You MUST read this if you love your car

If you love your car, you will do everything you can to protect it from harm. Here’s why taking car insurance is the first step in this direction.

A car in a battered condition reveals its owner’s cavalier attitude. We often see dusty cars parked on the roads, with their tyres in urgent need of air and the side mirrors hanging off their moorings. Contrast this with a shiny, freshly-washed car that gleams in the sunlight – you glance at it and think, ‘This owner really loves his car!’

If you belong to the second category of car owners, who shine and buff up their cars and do everything to prevent them from being damaged, you must read on.

Your car is your pride, and you take great pains to keep it in top notch condition. You realise early on that keeping your car in good condition results in the vehicle giving you good service – a well-tuned car has great reflexes, is likely to stall less and is less prone to frequent repairs.

But nothing prolongs your car’s longevity like car insurance. Taking a good car insurance policy helps protect the car in many ways. For one thing, it protects the car against damages arising out of accidents. Damage to the car results in costly repairs, right from replacing vehicle parts to the final painting and denting jobs. Just one car repair job can set the owner back by thousands of rupees. But instead of spending the money from one’s own pocket, one can simply have the motor insurance plan pay for it.

Car insurance providers have tie-ups with reputed service centres so that annual servicing, maintenance and repairs may be done at no cost to the policy holder, and using standard parameters. Also, this ensures less hassle by way of less paperwork and faster processing of claims. Most tie-in centres also conduct free annual maintenance for the car for a specified period of time.

But car insurance is extremely useful in another key area: Third Party Liability (TPL). Say your car is in an accident that is inadvertently caused by you, it can result in damages and injuries to another vehicle. In this case, you must bear the costs of damages to the other car as well as hospitalisation for the car’s driver and its occupants, if required. Hence, if you have taken comprehensive coverage when taking vehicle insurance, the TPL component of the policy safeguards you against the liability and pays for the damages caused.

Taking car insurance is mandatory in India. Instead of viewing it as an added expense, it is important to view it through the prism of safety and financial security. So while most people who drive a car take the bare minimum insurance necessary, a car lover like you must take a plan that factors in every eventuality.