A Guide to Motorcycle Insurance in South Carolina (SC)
South Carolina has the unenviable reputation of having one of the most litter strewn road systems in the United States, with the American Society for Public Administration rating it as the worst in the country in 2008 for keeping its roads clean and free from litter. And this has meant that South Carolina has a very high fatality rate from debris/litter related accidents according to government statistics. Hence it is even more vital that any motorcyclists who wish to ride in South Carolina be sure to get themselves some comprehensive South Carolina Motorcycle Insurance so that they can be fully protected.
In this article I am going to examine motorcycle insurance in South Carolina and exactly what you need to know to get covered. I am going to look at the states minimum requirements as well as some other optional cover that you can consider.
What are the minimum requirements for South Carolina Motorcycle Insurance?
The mandatory minimum requirements that you must have to ride your motorcycle in South Carolina are:
$25,000 – Bodily injury liability for one person
$50,000 – Bodily injury liability for one accident
$25,000 – Property Damage Liability Cover
These are often referred to as 25/50/25 cover.
Are the South Carolina Motorcycle Insurance minimums adequate?
The nature of insurance is that you can never have enough, but obviously you have to know where to draw the line between being safe (but not paying too much) and not having enough cover (being too cheap!). This is a balancing act, and like most other states South Carolina is trying to address the issue by providing some very basic minimums so that most people have no excuse for not getting insured, but by the same token offers enough cover for most minor accidents.
Where the minimum South Carolina Motorcycle Insurance rates fall short is for more serious accidents, because medical expenses, especially for extended stays in hospital, can cost tens of thousands of dollars (the average was $14,427 in 2010) and so if there are several people involved in an accident (such as a highway pile-up for example), then it is easy to see how you could very quickly exceed the statutory minimums.
Similarly with the property damage portion of the cover if it was a minor incident, then the state minimums would probably cover it, but for serious accidents where multiple cars were written-off then the damages from any accident could very quickly escalate beyond that of the basic cover.
What you need to realise though is that you do have choices in the South Carolina Motorcycle Insurance that you choose to buy, and so you can increase these basic minimums to more realistic levels if you choose to do so.
With regard to your policy there are also added extras that you can get such as cover for Uninsured Drivers. This would mean that if you had an incident with a driver who was uninsured that your insurance company would still pay out regardless. This is a really big deal, because potentially having an accident with another driver who doesn’t have any insurance can cause all kinds of financial and legal problems; and often times it is accidents of this nature, without insurance, that often end up in the courts as you are forced to sue the other party to get recompense for your losses.
If you take out Uninsured Driver cover as an add-on to your policy then those types of problem go away, and you can instead focus on getting better after an accident, because your own insurance company will be footing the medical bills.
The other big types of add-on are to get Comprehensive South Carolina Motorcycle Insurance that offers fuller coverage through the addition of theft cover, cover for vandalism and storm and fire damage.
Over 80,000 motorcycles get stolen every year in the United States and yet only about a fifth of them are ever recovered. So if your bike is stolen it would be comforting to know that you would be able to afford to replace it.
Getting good motorcycle insurance in South Carolina is not something that you should leave to chance, because the reality is that being properly protected against unexpected accidents is important as they are quite common on the roads of South Carolina.
The state offers regulatory advice about the minimums for South Carolina Motorcycle Insurance on the South Carolina Insurance Departments website - https://doi.sc.gov - but realistically looking in the real world as to what policies actually cost, and the cover they provide is probably a better guide.
So start off by getting some South Carolina Motorcycle Insurance Quotes and see exactly what you will have to pay for the different types and amounts of cover.