Car Insurance

You’re late for work. You barrel through an intersection, broad- siding a car. The driver is seriously injured. He spends a month in the hospital and two years in rehabilitation. He loses two years of work.

You were at fault, so you will pay.

How much you’ll pay depends on whom you hit.

If the driver is a teacher, you could owe $460,000 for medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. If a doctor, it could be $620,000. A baseball player? Perhaps $22 million.

Got cash? Probably not.

Got insurance? Yup, but probably not enough.

Got big financial troubles? You bet.

Jack Hungelmann uses that accident scenario in his book, “Insurance for Dummies,” to point out that most drivers are “ridiculously” underinsured.

But is anybody listening? For most people, auto insurance is a big yawn. Mention it at a party and people will flee to the hors d’oeuvres table.

But maybe they should stick around. Carmen Ellingson, assistant education director of the Minnesota Society of Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriters, said many people don’t find out that their policies are inadequate until they’re in a serious accident.

Nancy Eustis considers herself a lucky exception.

Twenty years ago, a woman ran a stop sign in Minneapolis and broad- sided Eustis’ car. Eustis’ neck was broken, her spinal cord severed. She was in the hospital for three months, and in outpatient therapy for six months after that. One year after the crash, she went back to work at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, where she teaches social policy.

Although she’s now a quadriplegic, Eustis considers herself lucky because her husband, an attorney specializing in personal injury and products liability, had reviewed their auto insurance coverage six months before the crash and had increased their uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage to $500,000 each.

“I also was working, so I had health insurance,” Eustis said. “But that car insurance has really made all the difference.” With it, she created an annuity “that pays for a lot of the things that health insurance doesn’t pay for,” including up to three hours of home health care every day, a converted van with hand controls and wheelchair lift, and ramps and a special shower in her home.

Hungelmann, a former claims adjuster, has been an agent and a consultant in the insurance business for 32 years. He talked about the mistakes that people, unlike the Eustises, make when they buy auto insurance: