What is Motorcycle Insurance ?  Explained.

today I'm actually know what we were talking about and that's going to be all the things that you need to know about motorcycle insurance. 

What is Motorcycle Insurance ?  Explained.

let's get into it now I know that insurance is not exactly the most exciting topic by any means but it is something that you should at least have a general knowledge about. 

so I'm going to make this blog as detailed as possible state's gonna have different laws not like that but every company is going to have different ways that they do things a lot of people think that insurance companies are these big governments overseeing organizations that have to follow strict rules. 

it's really not like that they actually are just a business the only thing that the government kind of steps in on in most states is that they require you to have it outside of that it's pretty much up to the company to decide how they want to do business. 

so I will be saying depending on the company and depending on the state a lot but anyways let's jump right into it. so if you're looking at your own insurance policy or maybe if you're shopping around there's gonna be three to four main categories we're just going to be liability comprehensive collision and then other. 

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liability 

now liability is that coverage that most likely your state is going to require you to have to drive on public roads reason being is that liability covers you in case you do damage to somebody else. 

let's take this clip for example now the gentleman on the black bike clearly was at fault to the gentleman on the white bike albeit he is much better-looking and definitely a more talented rider than the guy on the white bike but liability insurance is what's going to cover the black bike gentleman to pay for the damage on the white bike. 

basically there's going to cover you if you are liable for the accident it's liability now like I mentioned in the beginning of the blog this is going to vary pretty I wouldn't say greatly but it does vary from state to state but when you see liability coverage is usually broken up into three different numbers. 

now I'm gonna use Texas for an example because it's a better state than wherever you live and those limits are thirty sixty twenty-five basically is saying that the state of Texas requires you to have this much coverage but let's go over what those three numbers means. 

so let me go ahead and make myself smaller all right that's better all right so 30/60/90 five you'll probably see three numbers on your policy under the liability now doesn't matter what these numbers are the order that they are in determines. 

what they cover on the policy the first two numbers are going to be for bodily injury and the last number is going to be for property damage the first number within the bodily injury category is how many dollars in thousands that the policy is going to cover for one person. 

the second number is going to be the number of bodily injury claims for the entire accident and then that third number is just the overall property damage. so now we know what those numbers mean. 

let's go ahead and put it into a example let's say that this lizard is a SUV okay and this bottle of Geritol is you on your geezer Glyde say for example you I don't know cut them off or do something to cause this SUV to have an accident. 

now then the SUV there was two passengers will be will represent those passengers with these challenge coins now let's say that the driver had $10,000 worth of injuries and the passenger also had $10,000 worth of injuries if you have the 36 t25 coverage you would still be fine you have 10 on this side which is below the 30 for the individual. 

you have town this side which is below the 30 for the individual add them together you get 20,000 which is under the 60,000 for the combined accident and say for example their SUV had another $10,000 for the damage that falls below the 25,000 of the limit.

 

so once again you're still okay now let's switch it up a bit let's say this beetle here is another SUV but 

this time we have three individuals in it all right same accident occurs I don't something happens you get an accident all right. 

now we have three people involved in that accident I'm gonna split this up into two different ways to show how you could not be covered within this accident example a you've got $25,000 worth of damage on person 1 another $25,000 of the damage on person 2 and another $25,000. 

the damage on person 3 all three of these are under that $30,000 per person mark correct but when you add them all together you now have a $75,000 combined biele injury bill which is now over that 60,000 combined limit that you have on your policy which means you're about $15,000 in the hole .

so what do you do when that happens basically you're gonna get sued for that extra $15,000 and there's nothing that you're in is gonna do for it now the second example say for example a person one has $40,000 with the damaged person two has 10,000 in person three has 10,000 altogether you're at the sixty thousand dollar cap you're you'll be fine on that but remember person one has over thirty thousand dollars. 

so anything over that thirty thousand dollars is once again not going to be covered by your insurance policy chances are you're gonna get sued for that extra ten thousand now I'm not doing this to to scare you by any means but I don't know about you I don't want to be sued for ten thousand dollars nor do I want to be sued for a dollar. 

the reason I'm letting you know about all this is because when you're looking at lie building insurance carrying the state minimums on a motorcycle so you're probably gonna be okay chances are you're not going to be causing more than that amount of damage on a vehicle unless you total it and people have some serious injuries but there's always that worst-case scenario .

say for example you cut off a Maserati that car goes on the guardrail they're gonna charge twenty five thousand dollars just for the paint job and everyone on the inside is injured to the point where they rack up you know an $8,000 hospital bill it happens guys one thing I would suggest that you do when you are shopping for insurance is ask the representative how much extra is it going to be if I bump up to the next level like a 5150 coverage chances are you're gonna be looking at maybe a couple dollars a month essentially. 

what I'm saying is that the liability coverage is pretty cheap so an extra couple dollars here and there might be worth it if God forbid you ever have to use it alright so that's gonna do it for section one hopefully you were able to follow along with my perfect awesome examples section number two is going to be comprehensive. 

now both comprehensive and collision are both kind of within the same category and they're also often referred to as full coverage when you work in the industry you learn to never use the term full coverage because it's not really true although yes these coverages do provide you some sort of protection. 

if you are not at fault or something not you're late it happens but there's a lot of things built to the policy called exclusions that are not going to be covered under your policy and I'll go over a few common exclusions after I explain what the coverages are. 

