Insurance for a borrowed car in the Czech Republic

Will this be a rental from an agency, or are you actually borrowing a car that is owned by some other private party (like a friend)?

I don’t have any personal experience with this, but I would minimally recommend contacting the insurance carrier that covers your friend’s auto to ensure that there’s adequate coverage in place for you. What did your agent recommend? You’ll really need to make sure you’re properly covered…no need to expose yourself to litigation in the case of a claim. Perhaps someone else who has done this can weigh in.

We will be borrowing a car from a friend.

Personally, I would not risk it.

In the UK at any rate it is the owner who insures the car, though you can buy insurance that will cover you for any car as well as your own. I can't imagine the Czech Republic is very different as these kinds of things tend to be EU-wide.

You need to check with your Czech friends whether their insurance would cover you. For example my car is only insured for myself and my g/f, so if you wanted to drive my car I would have to ring my insurers who would charge me a few pounds to allow anyone to drive it (as long as they had my permission) or add you as named extra drivers.

It won't cost much, but insurance costs go down year on year if you don't make any claims. If you wrap it around a tree then your friend will pay for it in the long run through increased premiums. Minor incidents in the UK are generally dealt with without getting the insurers involved, because of losing the no claims bonus.

You will need info from the insurance company in CZ but generally only the owner can provide insurance. I don't know if a travel policy would cover you but I doubt it.

Frankly, I think you are opening a large can of worms. Better to rent the car you need.

You are hanging out there on this arrangement. Proceed with caution or a large checkbook.

Doesn't your friend has that car insured?
As far as I know in some European countries companies insure cars not people, like in the US.However I don't know how this would work with a foreign driver.

Yes, I found out that the car is insured if someone crashes into us, but if we crash the car, we are responsible. So we are going ahead and borrowing the car.

Of course that's true Betsy, but you can have your friend get what we call here full coverage. The thing is that they might not be able to do full coverage for a short period of time.

Are you adequately insured, then? You may want to research the potential civil and/or criminal liabilities should you be the cause of an accident. If you run over someone on a bike, for example, what problems will you have? The Czech Republic has one of the highest accident rates in central Europe.

Borrowing a car in Czech Republic is a big risk to your pocketbook with high theft and accident rates there. My husband & I rent a car when we visit family there each year because we don't want take a risk of something happening to a family car.
If you are really set to do this anyway, you can contact the following with your questions to see if there is an additional personnal insurance package you can pay for to cover you:
AIG Czech Republika Pojistovna, A.S.
V Celnici 1031/4
Prague 1 110 00
Czech Republic
Tel: +420 234 108 311
Fax: 420-2-242-38-452
Email: [email protected]

Thanks for the information. I'm definitely going to contact them.

I'm glad to read that you're finally going to contact an insurance carrier...they should be able to answer all of your questions and assist you with purchasing a product that will cover you fully. It just sounded a little illogical when you said that you found out you're not covered should you be the cause of an accident, so you're going to go ahead and borrow the car. And if you go with AIG, you can sleep easy knowing that your policy is backed up by at least $183 billion in U.S. taxpayer bailout money. :)

Just got a reply from AIG and they do not do auto insurance for individuals. They sent me to allianz.cz