What Happens to Your Car Insurance When You Travel?

The best thing about living in the United States (one of them, anyway) is the fact that you’re only a hop, skip and a jump away from both the Canadian border and the Mexican border. Freedom is yours! Anytime you want, all you have to do is hop in your car and take off and you can be in the wild unknown in a matter of days. There’s one quick catch, however. You’re not going to be able to take your car insurance with you.

Most people don’t think about checking on their car insurance when they’re loading up their car and getting ready to hit the road. They’re too busy thinking about the pile of junk in their trunk or their hotel reservations once they actually get where they’re going. Because of that, they manage to completely miss the fact that unless they make the right preparations they’re going to be uninsured the minute they cross the border.

What you have to understand is that Canadians, South Americans, Europeans and Mexicans like Americans. They really do. Tourism is at the heart of the long term stability of many countries, so it doesn’t do to bite off their nose to spite their face! That doesn’t mean they’re going to leave anything up to chance, however. Filing car insurance claims in another country is a hassle during the best of times, and let’s face it-bureaucracy being what it is, we’re not living in the best of times!

Since currency differences aren’t helping the situation any, most countries (and we’re not just talking about Mexico and Canada here) are going to make you buy an insurance policy from a local provider before you can legally go cruising on their local highways. That protects both of you; they know that you’ve got insurance they can count on to pay the bills when the time comes and you know you’re going to have to spend your entire vacation fund fixing up a fender bender or two. It’s a win-win situation.

Car insurance policies are available for foreign drivers on both a long term and short term basis. If you’re taking a year’s sabbatical from work (and really, who could blame you!) and planning to spend some time traveling abroad you’re going to be able to pick up a regular policy just like the locals. On the other hand, if you’re like most people and you had to get down on your knees and beg for a week off to actually enjoy your vacation instead of spending it chained to a pager, “just in case,” you’re probably going to find that a short term vacation policy suits you just fine.

Whatever you do, don’t leave your car insurance off the list altogether. The last place you want to end up is rotting in a cell in Tijuana because you didn’t bother to check on your insurance before you hit the highways. That’s more trouble than you can afford.