Can I Get Temporary Car Insurance?
- Expertise: Auto insurance, home insurance and renters insurance
- Education: Sonoma State University (BA in English)
Aaron Besson has worked at LendingTree for more than seven years and has been a staff writer for the last five years. He specializes in producing research-backed content about auto, home and renters insurance. Aaron enjoys the deep dig into insurance data to get the right answers to hard questions. His work has been cited by CBS, iHeart Radio, the Sacramento Bee and Yahoo.
Car insurance policies usually come with terms limits of six months or a year. If you’re looking for car insurance for a day, a week or a month, you won’t find a policy for those lengths of time from a reputable company.
There are affordable car insurance options for those who don’t own a car or don’t drive a lot, though, including usage-based and non-owners car insurance policies.
Is it possible to get temporary car insurance?
Major auto insurance companies do not offer coverage for terms less than six months. You can buy a policy and cancel it at any point, but you may have to pay cancellation fees before you receive any refund on the remainder of your premium.
Another potential problem to consider is that if you regularly buy car insurance for short periods, car insurance companies will see your track record of frequently going without car insurance. There’s a good chance they will deem this high-risk behavior, and charge you higher rates.
What are my short-term car insurance options?
If you borrow a car now and then, there are a few alternatives to paying for a regular policy. Usage-based and non-owners car insurance are two examples.
Usage-based car insurance
Usage-based car insurance (UBI) calculates your rate with how and when you drive as the primary factors. Car insurance companies offering UBI use telematics data from your car to set your rate.
The way UBI works is that data on your driving behaviors such as speed, braking, times of day you drive, how much you drive and phone usage while you drive is collected by a telematics device. The device may be built into your car, or it may be a unit your insurance company installs.
In some cases, telematics data is collected through an app on your phone, or a tag attached to your car that syncs with your phone’s Bluetooth. Your car insurance company will then analyze the data and give you a rate discount based on it. If you’re an infrequent driver, that can help you get cheaper rates.
Non-owners car insurance
Non-owners car insurance provides liability-only coverage if you need car insurance but don’t have a car. The policy may also include some or all of the following coverages, depending on the auto insurance requirements of your state:
- Uninsured and/or underinsured motorist coverage
- Medical payment insurance
- Personal injury protection (PIP)
Collision or comprehensive coverage is not included in a non-owners car insurance policy, as no vehicle needs to be covered. Non-owners car insurance is ideal if you want to maintain your car insurance while you don’t have a vehicle, or if you need to file an SR-22 after a DUI and don’t currently have a car.
What are other options for temporary auto insurance?
If neither UBI nor non-owners car insurance are ideal for your situation, you still have other choices, including permissive use and getting added to someone else’s policy.
Permissive use
“Permissive use” means that someone with car insurance gives you implied or expressed permission to drive their car. It is part of many providers’ car insurance policies. If permissive use is in place, you are covered under the policyholder’s coverage.
Permissive use does have exceptions and limitations. For example, the number of times you drive the permitted car in a year may be limited. Another frequent restriction is that you may not reside at the policyholder’s address. If permissive use isn’t clear in the policy, make sure to call the insurer and ask about it before assuming it’s in place.
Get added to another’s car insurance policy
Having a policyholder add you to their current car insurance is a common practice. In fact, car insurance companies often require policyholder’s to list people who live at the same address and will be using the covered car. Having an unlisted frequent driver using a covered car may cause an insurer to cancel a policy.
Getting added to someone’s policy will cause the original policyholder’s rates to go up in most cases. As long as you have a clean driving record, though, the overall cost should be cheaper than if the two of you had separate auto insurance policies.