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Uber Insurance Flops Getting Fixed

By April 22, 2015October 6th, 2020Insurance

DrivingIf you haven’t heard of Uber by now then the chance that you’ve been living under a rock is very likely. Uber is the new car service of choice for not just 20 somethings, but also an easy fix for that situation where you probably shouldn’t be driving home whether it be from a bachelorette party or a business meeting.  If you have kids in college, they’ve probably used Uber as a cheap method to get around. There was a day and age that I would never recommend Uber. Recently though, there’s been legislation and insurance fixes so that now, even as an insurance agent, I’m warming up to the idea.

There use to be major problems with Uber. Your personal auto policy specifically excludes anything in which the car covered is performing taxi duties. When you sign up as an Uber driver, they do enroll you in a commercial auto policy. The gray area used to lie in the moment you activated your service. The personal auto policy immediately would go into exclusion and your commercial policy wouldn’t come into play until you had picked up passengers. Even then, the limits were questionable.

In the past year, Uber has stepped up their game. The biggest insurance gap was evident from the moment from you turned on the app to when you had a passenger in your car. It changed after a tragic accident in San Francisco where the driver had the app on, but hadn’t yet reached his passengers. Since then, Uber has changed their coverages to where they will still recommend your insurance first, but if there is any gap, they will provide coverage. I will warn that it has lower limits ($50,000 per individual/ $100,000 per accident and only $25,000 for property damage – this is only liability for a third party in which $50,000 may not get you very far if it’s a serious accident). There are still some areas where you should buy supplemental coverage. If you don’t have a passenger what about fixes to your car? Look into buying your own personal injury protection, increased liability limits, etc.

Uber is the first of it’s kind, so they are constantly changing and fixing it. There are still problems to be fixed, but they are slowly getting better. If you have questions contact us for more on Oklahoma City auto insurance.