Accidents happen. And when you really, really love your car, those accidents can take away the pleasure of driving. The beauty of the open road with your car on it is that you have the ultimate power. You can go where you want and do whatever it is that you want to do. You’re really limited only by your ability to stay seated and your ability to put gas in the tank. Otherwise, the road is yours — as much as you want.

So what does that have to do with car insurance? After all, most people get away with the state minimums, so why should you have to worry about anything else? The truth is that drivers get liability insurance to save money, only to find that they could be out for a lot more money than they might realize. Now is the time to realize that you need to be able to protect your vehicle from loss and damages, and that means raising your insurance coverage.

Yet full coverage can be a lot more expensive than people realize. Even though there’s not a standard definition for full coverage, drivers realize that it includes protection for their car as well. This means that if you are hurt in an accident or your car was damaged by an act of nature, you can get the protection that you need to move on with your life.

Rental car coverage is also something important that you will definitely want to have if you’re going to ensure that you always have transportation. See, a lot of people expect that when their car has been in a bad accident they are going to get their car back the same day or even the next day. Yet it doesn’t often work that way — you’re going to need to give the mechanic’s shop enough time to tend to you. If you don’t, you’re never going to be able to get anything else done.

That’s a hard pill to swallow, especially in light of the facts — you don’t have a car, and you need one. That’s where the rental coverage comes in handy so much. In addition, you can’t forget about towing — you need to be able to have your car towed and brought to a qualified towing service. That’s the only way that you’re really going to be able to get anything else done. Otherwise you’ll have to pay out of pocket for the tow truck. Some mechanic’s shops have gotten smart and offered this service as a perk to their customers, but these are still few and far between.

It’s important to make sure that you’re getting enough coverage in terms of the services that you want. Comprehensive coverage can work for you in a pinch, and collision is nice when you have a car where the repairs to the car are pretty expensive.

As always, you need to be shopping around. The last thing that you want to do is just jump at the first policy that says hello — look around. It really will not hurt you in the slightest to look around and see what’s out there. You also want to make sure that you ask the right questions if you have them. You need to make sure that you’re getting immediate coverage on the whole policy, and not just the state minimums.

Yes, it’s going to cost you more, but think about the costs to your world that would occur if you didn’t have the policy in place. You’ll find that if you crunch the numbers, it’s a lot more expensive to not have the insurance that you need rather than assume that you can skip it and be just fine. The funny thing about accidents is that we really don’t know when they’re going to happen. That’s why it’s so critical to make sure that you have everything in order — start today!