What If I Loan My Bike And Then There’s a Crash?
Whether or not you are covered for personal injury and property damage when a friend, who borrowed your bike, gets into an accident depends on several factors.
First, if the other driver was at fault, and not your friend, that person’s insurance may cover it. Second, your policy may or may not cover an alternate rider. You may have purchased extra cover for this very purpose in general or your policy may allow specific persons only to be covered if they borrow your motorcycle. It all depends on the policy’s stipulations.
Third, if your friend himself has a motorcycle insurance policy, that policy will normally serve as a secondary means to cover expenses that go beyond your own policy’s limits. In some cases, however, it could be the primary policy involved – motorcycle insurance varies on these details, so you have to compare your own policy to your friend’s.
What About Motorcycle Insurance For Injured Passengers?
Not all motorcycle insurance will automatically cover all medical expenses for injuries to passengers who were riding with you when an accident occurred. But, many insurers will cover it, though sometimes you may have to pay a little more for passenger liability coverage.
Passenger liability riders normally cover close family members, or else you have to specify who will be covered. If you plan on having numerous and somewhat unpredictable passengers, however, you may have to add more substantial passenger liability cover.
Now, if you are at fault and liable, your insurance is going to pay for their injuries up to the limits of the policy. If it goes over those limits, you could potentially be liable for more and suffer a lawsuit – so added passenger liability protection can still help here.
If the other driver is at fault, his or her insurance would pay for the injuries to both yourself and any passengers. If they don’t have insurance or enough of it, however, you’ll be glad if you paid a tiny bit extra per month for un- and under-insured motorist coverage, which would pick up the slack in this situation.
Weigh Your Risks And Discuss It With An Agent
Those who never give rides to passengers anyway, of course, wouldn’t need to bother adding passenger liability insurance. Those who do will have to weigh how often they have passengers, how many different passengers they will likely have, and whether those passengers are family members or whether they have their own motorcycle insurance or not, in making a final decision on coverage.
Also be sure to add uninsured motorist insurance, which also covers under-insured motorists, since this plays into passenger liability sometimes and protects you in other critical ways for a minimal cost.
To learn more about how to cover passengers and/or those you loan your bike to, contact Flagler County (FL) Insurance Agency today!