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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

This article isn't very useful because it doesn't distinguish between liability and collision coverage.

It doesn't matter how young the driver is, if you put them in a cheap small used car, you only need liability coverage which is pretty cheap.

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That doesn't work in states where the insurance industry has successfully lobbied for laws requiring that all vehicles in a household be cross-insured for every driver in the household.

I've never heard of such a thing. Which states are those?

Geico's only stated recommendation is that anyone who uses the car more than once a month should be on the policy.

New Jersey.

If you have a child on your policy, and you have a collision on your policy, then your child will be required to be included in that policy. Insurance companies don't accept that you can live in a household, but won't be allowed to drive the new car, so they will charge you like the child is driving the new car under any circumstance.

My insurance company requires me to sign an affidavit affirming that my adult child will not drive a car insured by said company. If my adult child does drive my car and gets in a collision, the affidavit is used by the insurance company to absolve themselves of any financial responsibilities related to the collision.

I think it'd be reasonable aside from one obvious edge case: my adult child is blind and will never drive a car, yet I have to sign a new affidavit every time I renew my policy (every 6 months).

Is it legal to put a young driver on their own insurance policy with a cheap small used car, while the rest of the family has a different policy with fancier cars and collision coverage?

That's how my family did it. You can even keep them all on the same plan, but you specify who the primary drivers for each vehicle when you set up each policy.

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