Insurance for DE

[Phokaioglaukos]

Brian, you might well be right. The info I copied from Lou's message is from an old message I saved. He is a good guy, though, and it might be wortg a call. He ABSOLUTELY understands the DE insurance game. Whether he can help now or not I really do not know, though.

[Phokaioglaukos]

Checked a rumor with my agent last week and heard that effective November 15 State Farm policies will exclude any on-track activities in addition to the no racing exclusion that has been there for a while. My policies renew on November 10, so this will affect me starting May 15, but I have a bunch to consider now.

[Tony356993]

Chris,

 

Keep us posted. I'm good until about May 2007 also.

[Phokaioglaukos]

I'm learning lots more about this, and have talked to Tom Bobbit, the Laurel DE insurance folks, the Georgia insurance investigator and some people in the industry that a client introduced me to. When I get to the end of the road, I will post here, but you are welcome to ask me about it at any meeting/DE.

At present, there is no good answer. Unless that changes, I'll be self-insured while on the track, so keep your distance!

[pmajka]

I have heard a few positive and some negative things about laurel DE....


i went with them anyway...


better something than nothing.

Hope no one has to excercise the insurance.

Oh, my car is not a classic and is my daily driver, so.....yeah.

[Brian Minkin]

Phokaioglaukos wrote:

Checked a rumor with my agent last week and heard that effective November 15 State Farm policies will exclude any on-track activities in addition to the no racing exclusion that has been there for a while. My policies renew on November 10, so this will affect me starting May 15, but I have a bunch to consider now.

I just recieved my policy renewal for State Farm in the mail today. The following is their exclusion included with this renewal.

"The exclusion regarding racing and speed contests has been changed to state that there is no coverage while a vehicle is:

a. off public roads and being prepared for, used in practice for , or operated in any racing, speed, hill-climbing, jumping, or similar contest; or

b. on a track designed primarily for racing or high-speed driving"

Effective date of this policy is 11/27/06 so this is consistant with what Chris was told.

[IMQKRNU]

I attempted to process a claim for a DE accident through State Farm years ago.  While they did not pay the claim for many reasons, they did teach me a little bit about insurance. 

1) Autocross is considered a competitive event in the eyes of your insurer.  Therefore, your participation in DE can be construed to be training for your competitive autocross career.  State Farm hung their hat on the fact that they had a photograph of me taken at a PCA autocross in the car insured with them.  Insurance companies will do more than a little research to avoid writing a $56k check.

2) Even though they denied the claim, they asked if I still owed money on the car.  Apparently, they owe a fiduciary responsibility to the lienholder on your car, even if you were irresponsible and they denied the collision portion of the claim.  They said they would pay off my loan, and MAY come after me for reimbursement since they paid out on a claim that was outside of my policy guidelines. 

This should make you think.  Going forward, maybe the answer is to maintain a car loan on your car at all times, so the insurance company has to pay them if you wreck on the track.  I'd rather fight the insurance company in court as a defendant than as a plaintiff.  

In my case, I rescinded the claim to avoid being cancelled.  Yep, even though they were refusing the claim, they still intended to cancel my coverage, stating that they had learned things about my use of my automobiles that made me a bad risk.   When the replacement for my insured Porsche was a Mercedes S500, they believed that I had learned my lesson and would not be attending any further DE training events in their car.