Home > California Death Records > If you had a clean DL for over 15 yrs and had 1 bad accident w no injury/death, what happens to DL & insurance

If you had a clean DL for over 15 yrs and had 1 bad accident w no injury/death, what happens to DL & insurance

February 7th, 2010 Leave a comment Go to comments

Would appreciate response in terms of insurance (over 9 months paid insurance still left) and the car being beyond recovery, may result in me going for a new car as well as my DL with no negative record ever in California state. The accident was just an accident – no DUI, no neglect on any person’s part!
I add that I have not been cited for the accident and also, i have not had any mishap or problem with my DL (absolutely clean) in any of the other states in US or overseas with my current licence or with my previous licenses in NJ state and in Cananda

I’m an insurance guy myself and that’s a common question. First of all, the status of your DL will depend on if you were cited for anything. You didn’t say whether you were or not, so I’ll assume you weren’t. Your DL will be unaffected. Your insurance rates will increase. That’s standard practise. But you won’t have any immediate out of pocket insurance expenses (since your deductible will be taken from your total loss check), so you won’t see an increase in rates until you renew your policy in 9 months.

  1. steven_p_ohio
    February 7th, 2010 at 18:25 | #1

    I’m an insurance guy myself and that’s a common question. First of all, the status of your DL will depend on if you were cited for anything. You didn’t say whether you were or not, so I’ll assume you weren’t. Your DL will be unaffected. Your insurance rates will increase. That’s standard practise. But you won’t have any immediate out of pocket insurance expenses (since your deductible will be taken from your total loss check), so you won’t see an increase in rates until you renew your policy in 9 months.
    References :

  2. Jeff K
    February 7th, 2010 at 19:09 | #2

    There are a multitude of factors. What is your credit rating? (yes, this is used to determine insurance). If you’ve had 0 tickets in the last 3 to 5 years, and only 1 accident, and it’s not your fault, you should be ok..most insurance companies will eat that. If your record has blemishes on it from other states and the insurance company finds out, you may be in trouble, and I say this based on your comment "with no negative record ever in California state". If you weren’t cited for anything in the crash of your car, you should be fine, both DL and insurance wise. The insurance company will inspect the car, consider it totalled if the value of the car is less than what it would cost to fix it, hand you a check, take your car, and sell it.
    References :

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