Behind the Scenes: Iron Man & Rental Car Insurance

Movie director with megaphone — Going behind the scenes to research rental car insurance doesn't require super powers, just super stamina. Stark's got nothing on me.

I wrote a post last week on the DMV.ORG blog about Iron Man and rental car insurance. I used Iron Man as my means to walk readers though the somewhat- complicated topic of car rental insurance: Specifically, how Tony Stark might answer the rental car representative when it was time to decide if he should buy insurance for his rental.

I thought the article came out pretty well, so I emailed the link to a few people I thought would find it entertaining. Admittedly, it’s a very, very small group that find a mashup of Iron Man and car insurance interesting.

The feedback was positive overall. However, the comment that kept coming back was, “I didn’t know you knew so much about rental car insurance.” It’s a fair comment. I thought I’d share my research so you know that I didn’t dream up the information (not that other sites do that; of course they don’t). Instead, I actually made an effort to accurately communicate the benefits and drawbacks of rental car insurance as I saw them while trying to entertain you at the same time. (An entertaining car insurance article? That was my hope.)

My questions

I tried to keep it simple. I find simple questions frequently yield the best answers for complicated topics. Here are five simple questions I made sure to ask everyone:

• What is rental car insurance?
• What does rental car insurance cover?
• What are the benefits of rental car insurance?
• Do I need the insurance rental car companies offer?
• Will my rates go up if I get into an accident in my rental?

All are simple questions that you can ask your insurance company and your car rental company to help you decide if you need insurance for your rental.

My sources

First, I watched a video on rental car insurance from the Insurance Information Institute (III), which covers much of what I included in my article but nothing about Iron Man (a disappointment, I know).

I started here because I knew you weren’t going to watch a four-minute video about rental car insurance. Not many people would. (Actually, 13,829 people have watched this video since March 19, 2009.) If you really want to watch for yourself, here it is.

Secondly, I made a few phone calls and sent a couple emails.
• I called my car insurance company to find out where they stood on rental car insurance.
• I emailed a couple of my former colleagues who still work for car insurance companies as a secondary resource and to corroborate information I received from my insurance company. I also wanted to see if there were questions I should have asked my insurance company, but didn’t.
• I also called a national rental car company to get their take on the insurance they offer. I was lucky enough to have rented a car last week, so I was able to ask the same questions in person (If you thought the person at the grocery store who pays by check takes a lot of time, wait until you find yourself behind me and my 20 questions at the rental car counter).

Too much car insurance and not enough Iron Man? We can fix that.