Accident with borrowed car -- whose insurance will apply to satisfy legal requirements? Assume my friend and I are both licensed and have insurance for our own cars, but we're (obviously) not listed under each others' insurance plans. Let's say one of us borrows the other one's car (with permission) and has an accident. Whose coverage is responsible at that point to satisfy the legally mandated insurance coverage? I am trying to figure out whether I would have all the insurance that I would be required to have if I borrowed another driver's car instead of using my own, and if so, who would be providing it. I assume that's only coverage against damage to others (which should go under liability insurance?) but if I'm wrong please correct me. Is the lender's insurance supposed to cover it? If so, wouldn't this not make sense? Insurance companies look at your driving history (&amp; risk) when they offer you a plan, and if the borrower has a poor history, you've increased the company's risk without their knowledge, right? It would seem to open insurance rates to abuse. Is the borrower's insurance supposed to cover it? If so, wouldn't this not make sense? Insurance companies charge you differently based on what and how many vehicles you want covered, so wouldn't borrowing someone's Lamborghini suddenly open your insurance company to a massive risk without their knowledge again? My guess would be that only my own insurance should matter for this regardless of what car I use, but I don't know how insurance companies do their risk modeling. If they think people might be riskier with different cars (e.g. maybe I'm riskier with stick-shift than with automatic transmission, I don't know...) then I could see this not automatically being the case, since suddenly I have a higher chance of having an accident and harming someone else, and they might demand more to protect against that. Or maybe the other driver's insurance comes into play too, maybe because, who knows, insurance companies might think risky people are more likely to lend to risky people.
Let's say one of us borrows the other one's car (with permission) and has an accident. Whose coverage is responsible at that point to satisfy the legally mandated insurance coverage? I assume that's only coverage against damage to others (which should go under liability insurance?) but if I'm wrong please correct me. There are different types of insurance that may be required: liability insurance - pays damage to others (usually including your own passengers) which you are responsible for. This is legally required almost everywhere (both in the USA, where this depends on the state, and elsewhere). Rules vary on the required minimum amount, and the exact coverage (e.g. whether lost wages are covered in case of injury). uninsured motorist coverage - pays damages you or others suffered, which are the responsibility of another driver who is not insured. This is mandatory in some states of the USA. In some other countries, these damages are covered by a public insurance or trust (such as the Verkehrsopferhilfe in Germany). personal injury protection - pays your own medical costs, no matter who is at fault. Required in some states of the USA. Is the lender's insurance supposed to cover it? This depends on the insurance policy, but in almost all cases the policy is for the vehicle (and often has to be, under the laws requiring insurance). So if yes, if you lend your car to someone else, your insurance will cover them. Note, however, that some insurance policies restrict your right to lend your car - read the fine print! There is one situation where your own policy may be relevant: If the damages exceed the limit of the vehicle's insurance policy, your own policy may pay the rest - again, this will depend on the policy. If so, wouldn't this not make sense? Insurance companies look at your driving history (&amp; risk) when they offer you a plan, and if the borrower has a poor history, you've increased the company's risk without their knowledge, right? It would seem to open insurance rates to abuse. Yes, exactly. That is why many (if not most) insurance policies place limits on lending your car. You may only be allowed to lend it to people over 21 years of age, or only to people who you have registered as car users with the insurance company. Is the borrower's insurance supposed to cover it? If so, wouldn't this not make sense? Insurance companies charge you differently based on what and how many vehicles you want covered, so wouldn't borrowing someone's Lamborghini suddenly open your insurance company to a massive risk without their knowledge again? No, the borrower's insurance does not usually apply. Making the borrower's insurance apply would be problematic because the risk is based on the vehicle (type), too. Also, the borrower may not have insurance (e.g. may not own a car). In particular, enforcing the mandatory liability insurance is easier in practice if it is per vehicle, because you can check the insurance at vehicle registration (which practically all countries already require). If the liability insurance were per driver, it would be difficult to prevent a person w/o insurance to borrow a car (as in your example). Finally, sometimes after an accident there is a dispute about who was driving the car (especially with hit-and-run accidents), but there is usually clear evidence (collision damage) what vehicle was involved. If insurance applies to the vehicle, a dispute over who was driving will not interfere with the victim's restitution.Thanks to supercat for pointing this out.
