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Buying insurance for your bike
I live in a pretty nice area. Our neighbours are mostly young families and retirees and it’s quiet and out of the way. So when our next-door neighbours had their garage burglarized while they were sleeping it gave me pause for thought. Whoever did the break in walked off with over $5000 worth of tools. My neighbours’ experience forced me to look closely at our place. Was it just as easy for a thief to break into my house (probably)? What would I do if they rode away with any of my bikes (scream, lose it, etc.)?
The first thing you should do is purchase bike locks to cover all of your family’s bikes. The next thing you need to do is actually use those locks. I’m not saying that the locks will prevent a motivated thief from nabbing your ride but it will serve as a deterrent; usually, burglars are looking for a quick-and-easy grab and anything that doesn’t fit within that category will be passed over.
The next thing you need to do is look into the type of coverage provided by your house insurance. In my case, our home-owner insurance covers bikes up to $1000 in value (per bike). Subtract the $500 deductible and you can see that it’s not really that great a deal (especially if your bike is worth less than $1000). Individual policies might be different, so ask your broker for the details on your policy.
Given that my home policy doesn’t provide adequate coverage for my bikes, I called around looking for rates on bike insurance. Typically, I was quoted rates that were based on a fixed amount per $100 worth of value. In my case, rates ranged from $3/$100 to $6/$100. That means it would cost me between $30 and $60 for every $1000 worth of bikes that I wanted to insure.
The good thing about these policies is that the deductibles are quite low ($25-$100), they cover the bike anywhere (not just when they’re in my house), and some of them even covered them against damage (although I’m skeptical that they’d cover damage caused by a crash while bike — I didn’t ask).
In the end, it comes down to whether or not you feel you can deal with the loss of your bike through theft? Can you repurchase a stolen ride? Or are you SOL if someone walks off with your bike? If you’re in the latter category, consider looking into bike insurance.
1. Posted by Greg McMenimen | 1:48 pm, 11 January 2006
I was just thinking of this same situation the other day and brought it up with my wife. We looked into it with the same results. Very limited coverage and a high deductible. I have three expensive bikes in the garage and even though we live in a gated community I feel we still need to have better coverage. I plan on doing more research and find out what is covered besides if the bike is stolen.