you’re lucky. But if you do end up needing it, you’ll be SOOO glad you did.