First off, the fact that they stopped you on private property is irrelevant. The traffic offense - you driving the vehicle with a suspended license - occurred on public property en route to the station. That offense does not simply disappear because you are now on private property, nor do the police need to wait for you to leave private property in order to stop or arrest you. So... forget the gas station even exists in this scenario. The real issue at hand here is whether or not the officer needs to actually see you driving the vehicle in order to make an arrest. The answer is no. There isn't any other valid reason your car would be where it is now other than it was driven there. If you are the only person with the car, then it's reasonable to assume that you were the one that drove it there. Plenty of people get arrested for this "connect the dots" way of proving they drove, especially in DUI cases. But the officer doesn't even need to assume that second part either. It all comes down to the actual definition of "driving" in the law books. Most citizens would interpret the word as meaning actually moving in a vehicle. That's wrong. Defining a driver and what constitutes driving is actually way, way broader in the eyes of the law. In Kansas, a driver is defined in such a way: 8-1416. "Driver" defined. "Driver" means every person who drives or is in actual physical control of a vehicle. Essentially, having physical control over the vehicle is generally enough to label you as the driver or that you are driving the vehicle. In a lot of states, having possession of the keys to the vehicle is enough for a court to say you had physical control of the vehicle, because "physical control" is more broadly defined as "capable of making it move and within close proximity" to the vehicle. Thus, you can be arrested for traffic-related offenses. It does not matter if the car is parked, if you're filling it with fluids, or just taking a nap in the front seat.
united-states Meet the word &quot;clawback&quot;. The general rule is that anything you do simply for asset protection can be undone by the government or courts. See the excellent book by Adkisson and Riser titled Asset Protection. First, the creditor is going to ask about all your assets including transfers. You have to answer truthfully, or else you open a whole other can of worms. The creditor and court will look at the character of these transactions. Suppose you sell a Ferrari worth $200,000 appraised value, to your brother for $155,000. However, it was an open eBay auction. Plaintiffs review it, hoping to find it was a &quot;vest pocket&quot; sale rigged to be unappealing to anyone but family. Wrong: it was a competent and earnest listing, which did attract 12 stranger bidders, and 3 bidders took up your offer to let them inspect the car. And according to Ferrari brokers that price was realistic given the soft market. Your brother simply outbid them, for nostalgia reasons. You did get the money and did use it to settle with creditors. That sale will be considered legitimate, because there's extensive provenance held in reliable third party hands (eBay). You sell the Ferrari for $100 to your brother. The court will presume that you intend to buy the car back for $100 after your legal troubles have cleared. This sale will be declared invalid, the Ferrari clawed back, and the creditor will be able to target that asset. The same thing can happen if you are insolvent, expect to enter bankruptcy, and pay a creditor &quot;out of turn&quot;. E.G. you settle your debt with the country club (so you can keep attending) before you pay your tax bill. The creditors, IRS or court can &quot;claw back&quot; that payment. That happened to my family's business once. Meet the word &quot;Penalties&quot;. OK, so what does a dumb crook do? They lie about their assets. They testify &quot;I crashed the Ferrari on the property, it was a basket case. I parted it out and chopped up the rest, threw it in the weekly trash week by week&quot;. And they can produce no documentation of any part sales. Meanwhile, plaintiff had already pulled DMV records and found it's currently registered... to the brother, with a DMV sale price of $100. They sent over a detective, who has pictures of it sitting in the brother's garage. And plaintiff gleefully maneuvered the dumb crook into a lie under oath. And now they face judicial punishment - including harsh fines, and jail for contempt of court or refusal to disclose. This bypasses the Fourth Amendment, so there is no trial for proof of guilt. But it's a government agency, not a private party All the moreso, then. Government has the right to bypass some of the rules for private parties - such as being able to do asset search, subpoena, or attach assets without filing a lawsuit. The IRS is probably the most experienced at pursuing asset hiders. They have &quot;their own&quot; Tax Court which does exclusively tax cases.
