Comprehensive Coverage

Comprehensive coverage is the physical damage section of an automobile policy that pays for loss to the insured vehicle from causes other than collision. Insurance regulators describe it in consumer material as covering damage to a car "that's not caused by a collision (wreck or crash), like theft, hail, windstorm, flood, fire, or impact by an animal". The definition is negative by construction: rather than enumerating covered events, the coverage takes whatever damages a vehicle and is not an impact or an overturn. That is also why the same coverage carries three names. Insurance policy forms commonly title it "Other Than Collision", which states the mechanism plainly. South Carolina's insurance code names the class "automobile comprehensive physical damage" when it lists the kinds of automobile physical damage insurance that make up automobile insurance (S.C. Code section 38-77-30(1)). And ordinary usage shortens all of it to "comprehensive". None of the three is wrong; they are the market's word, the policy's word, and one state's statutory word for the same coverage part.

A precision worth keeping is that the statutes reached in drafting this page regulate comprehensive coverage by name without defining it. South Carolina's chapter on automobile insurance names it in its definition of "automobile insurance", authorizes insurers to offer it, and legislates a deductible exception for it, but it does not say what the coverage covers. Florida's windshield statute is titled "Comprehensive coverage; deductible not to apply to motor vehicle glass" and likewise assumes the meaning rather than supplying it. So the working definition is a policy-form definition rather than a statutory one, and the safest way to state it is the way the policy forms do: loss other than collision loss.

The "combined additional coverage" point is easy to get wrong because the two phrases appear side by side. South Carolina section 38-77-280(A) permits an insurer to "make collision coverage and either comprehensive or fire, theft, and combined additional coverage available" to an applicant who requests it. The word "either" is doing real work: comprehensive is one option, and fire, theft and combined additional coverage together are the alternative. Combined additional coverage is therefore part of a narrower named package, not another word for comprehensive, and a policy written on the second basis covers less than one written on the first.

Glass is the exception to the deductible, and the two statutes that create it are not the same rule. Florida section 627.7288 provides that the deductible provisions of any motor vehicle policy issued in the state "providing comprehensive coverage or combined additional coverage shall not be applicable to damage to the windshield of any motor vehicle covered under such policy", which is a windshield rule attached to those two coverages. South Carolina section 38-77-280(B) is broader on both axes: "Any automobile physical damage insurance coverage deductible or policy deductible does not apply to automobile safety glass", which reaches all safety glass and is not limited to comprehensive. A driver in one of those states pays no deductible on the covered glass claim. A driver elsewhere should assume the ordinary deductible applies unless the policy says otherwise, since these are two states' statutes and not a national rule.

What the coverage pays once it responds is a separate question from whether it responds. Physical damage claims on a vehicle are ordinarily settled on the vehicle's depreciated value rather than the cost of a new one, so a stolen or flooded car produces a payment measured by what the car was worth, less the deductible, and not by what a replacement now costs. The published material on auto insurance covers which coverage responds to which event, and the material on actual cash value covers how the payment is measured.

Comprehensive sits on the declarations page as its own coverage with its own limit and its own deductible, usually beside collision and often at a different deductible amount. After a covered loss the insurer values the damage or the vehicle, subtracts the deductible, and pays the balance. There is no fault question to resolve, because nobody is being blamed for hail. There is usually no third party to pursue either, which is why the deductible refund mechanic that exists on a not-at-fault collision claim has no counterpart here.

A hypothetical example of the glass carve-out, set in Florida. A storm does $2,600 of damage to the body of Ines's car and separately cracks the windshield, which costs $850 to replace. Her comprehensive deductible is $500. Applying the deductible to the bodywork gives $2,600 minus $500, or $2,100. The windshield is paid in full at $850 because the statute disapplies the deductible to windshield damage. The insurer therefore pays $2,950 against a $3,450 loss, and Ines is out $500. The same loss in a state with no such statute would put the deductible against the combined claim instead, and the policy's own language would decide whether the glass was treated separately at all.

The decision about whether to keep the coverage is the same one that applies to collision, and it is about the specific vehicle rather than a rule of thumb. Two things are particular to comprehensive. It is normally the cheaper of the two physical damage coverages, so dropping it saves less than dropping collision. And it is the coverage that responds to the losses a careful driver cannot influence at all, which is the category people most often discover they dropped.

Pros

• It covers the losses a driver's own skill cannot prevent, including theft, fire, flood, falling objects and animal strikes.
• It is usually the less expensive of the two physical damage coverages.
• In some states the deductible does not apply to glass at all, which makes the commonest small claim free to file.
• No fault determination is needed, so claims tend to settle without the delay a liability dispute causes.

Cons

• Because it is defined by exclusion, the boundary with collision is where most disputes about which coverage applies arise.
• It pays the vehicle's depreciated value on a total loss, which on a newer car can fall well short of the loan balance.
• The deductible applies per occurrence, so an unlucky year costs more than the figure suggests.
• "Comprehensive" sounds like complete coverage and is not: it says nothing about liability limits and does nothing for injuries.
• A policy written as fire, theft and combined additional coverage rather than comprehensive covers less, and the two can look similar on a quote.