Rental Car Accident with Unauthorized Driver and Uninsured Motorist

[jellies]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?
Person who rented car: WA
Person who drove the car: CA
Car accident location/ car rental location: CA

I rented a car from Dollar while in CA, because I was running late to the airport, my friend who had a later flight said she could take the car back to the car rental place. On the way back, a car rear-ended our rental car that our friend (unauthorized driver - not on the rental car agreement) was driving.

The other motorist was uninsured and unidentifiable (he did not have a driver's license or any other form of identification on him). When the police arrived, they were unable to identify him based on information given (basically, the guy seemed super shady and was probably lying about something.)

My friend has car insurance, I have car insurance, and I purchased travel insurance from Aon (though, probably invalid because of the unauthorized driver thing.)

How could we go about filing claims?

 

[HighwayMan]

I fail to see how travel insurance comes into play here.

How much damage was there to the rental car? It's possible that you will be paying for it.

 

[adjusterjack]

How would we go about filing claims?

Uh, you call up your respective insurance companies and say "I want to file a claim."

Unfortunately, there may not be any coverage on either of your policies.

The standard collision coverage provision covers non-owned autos only while used as a temporary substitute for your covered auto which is out of normal use because of its: breakdown, repair, servicing, loss, or destruction.

Read your policy to see if your policy says anything different or in case you happen to have purchased some sort of optional coverage.

Report to both insurance companies anyway, and get an official response as to coverage.

Also check your credit card to see if you have collision coverage for rental vehicles. Could be one of the additional features of your credit card account if you paid by credit card although I don't know how an unauthorized driver will affect that.

Bottom line, you are likely to have to pay for the damage out of your own pocket plus the value of any downtime of the vehicle while it's being repaired.

You do, of course, have the right to sue the at fault driver for anything his negligence costs you. Good luck with that.

 

[jellies]

Thanks for the information, guys! I wasn't sure if any of our policies would cover it due to the "unauthorized" user issue, but was hoping that insurance could help out somehow.

The travel insurance came with a rental car damage clause to it, though, only if we follow rental car's contractual agreement.

Damage - I don't know yet. The whole back is smashed in, the trunk, and the windshield is broken. I'm hoping it to be <$10k (the car was a 2016 Mazda3)

Unfortunately, I don't think I would be able to sue the guy... and if I did, I wouldn't be able to collect on it. He was not insured nor identifiable based on the information he gave (his name, address, birthday) to the police. They tried running his records and came up with zilch.

 

[adjusterjack]

Unfortunately, I don't think I would be able to sue the guy... and if I did, I wouldn't be able to collect on it. He was not insured nor identifiable based on the information he gave (his name, address, birthday) to the police. They tried running his records and came up with zilch.

Unless he is sitting in a jail cell at the moment, he's probably disappeared off the face of the earth.