The Straßenverkehrsordnung(Translation) in Germany says this: § 34 Accidents (1) Any person involved in a traffic accident must: stop immediately; take the necessary steps to ensure traffic safety and, if there is only minor damage, move their vehicle to the edge of the carriageway; ascertain the consequences of the accident; assist injured persons (section 323c of the Penal Code); to other persons present at the scene of the accident who were involved and have suffered damage: a) state that they (i.e. the person referred to in the first clause) were involved in the accident; and b) if requested to do so, provide their own name and address, present their own driving licence and vehicle registration document and, to the best of their knowledge, provide details of their third-party insurance; a) remain at the scene of the accident until, by virtue of their own presence, it has been possible to identify their personal details, their vehicle and the nature of their involvement to the benefit of the other persons who were involved in and have suffered damage in the accident; or b) wait for a reasonable length of time and leave their own name and address at the scene of the accident if nobody was prepared to perform the identification; immediately facilitate subsequent identification if they have left the scene of the accident legitimately, after giving a plausible excuse or upon expiration of the waiting time (paragraph 6(b)). For this purpose, they must inform at least the persons referred to above (paragraph 6(a)) or a nearby police station that they were involved in the accident and must provide their own address, their present whereabouts as well as the registration number and location of the vehicle that was involved in the accident, which must be kept available for immediate investigation for a reasonable length of time. For minor accidents (no injuries, no suspected criminal offence, no major disagreements between involved parties, ...) you do not have to call and wait for police (you have a right to call them but they might try to discourage you from requesting that they come to the scene). For normal traffic accidents insurance doesn't come and collect evidence at the scene, instead an appraiser will document damage to your car and look at statements and witness reports and other documentation. You can just exchange all necessary information with the other party/ies and then leave with your car (possibly using a towing service). However, OP might refer to the specific case of an accident with a rented car. In that case, the contract with the rental service often mandates that you call police and request an official police documentation and report in case of an accident.
Under U.S. law, when you hire someone and they are injured while doing work for which you hired them, the ordinary tort law regime does not apply. Instead, you are in the worker's compensation regime, under which the employer is strictly liable for the injury. Whether the employee or the employer was at fault in any way (negligent, grossly negligent, reckless, or intentional) is largely irrelevant (except that worker's compensation insurance does not cover the employer's intentional harm to workers which is the employer's responsibility to pay on an uninsured basis). This applies to all injuries on the job, whether or not they are related to the work, and whether or not anyone involved with the employer actually did anything wrong. For example, an employer has strict liability for the injuries of a convenience store clerk sustained by the clerk in an armed robbery of the convenience store where the clerk is working undertaken by felon who escaped from prison hours before due to the carelessness of the prison guards. Usually, that injury is fully insured if the employer has the legally required worker's compensation insurance in place, but the penalty for not having it in place is most commonly that the employer has liability to the full extent, if not greater, than the employer's worker's compensation insurance would have if it was in place. Worker's compensation recoveries are limited to actual economic damages like lost wages and medical expenses, without regard to non-economic harms like pain and suffering and worker's compensation plans also have a very limited death benefit when the worker has no dependents. But these limitations on damages don't always apply when the employer fails to have worker's compensation insurance in place. Worker's compensation liability varies from place to place, but in most states it applies to independent contractors who have not put in place worker's compensation insurance for themselves as well. In your example, Fred has full liability for Barney's injuries. Uriah does not have liability for Barney's injuries due to his good faith belief that he was acting in self-defense or defense of others. But note that Fred's strict liability for Barney's injuries does not preclude a third-party from having liability as well, both to Barney (for damages for which there is not employer liability under the worker's compensation regime such as pain and suffering, and/or in the case of an intentional tort like the armed robbery of the convenience store, punitive damages), and to the employer/worker's compensation insurer for a subrogation claim to recover the amounts paid to Barney as a result of the third-party's negligence or intentional acts.
