What Three Weeks of Maryland Auto Insurance Policy Reviews Revealed About Your Coverage
After three weeks of reviewing auto insurance policies submitted by Maryland drivers, Attorney Joebeth Bowers of Bowers Law returned to the Monday Morning Lawyer podcast with a clear picture of what people are getting right and what is quietly working against them. The patterns he found in real policies are worth understanding whether or not you ever send him a declarations page to review.
What Attorney Bowers Found Reviewing Real Maryland Auto Insurance Policies
The good news is that some drivers are genuinely well covered. Attorney Bowers described reviewing a policy with $500,000 in liability coverage, $500,000 in stacking underinsured motorist coverage, and the enhanced UIM option, calling it one of the strongest policies he had seen from someone who had not previously worked with his office. Even that policy had room for improvement. The more common picture was policies with strong liability numbers but significant gaps in other areas that cost relatively little to fix.
The starting point Attorney Bowers recommends for anyone who owns a home is $250,000 per person and $500,000 per accident in both liability and uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage. The reasoning is grounded in a specific scenario. If you are injured in an accident and the at fault driver has no insurance at all, your own policy becomes the only source of money available to pay your claim. The question to ask is whether the maximum limit on that policy is enough to cover your mortgage for a year if you cannot work, or enough to pay off whatever remains on that mortgage. Attorney Bowers noted that bumping from $250,000 to $500,000 or even to a million dollars in coverage is often far less expensive than most drivers would expect.
Why Hidden PIP Waivers Are One of the Most Costly Problems on Maryland Auto Policies
The issue that came up most often across the policies Attorney Bowers reviewed was the PIP waiver. Personal injury protection coverage pays your medical bills and lost wages if you are injured in an accident, and it is a benefit that runs entirely in your favor. It does not pay the other driver. It does not need to be paid back if you receive a third party settlement in Maryland, unlike health insurance which is typically subject to reimbursement. Despite all of that, PIP coverage is routinely stripped out of policies, particularly when drivers purchase coverage online or through an 800 number without speaking to an agent.
Insurance companies use price as their primary competitive tool, and removing PIP is one of the fastest ways to shave dollars off a quoted premium without making it obvious. On Progressive policies, Attorney Bowers has seen PIP waivers appear under labels like guest PIP, passenger PIP, or guest medical, language that looks at a glance like coverage is in place when it is not. On Geico policies in Maryland, the waiver often appears as Option A, a label that tells the average policyholder nothing about what they have given up. Attorney Bowers also noted that his office can help navigate the process of undoing a PIP waiver properly, because insurance companies have been known to locate old waiver documents during claims handling and use them to deny benefits even after a policyholder has attempted to fix the issue.
Why Your Uninsured Motorist Coverage Limit Needs to Match Your Liability Coverage in Maryland
A pattern Attorney Bowers flagged across multiple policies was uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage set at a lower limit than the liability coverage on the same policy. If you are asking what amount of money would feel adequate in a worst case accident scenario, that number needs to be reflected in both your liability limits and your UM and UIM limits. Carrying $500,000 in liability but only $100,000 in uninsured motorist coverage means the protection you have built for yourself falls well short of the standard you set for what your policy should pay. Insurance companies competing on price will not flag this imbalance. They will simply offer the lower number and collect the lower premium.
The Math Behind Increasing Your Maryland PIP Coverage to the Maximum Limit
Attorney Bowers walked through a specific example from a recent review that illustrated how dramatically the math favors increasing PIP coverage. The policyholder had $2,500 in personal injury protection. The cost to raise that to $10,000, the maximum PIP coverage available in Maryland, was $31 per year, which works out to less than three dollars a month.
Attorney Bowers then ran the break-even calculation. Reaching the point where the insurance company would have paid out more than the additional premiums collected would take 241 years of paying the extra $31 annually. The policyholder confirmed the number with their agent and made the change. Attorney Bowers also walked through what a relatively minor accident actually costs. An ambulance ride and a few months of physical therapy, without any major diagnostics, can easily reach ten thousand dollars or more in medical bills on its own. The coverage does not require a catastrophic accident to become necessary.
"*" indicates required fields