Comprehensive coverage.

so back to the main topic which is the comprehensive coverage this is basically going to cover your bike for anything that happens to it during a non riding event say for example your bike is parked down a parking lot and a hail storm hits dents all the hell that's where comprehensive comes in say you're at Daytona Bike Week and you walk out of a bar after having just one drink and your bike is gone. 

that's where comprehensive comes in pretty simple stuff right now moving on to section 3 which is going to be the collision now collision can be anything riding related that happened to your motorcycle remember that clip from the beginning of the blog or that super handsome Dino rider ran into the back of that ugly white streak line. 

now thankfully there was no damage to that beautiful black Dyna but if there was collision coverage 

would have been what stepped in to repair that damage other instances if you drop the bike and it becomes damaged enough to where you have to make a claim that's where collision comes in. 

now I'm saying that kind of with a you know air quote here because depending on what your claims provider is going to say if that was a moving violation or not that dropping a bike might fall under comprehensive or it might fall under collision doesn't really matter they both usually are going to have the same deductible. 

which we'll go over that in a second and are going to provide the same coverage for your bike but other instances of collision coverages is say for example you're going around a corner and low side or your high side out of it just a complete freak accident and your bike is you know dented needs 

paint everything that's where collision comes in now one thing that I want to touch on and highlight and I haven't done it in the first three sections because it doesn't really fall into any section for all companies every company tends to label it differently and put it within different sections and going to be your uninsured underinsured motorist coverage now this is essentially liability coverage that you are buying 

for yourself meaning that if you get hit by a driver who is uninsured or underinsured say for example a driver hits you and they only have a twenty five thousand dollar property damage and they totaled out your brand-new CVO Road Glide chances are there's gonna be a gap between that twenty five thousand and whatever that bike is worth at that time at that point sometimes your collision coverage will step in 

sometimes your comprehensive will step in but more cases than not your uninsured underinsured motorist coverage is gonna step in once again this is a fairly cheap coverage you're only talking about maybe I'm not even gonna throw a quote that's gonna vary so much a very small amount in comparison to the total coverage amount to basically provide you with a whole nother policy to cover yourself not 

only yourself as in your bike but yourself as in your body itself say for example if you got hit by someone who had zero insurance and you had a ten thousand dollar hospital bill I don't know about you but I can't come up with ten thousand dollars out of thin air that coverage will definitely pay for itself if once again god forbid you ever have to use it even once now going back to something I briefly touched 

on earlier and that is the deductible now before working in the insurance industry I had no idea what a deductible was and I'm assuming you might not either and it's pretty simple it's essentially in the amount that is  deducted from your quotes to get your bike fixed or repaired four simple math if you have a thousand dollar deductible which is way too high and you get a quote for ten thousand dollars to 

fix your bike your insurance company is going to give you a check for $9,000 $10,000 minus the thousand dollar deductible my suggestion to you is make your deductible only as high as an amount that you can afford to spend at any given time if you have a thousand dollars that you can just drop out the drop of a hat by all means carry a thousand dollars coverage but thought about you I don't I don't like 

living like that so I keep my deductibles as low as possible reason being is that if my bike goes down or gets damaged I want to be able to get it fixed as soon as possible I would hope that most you guys are on the same page but one final note on the deductible is that the difference between a thousand are deductible and a $250 deductible is usually not that much this is definitely when you're looking for 

insurance this is definitely something I would suggest you get price options for all your deductible ranges and that way you can make a better understanding to know if it's going to be worth the extra couple dollars a month or not also ask whatever company you're quoting with if they offer a vanishing deductible I am currently with progressive and they do offer the vanishing deductible so that basically 

means every six months is it's either six months or a year that you go without an accident your deductible drops down either a hundred dollars or to the next year whatever they offer which is pretty awesome and it's definitely worth the extra money if they are charging for that option like I said you use it once it's gonna pay for itself alright so before we get into the section four which is basically just the 

