No, car rental insurance is a major component of the cost to rent a car in the US. Since you should always be insured when driving a car, knowing what the different car rental companies charge for insurance is as important as shopping for a good car rental deal itself.

We did a little research to show what companies are charging for liability damage waiver (DW), personal accident insurance (PAI) and supplemental liability coverage (SLP). For more details on what these terms mean, see our last article.

We contacted car rental stores in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and Miami. We chose Enterprise, Hertz and Avis for their size in the US market.

Overall, we found that the prices vary greatly by city. This depends highly on state laws and levels of risks by city. Generally, we found that Los Angeles had the cheapest insurance packages, with prices varying from $24 to $28 per day. Then follow San Francisco and Miami. The most expensive prices are in Boston, where car rental insurance ranges $39-46 per day!

Car rental companies take turns on who has the cheapest insurance. It depends on the city. In Los Angeles, Enterprise is the cheapest. In San Francisco, Hertz wins. Avis was not the cheapest in any city we researched, but has pretty competitive prices overall.

Take away: in order to research for the best car rental deals, you must take into account the prices of car rental insurance, if you need one. There is no point choosing a store because they advertise a $19/day rental if you later need to pay $45 for the insurance.

Here is the raw data:

Note: prices as of December 2009.

Source: primary research.

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