My wife and I live in Chicago where it is not necessary to have a car. But before we met, and for a very long time after, she drove. She drove cars professionally, she drove big rigs. But after moving to Chicago, we never drove and eventually she let her driver’s license lapse. Eventually, she took the test again and currently has a license. But as we don’t have an automobile, she doesn’t have automobile insurance.
My brother, my wife and myself are driving from Kansas City, MO to Akron, OH for a concert. Originally we were planning to rent a car rather than driving my brother’s gas-guzzling minivan.
Anyway, my brother has apparently been on the phone with his insurance agent, and the new plan is to drive his van, and he is going to be the only driver. All because she doesn’t have auto insurance. Again, she doesn’t have a car and doesn’t drive, but she has an excellent record from the period when she was driving every day.
Is it possible to get short-term auto insurance so she can drive his car?
Generally, auto liability insurance covers anyone driving the vehicle with the owner’s permission. It shouldn’t be neccessary for her to get her own policy.
My insurance covers the car, regardless of who is driving. It allows for me to temporarily loan my vehicle out to someone without having to claim an extra driver on my policy.
I thought most policies were like that. Guess I was wrong.
Otherwise, an idea might be to rent a car that gets better mileage than your bros.
The savings in gas can be put toward the rental companies insurance policy.
Example being; I rented a car to drive from Milwaukee to Louisville and back. The rental got far, far better mileage than my Mustang GT. The savings in fuel were more than the weekend rental rate. I actually came out ahead. My auto insurance covers rentals so I didn’t need the extra policy, though.
Yep, that’s my understanding. It would be different if gaffa’s wife lived in Kansas City with gaffa’s brother. Then, as part of gaffa’s brother’s household, she’d have to be on the insurance for the car to be covered. But as someone who doesn’t live there but who has permission to drive it on a one-time basis, the brother’s insurance should cover it.
Apparently he’s had such bad luck that he’s in danger of his insurance being cancelled. So her getting her own short term insurance seems to be the only way to get him to allow her to drive his car. The alternative is him driving for 14 hours straight.
Typically the insurance you buy with a car rental serves simply to waive the deductible for collision damage. It’s also typically priced so as to constitute a spectacular ripoff (IOW, they are charging something like 10 times what it costs them to provide this coverage).
You are contemplating being driven for 14 hours straight by someone whose claims record is so bad he is about to be denied cover?
Don’t.
On the broader question, it would be usual for her to be covered on his policy and, if she isn’t, a phone call will fix it. If this isn’t possible you may have a problem, since she will present to any other insurance company as someone seeking non-standard cover because another insurer has denied the usual cover. Bells would ring. And looking into that would represent taking a bit of trouble for what would, if issued, be a very small policy. My guess is that they will pass on the opportunity to insure your wife.
I’ve been in a similar situation where I needed to borrow a friend’s van (that was usually “out to pasture” and uninsured) for a couple of days. I use one of the online insurance companies, so I just added the van and then dropped it a few days later. It lead to a lot of adjusted bills and ID cards getting mailed to me but it only ended up costing something like $8.
I would guess you could just go to one of the online insurance providers and open a policy and then drop coverage as soon as your trip is over. I sort of hesitate to suggest this, since I’m not 100% sure that you won’t end up getting slapped with a bunch of fees if you do it, but all the funny business I’ve done over the years with adding and dropping vehicles (including dropping all of them for a few weeks once) has never resulted in me getting charged anything other than the per-day rate. I use the one that shares its name with an early 20th-century political party.
I’ve done this a few times on the few occasions I needed to rent a car before I owned a car. It was a few extra dollars a day, but that was partly because I was under 26 (and let me tell you how much of a pain it is to find a car company that will rent to someone under 26 at all!). Just call around to rental companies and check what they offer.