My Car Caught On Fire! Does My Car Insurance Cover It?

08 Aug 2024

Imagine one’s car catching fire while parked at home or being damaged by a wildfire. These are some of the events that may make one consider how car insurance fire can assist. Although occurrences like these are unplanned and may not be foreseen, knowing how your policy might assist will put you in a better standing for the unforeseen.

You will get to know with the help of the right coverage.Your vehicle may be protected from fire consequences. But as for a little extra, we will provide you with those essential safety measures to help you if your car turns into a beacon of smouldering metal.

Does Car Insurance Cover Fire Damage?

While we certainly hope that you’ve never had a related experience with fire beyond the joy of toasting marshmallows with friends or a car flame, one never knows when it will ignite. For car fires that occur due to non-collision causes like mechanical failure, car fire insurance investigation covers your losses that are a result of a car fire.

Possibly, one of the most unfortunate events that can befall your favourite car is to have it burnt. If this is something that keeps you up at night, you might be asking yourself about the possibilities of what you can do about it.

Well, I hope that you never find yourself in such a situation. Nonetheless, accidents can often occur, and they are rather unavoidable. However, for most of these circumstances, one may rely on it and will insurance cover car fire to provide support as an assurance to such types of losses.

Here are more situations that may fall under this coverage:

• Problems like short-circuiting of electrical installations or wiring breakdowns.
• Leaking fuel lines, leaking fuel pump that sprayed fuel on the sensors and short circuits them, sugars and carb build up.
• Overheated engine that can cause the flammables and fluids, which it comes into contact with, to catch a flame.

Combustible wastes are kept in a car in an untidy or unsecured manner, or they are generally hazardous goods and articles that require proper handling and storage.

Other circumstances that are most likely to come under car insurance fire include situations where your car has been burnt down through arson or in bizarre instances of successfully recording a case of accidental human combustion, hence resulting in a car fire.

If you have comprehensive coverage, then you are probably familiar with how it works and what its function is. With Comprehensive, you can generally count it as giving coverage to your car for parts or damages that are not a result of a collision with another car.

As you may be aware, when you opt for car insurance fire, you sometimes get to choose the amount of money known as the deductible. This amount also changes and is referred to as the excess you personally contribute towards a claim.

Here’s how that might look if you had $500 deductible:

• Policy coverage: Comprehensive
• Deductible: $500
• Car damage: It involved fire, which was as a result of electrical problems.
• Cost to repair: $4K

When reporting a case to your car insurance fire company, you will be advised to take your car to a repair shop. If the estimated cost of the repairs is $4K, you will then have to fork out $500 as the deductible while the car insurance fire will then clear $3. 5 thousand for the makeover of your car that was affected by fire.

However, suppose that you have fire damage that arose due to a car accident. If that’s ever the circumstance, we suggest that you contact your car insurance through direct reporting to assist in navigating challenges that may occur.

Safety tips if your car catches on fire

Below are some tips that may help in so far as the cause and prevention of car fires are concerned:

• Be consistent with maintenance: Taking your car for routine maintenance and getting it through an efficient safety check will have your car up and running without hitches and you will have greatly reduced the chances of any flare-ups.
• There should always be an extinguisher around: Possibly related to homes or businesses, carrying a fire extinguisher in your car so that it is readily available to you can again be advantageous to you if your car quickly catches on fire and you will need to put the fire out to avoid more damage.
• Make safety a priority: If you ever find yourself in a car blazing up, it is important to note that your safety as well as your passengers’ safety comes first. If you see smoke or flame issuing from your car, please safely pull over, shut off the engine/if possible, and evacuate all passengers.

Make the Most of Your Situation

To conclude these coverages in your car insurance fire that will help shield you and your car from those ‘what if’ road scenarios.

Collision may or may not be offered with your policy depending on the coverage and the need for the coverage to cater for damages to your car that are not as a result of an accident. Again, collision is all in the name, it may protect your vehicle and these damages were probably caused by an accident.

With that in mind, we shall encourage our readers to grab their car insurance provider’s contact details and get your policy coverage checked on these aspects.