Full Coverage Car Insurance: The Term That Does Not Exist (2026)

Full transcript

The term does not exist

There is no such thing as a full coverage car insurance policy. That is not our opinion. That is the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the standard-setting body for state insurance regulators, telling shoppers in writing that policies are made up of different types of coverages.

What people actually mean

What survives the phrase is a bundle of three separate coverages. Liability pays other people. Collision pays to repair your car after a crash. Comprehensive pays when it is stolen, or burned, or flooded, or hailed on. Each one is priced separately.

The price of the bundle

Here is the number nobody quotes. The NAIC measures the average cost of a policy carrying all three coverages. Countrywide in twenty twenty-three, that was one thousand four hundred thirty-eight dollars and forty-six cents.

What drivers actually spend

Against that, the average insured driver spent one thousand two hundred eighty-one dollars and sixty cents. The gap is not a discount. It is the footprint of every driver who declined the physical damage coverages.

Nobody legally requires it

State laws do not require you to buy physical damage coverage for your car. Your lender does, at least until the loan is paid off. The day it is, collision and comprehensive become a choice you are making. Most people never revisit it.

Three in four carry it

Of two hundred thirty-four million insured vehicles countrywide, about seventy-six percent carry collision and eighty percent carry comprehensive. So roughly a quarter of insured cars on the road carry no collision coverage at all.

The ceiling on what it pays

Both coverages pay actual cash value, which the Texas Department of Insurance defines as the cost to replace your car minus depreciation. On a ten-year-old car that is the value of a ten-year-old car. Then your deductible comes out of it.

The test that settles it

So run the arithmetic instead of the feeling. Take what your car would sell for today, subtract your deductible, and compare it with about seven hundred dollars a year for the pair. When a year of premium approaches the biggest cheque the coverage could ever write, you are pre-paying your own claim. The full breakdown is on Dreamy Leads dot com.