There is a reasonable chance that the amount that you are borrowing and paying interest on is through a third party, so the dealer can't just waive the interest for the period when they are fixing the car. Legal responses would include canceling the sale, and suing for damages. The problem with suing for damages is that this isn't costing you an extra $15/day (the loan gets paid off at a fixed time, regardless of how much you get to actually drive the car). It would be a considerable stretch to argue that you were deprived of a week's worth of enjoyment for the car because of the wrongful acts of the dealer, and should be compensated. Your attorney would be in a good position to tell you, based on the facts and Texas law, whether that approach would be futile. The legality of the situation primarily depends on what the contract says. It is likely that the contract has clauses that maximally disclaim responsibility to the maximum extent allowed by law. There will be some clause that says something about taking delivery of the car, so you can check whether they have breached the contract on that point: it is possible that there is some escape hatch like "as soon as possible, upon receipt of payment". It seems pretty clear that they concealed a material fact, in order to induce you to buy the car. For example, the manufacturer may have installed a defective veblitzer which had to be replaced, and a reasonable person would not buy a car with a defective veblitzer, thus the veblitzer is a material fact. Or: the veblitzer may have been damaged in a flood. The fact that the car is, by their representation, not safe to drive in its current state, the mind of fact that would push most people into the "no thanks" category. To pursue the fraud angle, you need to be more specific about the defective part in your complaint. The only way to force them to reveal the nature of the missing part is to sue them and compel disclosure of the relevant facts during discovery. Again, your attorney would deal with this. You should bear in mind that if the sale is simply cancelled, you may not be able to recover the loan application or processing fee, and the trade-in will no doubt have been sold, so you can't get the old car back. There are laws against deceptive trade practices which might be applicable, depending on whether they said anything deceptive in their disseminated advertising. Section 17.46 may be applicable, if they patched the car together temporarily with a counterfeit veblitzer.
Is it legal in the US for a company that rents out car parking spaces, to bundle the renting of a parking space to buying insurance for the content of the parked car? Yes. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that I've never see this practice in real life. All things not prohibited are allowed, and there is nothing, per se illegal about bundling services and requiring them to be purchased as a package deal (there may be some licensing issues for insurance sales involved, but those would probably be easily overcome). Sometimes bundling gives rise to an anti-trust violation, but neither the parking lot operation business nor the car insurance business are so consolidated that this would fairly be viewed as some kind of anti-competitive practice.
This is a context where you need to lawyer up. There are two issues, his share of the costs, and his permission to construct in part on his property. You mother has the same rights, so she likewise can refuse to sign off on his scheme (the lawyers negotiate a resolution). Assuming both parties are insured and (to make it more complex) have different insurance companies, the companies limit how much they will contribute for their part of the damage. Normally, you find a contractor who will do it for a given price, let's say $10,000, and the parties split the cost. Both parties have an interest in the choice of contractor because of cost issues, and quality of product and service (though the insurance company cares about the cost). If one of the parties is a contractor, they too can legitimately submit a bid, and then the parties can decide which is the best bid. It is not fraud if a contractor, who is an insured, submits a bid and makes a profit on the job. It would be fraud if that party withheld material facts from an insurance company. In the context of massive disaster insurance claims, the insurance companies may not perform a rigorous investigation (e.g. may not ask for multiple bids). It would then be a material fact that one of the insureds stood to profit from this arrangement, so the insurance companies would likely wish to see evidence that the costs were not unreasonably inflated. If the neighbors bid is in line with industry standard (and the insurance companies know who the contractor is), there is nothing fishy about the arrangement. This assumes that both parties are being cooperative with each other. When that is not the case, lawyers are good at getting cooperation (not letting the other party push their client around).