catch-all I wanted to go over some exclusions that I mentioned earlier in the blog to kind of give you an understanding of what can happen to your bike and your insurance goes yeah we're not covering that all right so let's go ahead and start with property damage this is gonna kind of cover both collision and comprehensive coverage will not apply for a loss if being used to carry persons or property for 

compensation or a fee if you're delivering pizzas on your bike and for some reason you go down and they find out that you were working while that happen not covered will not be covered or sustained during practice or preparation for any pre range organized racing stunting speed or demolition contact contest for activity or any writing activity conducted on a permanent or temporary racetrack racecourse 

or during any closed course event if you take your bike down the drag strip and you get sideways and third gear and dump it not gonna be covered this is a good one damage won't be covered on any vehicle caused by an intentional act committed by or at the direction of you or a relative so if you dent it on purpose it's you're not going to be covered this is this is my favorite this is one that a lot of people are 

not aware of due to destruction or confiscation by government or civil authorities of any vehicle because you are any relative engaged in illegal activities if your bike gets impounded and the cops you know dick it all up during the impound not covered this is my other favorite one to any of you coverage will not be provide to any vehicle cause directly or indirectly by war declared or undeclared or Civil 

War warlike action by any military force of any government sovereign or other authority using military personnel or agents this includes any actions taken to hinder or defend against an actual or expected attack or any action taken by a governmental authority to hinder or defend against any of these acts so basically if a war breaks out or even something as small as a riots - where the National Guard is 

deployed and they you know plow is Hank through your garage you're you're Sol which is really sad you think about you know when you're watching I remember the Baltimore riots were the most recent ones and you see people you know flipping cars or burning down houses or buildings chances are those people didn't get a dime from their insurance company here's another good one cover don't be 

provided to any vehicle caused directly or indirectly by any accidental or intentional discharge dispersal or release of radioactive nuclear pathogenic or poisonous biological material so don't put nuclear waste on your bike and this list goes on for literally pages and pages I highly suggest you go and download that's on your policy docs that's that big thick pack you get in the mail soon as you start a policy that is 

the kind of stuff that's in there so just go to the exclusion the exclusions section I trust me it's it'll be entertaining if nothing else if you find a good one that I didn't read off go ahead and put that down in the comments I'd love to see what your your insurance labels as an exclusion and now on to section 4 which is basically going to be a catch-all for everything either motorcycle related or just an additional 

coverage that you can tag on to your insurance that you either might not know about or might need a little bit more information on and the first coverage I'm going to reference is shrimp interruption now this isn't Sara Lee motorcycle-specific I will say that I see it more on motorcycle policies than say for example auto policies but this is basically exactly what it says if for some reason you get an accident on 

a trip obviously it's going to cost money to get back to where you live or at least get to somewhere where you can stay or provide accommodations of some sort say for example you ride from Arkansas down to Florida and your bike gets stolen you don't have a way to get back that is where a trip interruption could step in to help you out now I will say that I've quoted a few different companies and 

their trip interruption does work quite differently so something's gonna check for is a dollar limit per day some companies have a very low twenty five dollar per day limit basically just getting new food and some companies have an exuberant you know $500 a day it's gonna pay for lodging and everything

else this is also usually tied in with roadside assistance which is a nother coverage within this catch-all 

once again and do your research ask your representative of how the roadside assistance works sometimes they'll just cover up to a flat dollar amount say for example you have $100 for a tow truck

and that's it some companies will say we will pick up your bike and tow it 2x miles from where the bike is picked up completely free of charge like I said every company does it differently and I'm more than 

confident that your rep will know what they're talking about and exactly what you're asking for when it

comes to the roadside assistance coverage also with both the roadside assistance and the trip interruption it's usually extremely cheap I'm talking less than a dollar per month if I was telling you to get any sort of coverage get that coverage it's a lot more likely that you're going to break down the side

of the road than it is that you're going to total the bike chances are that tow trucks and it cost you about a hundred two hundred bucks you'd have to have that roadside assistant coverage on your policy for about 12 to 15 years and not use it to be in the red you use it once it pays for itself next up on my list is rental car coverage once again not motorcycle specific by any means I see the on a lot of auto policies 

it's definitely not the cheapest option it doesn't fall within that you know trip interruption and roadside assistance cheapness but it is still fairly cheap if you're someone who only has a motorcycle from your only means of transportation by all means definitely spend the extra money and get yourself some rental coverage but once again every company's going to do itdifferently most companies are gonna

offer different options as well most the time it's on a dollar per day basis for example twenty five dollars a day for X days to pay for a rental so maybe do a little bit of research on how much rental cars cost in your area what kind of car that you would need to get around in if you're writing a letter cycle

daily it's probably not gonna be probably not gonna be of a super luxurious vehicle by any means but 

