If I borrow a friend’s car and crash, whose insurance is used?
Samantha B. Cohn's Answer
Full Transcript
Below is an AI-generated transcript of the video answer.
Another day at work, another chance to answer some of your questions. This time from the parking lot
of Chesterfield County Courthouse. A question that comes up quite often is if I borrow somebody's car
whose insurance is involved? I guess the question is also if you're at fault for the crash or if
you're not. Typically in Virginia the insurance coverage follows the car. If you have permission
to use your friend's vehicle you will be considered a permissive use driver and their
insurance will typically cover you. If you have your own policy of insurance then your policy can
be a secondary policy that can be used to essentially stack on top of the car's coverage
in order to obtain more coverage. If you are at fault those would be the two coverages that would
be utilized in any crash that you caused. If you're not at fault then what would happen is
that the coverage of the person who is in the car that hits you, same type of situation, they might
have been borrowing the car, they might have their own coverage, another one that comes up often is
somebody's driving for Lyft or DoorDash or Uber, the coverage would be for the car and then for
the driver and if you're not at fault and you have your own policy your coverage would be
underinsured coverage and additionally the car that you're driving would be another underinsured
coverage. So you could potentially have four or more policies covering which is why it's so
important to speak with an attorney about these situations because it's going to depend on what
coverage is available, who has different policies, how they stack and how that gives you access to a
certain amount of money, possibly not all but maybe all, so it's important to get with an
attorney to figure out exactly what the total compensation is that you may have at your fingertips.