The day when I got a brutal life-lesson about car insurance

There are a lot of bad things that can happen to a person in their life that will end up teaching them a harsh life lesson and one of my first really big ones was when I was 16 years old and had just purchased a "new" car. The car was new to me, but it definitely wasn't new. I paid about $3000 for it and this was a big portion of my summertime landscaping savings.

By the advisement of my father, I got only liability insurance on it and what that means is that if I am in an accident, my insurance will pay ONLY for anything that I hit, I would not insure my own ride.

This is fine for the most part, but I learned a valuable and painful life lesson a mere 2 days after purchasing the car. This would end up being a massive financial and insurance lesson to me, as painful as it was at the time.

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There was absolutely nothing special about my 1986 Honda Civic hatchback other than the fact that most of my friends didn't even have cars because they were lazy do-nothings who didn't have a job. For a few days I was all the envy of my friends at my new ride that I had bought with my own money, in cash, at the end of the summer. School had just started and I was flaunting my new ride complete with really long stick shift in the center console.

Previously to this car I had shared a Ford Escort with a sibling and that thing was truly a piece of junk.

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The thing I would find out about this car later was that it was so efficient because it was extremely lightweight. The tires were also very narrow and this resulted in me hydroplaning on a highway while I was driving some friends to a shopping mall, as was something we did for fun back in the day.

It was raining and by the time I saw the Ford LTD, which is basically a road tank, stopped in the road ahead of me I slammed on the brakes and never stood a chance.

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This is an exaggeration, because I would have died if this was my actual crash but I know that after the impact I went out to inspect the damage on the front of my vehicle and my license plate was looking up at me and the front of the car was completely totaled. The Ford LTD didn't look like anything had even hit it. That was back in the days when cars were starting to reduce their bumpers for aesthetic reasons but the LTD had something on it that would have impressed the wasteland warriors of Mad Max.

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The metal and rubber bumper on an LTD was meant to handle impact. This is the same car that police used all over the United States at the time and it was meant to be in a rough and tumble situation. The Civic on the other hand, was meant to be fuel efficient... and it was! Right up to the point where you rear-end a road yacht like a Ford LTD.

We were actually quite lucky to not get injured but that was not what was going through my head at the time. I was sitting there thinking about all the hours that I had put in to purchase this thing and how it was definitely going to be a total loss.

The police issued me a ticket on site and I think they were stereotyping me as a young and irresponsible youth because the ticket was for "reckless driving" which was not the case. It was just a rather inexperience kid driving a car that he was unfamiliar with. Hydroplaning was not something I had ever experienced before at that point in my life.

The insurance paid for the damage to the LTD but as expected, it didn't pay for any of my own car. To this day that remains the most expensive 2 days of my life and it didn't end there. Because my insurance had to pay out so rapidly for my policy, I was now in a category of what must have been considered "high risk" because when I did finally get another car the following year, my policy price had more than doubled.

The reckless driving charge was dismissed in court and I don't remember what the charge ended up being but it was something minor.

I went from feeling so proud of myself for working all summer for this new ride to being completely devastated over a complete loss on the ride. There was no repairing this thing as the crash warped some of the engine as well. We sold the car for scrap and that ended up netting me about $200.

That's a huge blow for a 16-year old kid in the early 90's.

It did teach me a couple of things though and that was to be a lot more cautious with a new car that you don't know much about especially in inclement weather. The 2nd thing was that insurance companies always come out on top and they don't give a damn about you. If you ever make a claim on an insurance policy they are going to make that money up by raising your policy rate.

I'm happy to say that I have only ever had one other accident since that day 30+ years ago and it was the other guy's fault. It took many years of me having zero claims for my policy rates to go back down and I loathe insurance companies to this day because of it.