In Maryland you must carry liability insurance, uninsured motorist (UM) insurance and you must carry personal injury protection (PIP). Depending on the value of your vehicle and depending on whether or not your vehicle is being financed, you could be required to carry additional insurance and you may be required to carry more than the state’s minimum requirements.
The good news is you are not required to get your insurance from any one particular insurance provider – in other words, you do not have to get insurance from the insurer that is recommended by the institution which is financing your vehicle. This means you are free to go online and get affordable automobile insurance.
But before we do that let’s look at a couple of ways to keep your insurance rates low regardless of which insurance carrier you decided to sign up with.
You have control over how you drive. If you drive safely and obey the laws you can go a long way toward keeping your rates under control. If you speed and get a speeding ticket your automobile insurance premiums will go sky-high. Similarly, if you are convicted of drunken driving or of driving under the influence you can count on considerably higher insurance rates for several years to come. Don’t speed and never drive impaired.
Young drivers are in a special risk category, forcing them to pay a higher premium for their insurance. If you are able to remain as part of your parent’s policy that should help keep your rates somewhat lower than if you are on your own. But regardless of whether you are still on your parent’s policy or if you are out on your own, staying in school and maintaining a “B” grade point over can earn you a Good Student Discount and help reduce your monthly premiums by approximately 5%.
Older drivers, those 55 and older, can sometimes qualify for a reduction in their monthly premiums by as much as 10% if they take and successfully pass a remedial driver’s course. Talk to your insurance agent to see whether or not your insurer offers such a program.
If your car is older, or if it has very little value, then you should consider dropping any collision or comprehensive coverage that you might have. Dropping both collision and comprehensive will reduce your premiums and make your automobile insurance more affordable. Remember, however, that once you drop comprehensive and collision your car will no longer be repaired should you have a claim. Depending on the age and condition of your car it is possible that your insurance company would not have repaired your car even had you continued paying for collision and comprehensive coverage.
The last thing you can do is to increase the deductible on your policy. When you increase your deductible you are increasing the amount that you will have to pay out of your own pocket should you be involved in a claim. Because you are paying more and your insurance company is paying less, your monthly premiums will be lower the larger your deductible.
Now that you have constructed an affordable automobile insurance policy that you can live with it’s time for you get online and start comparing the cost of your policy at different insurance companies. Unfortunately, in order to really cover every insurance company you will need to fill out the form on at least 2 and preferably 3 different comparison websites.
It’s a lot of work to make comparisons at multiple websites, but the end result will be that you will know with certainty that you have gotten the most affordable automobile insurance that is available to you in the state of Maryland.