say for example if your bikes in the shop for 30 days 30 days at $25 a day you're looking at 750 bucks that in my mind is worth it next up on the list is carried contents now this is a coverage that is very misunderstood across all auto products specifically cars now a lot of auto policies speaking to cars trucks etc are not going to offer this coverage standards some might offer it as a add-on but it's 

definitely not included in any policy I have ever seen I'm going to use a car for this example because I feel like a lot of people are going to be surprised by this say for example you park your car in the Walmart parking lot someone the smashes your window and steals your cell phone out of their cell phones probably about a thousand dollars your insurance company is gonna pay you zero cents for 

that cell phone now the broken window is going to be covered by your comprehensive coverage but anything inside the vehicle is not covered you can think of your vehicle whether it be a motorcycle or car as a toy car or a toy motorcycle okay alright so take your car your motorcycle flip it upside down and shake the shove it you know you're gonna lose change maybe your backpack laptops cell phones 

maybe a GPS here they're everything that fell out of that vehicle not covered so anything that you have in your saddlebags anything that you have in tank bags or any sort of storage within the vehicle or even for example your luggage not covered basically anything that is not bolted to the vehicle is not going to be covered by your comprehensive or collision coverages so someone cracks open your saddlebag and 

steals everything you have in there once again company's gonna pay for the damage to your saddlebag if they did damage it but everything that was in it not covered but the carried contents coverage does cover that say for example someone goes by and Yanks your luggage off the your sissy bar now that is covered so I guess this coverage is really gonna depend on how much stuff do you keep on your bike 

how often is it exposed to being mess with being vandalized or stolen or anything like that also this doesn't apply to just vandalism vandalism or theft say for example if you have a three thousand dollar MacBook in your saddlebag and you low-side and that laptop is toast that's not gonna be covered by your motorcycle policy it will be covered by the carried contents policy or carried contents coverage 

within your policy so like I said that's kind of a 50/50 depends on if you ever carry anything that is worth value that can be stolen or broken I feel like this is gonna be that one coverage that kind of splits people down the middle evaluate on your own and last but certainly not least it's my favorite coverage which is the accessory coverage now everyone knows that I am the bolt on King which means that I 

have a lot of accessories on my bike now I'm sure if you've got anything bolts on your bike you understand that that stuff adds up over time but I don't think you understand how quickly that stuff adds up and how high that total actually gets now I will say that most policies do include a base accessory coverage I would suggest that you ask your insurance rep about what that covers and what the limit is 

and that's really we're gonna have to do your due diligence to add up all the accessories

on your bike and get a dollar amount form and then see if you fall under that limit or if you need to bump up that covers a little bit once again this coverage is not that expensive you're probably only looking at maybe 10 to 50 cents per thousand dollars of coverage per month super cheap definitely 

worth it and that's going to cover it for everything whether it be a collision or a comprehensive damage to that part or accessory or say for example I mean you see those seat locks popping up on websites now if someone Yanks your 700-seat and you only have five hours worth of accessory coverage you're kind of hassle well because that that that seat was not part of the bike when it first you know came from 

the factory that's also one thing that you should clarify with your insurance company some some companies will go off of how the bike was bought some companies will go off of how the bike was shipped from the factory I will say most go off of what was shipped from the factory so if you get say for example you have a $7 seat they're going to replace it with whatever it came from the factory which

gonna be about 100 200 bucks you're still gonna be out about five hundred dollars but if you have that accessory coverage that might be able to supplement that extra five hundred dollars so that is going to do it for the coverages now I know you're asking yourself why who should I go with for insurance and I'm just going to say shop around shop around and oh yeah shop around seriously don't waste your time 

asking your buddies hey what do you got don't waste your time going on some forum or HD forums calm or Facebook or anything and ask what people are using and what they're paying it doesn't freaking

matter I could have an identical twin living across the street with the same driving record the same 

exact bike and his quote is going to be different than mine seriously guys there are so many factors that go into building a pricing model for each individual company well I suggest you doing is writing down what coverages you want what options you want to explore for example the different deductible options things like that coverages you want and then block off an hour to two hours and all these companies 

don't do online quotes reason being is that discounts are going to play a lot more into your favor if

you're on the phone than if you are online the people on the phone are licensed representatives they are

trained within that company to give you literally the best price possible because when you call those people they want your business they want to get that quote down as low as possible to get you to join 

their company so they're gonna give you every single discount they can just like I said block off about two hours call these companies give them their pin number given what coverages you want and see what they can do price-wise some that I would recommend not saying that you have to go with these or even start with these progressive and Dairyland Dairyland is a pretty much motorcycle exclusive 

insurance company and the progressive is probably the biggest big-name and motorcycle insurance company out there if you get a policy through the holidays it's going through progressive if you get a policy through USAA it going through progressive.