We write insurance for any personal vehicles in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Texas and we represent a number of different insurance companies in each state.

Because these types of vehicles aren’t used as often, there is no law forcing you to carry insurance, or the value of some vehicles are relatively low, insuring them can be an afterthought.

Even though insuring your personal leisure type vehicles is fairly simple and inexpensive, we constantly see mistakes that are made by either agents or consumers.

While it is true that motorcycles, ATVs, Snowmobiles, and similar vehicles usually cannot do a lot of damage to others, there are plenty of reasons to carry insurance. Ask yourself if the following could be a concern:

• If I have a passenger that gets injured in an accident, can my insurance protect me and my passenger?
• Is it worth it to insure the vehicle against theft and physical damage?
• If I get injured, am I well covered through my health insurance? Click here to help you decide. (link to FAQ-PIP)
• What are the risks of letting someone else ride my vehicles?

You just received a quote for your used motorcycle that cost you $2,000. You decide to self-insure the damage to the motorcycle hence leaving off comprehensive and collision coverage. You see a premium of $60 for liability for the year and are shocked to see an insured motorist premium of $240. Five dollars per month sounds a lot better and you don’t think it’s worth spending an extra $15 per month to insure the damages to your motorcycle. What a lot of motorcyclists don’t realize is that their biggest risk is falling victim to a phantom driver, meaning that someone, for example, changed into their lane without seeing them and to avoid an accident, the motorcyclists swerves out of the way and loses control of the bike and ends up sustaining life-threatening injuries. There is a reason why insurance companies charge so much for uninsured motorist coverage.

According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in 2006, 13.10 cars out of 100,000 ended up in fatal crashes. The rate for motorcycles is 72.34 per 100,000 registered motorcycles… Per vehicle mile traveled, motorcyclists’ risk of a fatal crash is 35 times greater than a passenger car.

A lot of recreational vehicles, especially motorcycles, have custom parts added by dealerships and other third parties. Your standard insurance policy may only cover a small amount or nothing at all for customization unless you specifically add it.