If I borrow a friend’s car and crash, whose insurance is used?

00:00 Another day at work, another chance to answer some of your questions. This time from the parking lot

00:05 of Chesterfield County Courthouse. A question that comes up quite often is if I borrow somebody's car

00:12 whose insurance is involved? I guess the question is also if you're at fault for the crash or if

00:20 you're not. Typically in Virginia the insurance coverage follows the car. If you have permission

00:26 to use your friend's vehicle you will be considered a permissive use driver and their

00:31 insurance will typically cover you. If you have your own policy of insurance then your policy can

00:38 be a secondary policy that can be used to essentially stack on top of the car's coverage

00:46 in order to obtain more coverage. If you are at fault those would be the two coverages that would

00:54 be utilized in any crash that you caused. If you're not at fault then what would happen is

01:02 that the coverage of the person who is in the car that hits you, same type of situation, they might

01:09 have been borrowing the car, they might have their own coverage, another one that comes up often is

01:14 somebody's driving for Lyft or DoorDash or Uber, the coverage would be for the car and then for

01:23 the driver and if you're not at fault and you have your own policy your coverage would be

01:30 underinsured coverage and additionally the car that you're driving would be another underinsured

01:36 coverage. So you could potentially have four or more policies covering which is why it's so

01:43 important to speak with an attorney about these situations because it's going to depend on what

01:47 coverage is available, who has different policies, how they stack and how that gives you access to a

01:54 certain amount of money, possibly not all but maybe all, so it's important to get with an

01:59 attorney to figure out exactly what the total compensation is that you may have at your fingertips.