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In the state of California, you must have auto liability insurance. That applies to every driver in your household. If someone who lives in your house drives your car and gets into an accident, the insurance company will not pay the claim unless they have insurance.

California requires that every driver have liability insurance. The minimum level of coverage to be legal is $15,000 for medical expenses for one occupant and $30,000 for 2 or more occupants of the other vehicle, and $5000 for property damage including car repair. Note that these figures pertain only to the other car. If you want to protect your own assets, you will need additional coverage.

Additionally, you should know that if you do not have liability insurance, the California Department of Motor Vehicles will suspend your license for a year. You will also be personally liable for any injury or damage done to the other car if you get in an accident.

Sometimes people in the household have their own car and insurance. In this case, you don’t have to put them on yours. But, if they get into an accident using your car, their insurance policy will be the one covering the damage, not yours.

You should know that additional driver insurance protects someone only when they are driving your cars. They don’t have insurance to cover them in other people’s cars.

When you add an additional person to your coverage, it will increase the cost of your policy. The amount of the increase will depend on how old the driver is, their driving record, and sometimes even their credit score.

Parents are often shocked to find out how much their premiums skyrocket when they add a new teenaged driver to their insurance. Their student’s good grades can help with the price though. If the additional driver has one or more accidents or traffic tickets, the rates are higher as well. The reason insurance companies are looking at credit scores more and more has to do with actuarial tables that show that bad credit equals bad driving.

You should make sure that every driver in your household has insurance whether it is their own policy your yours. If not, lending your car to them for a quick errand could turn out to be quite expensive.

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