When you get in an accident that you weren’t at fault for, most people’s initial reaction is “why should I have to pay for anything?” Which admittedly is a very good point. But it is almost always more advantageous to go through your own policy if you have collision coverage.

Every motorist in California is required to have liability insurance. However, the minimum amount of insurance that is legally allowed* is $15,000 per person for bodily injury, $30,000 per occurrence for bodily injury, and $5,000 for property damage. What this means that when an incident happens, the most the insurance company will pay in those situations is $15,000 for injuries to any one person, and $30,000 total for injuries for the entire incident.

Taking the most generous view of how insurance companies operate, they receive premium payments from their insureds, and therefore they should take their insureds side in any dispute. How this plays out in practice is that insurance companies will use any excuse to deny responsibility. So if their insured says “the accident wasn’t my fault” they will take that as the 100% truth even if the facts make it clear that is not true or even when there are witnesses who say their insured is at fault.

Generally, insurance companies will not accept liability for an accident until they have had a chance to talk with their insured. Sometimes, their insured is not very cooperative. If the at fault party does not have collision coverage to repair their vehicle, they have no personal incentive to contact their insured company timely. They might be hoping that if they ignore the issue it will go away. Even in a best case scenario where you will eventually have a police report placing the other driver as having been involved in the incident and at fault, it will take at minimum a month to obtain that report.