Insurance & Borders
 

Hello All,

I'm a bit confused about how to do accident/collision insurance for a round the world trip. It see mention of buying it at borders for that specific country. Is that how it always works? Does every country offer motorcycle insurance at the border? If no...how do you fill the gaps?


-Tyler

It is a confusing subject. Buying at the borders (or a town near the border) is how it works at many places but it is not always the case. Paradoxically insurance is often easier to buy in what we consider the less developed world than in the developed world.

For example entering EU overland there generally is no where to buy it at the borders and you have to buy it first online. Ditto entering US. Some countries also have no easy system to sell you insurance of any form if your freight the bike into them (eg Chile - though you can buy insurance covering Chile once in Argentina). Further complicating the issue is some countries don't check at the border whether you have valid insurance, whereas others will not let you in without it.

Bottom line is once you know your route you generally need to do a little bit of research to check out how to do it for each country. You can always find the info with a little bit of Googling.

And for what it's worth I always assume each border crossing will cost me $50 for a months insurance (motorcycle) - usually it is a bit less somtimed a bit more but it's not a bad figure for budgeting.

Final thought - most (all?) border insurance coverage is the country legal minimum and these are usually very low values (often only a few thousand dollars). Even though I always try and buy insurance I always try and ride as though I have none.

Sent from my Moto G (5S) Plus using Tapatalk

Hi Tyler:

Welcome to our forum community.

The process for buying insurance for an out-of-country tourist vehicle varies by region & country throughout the world.

Within the European Community countries (EC), you can buy insurance in one country that is valid for all the other EC countries.

Outside of the EC, you buy insurance at the border crossing into the country. How easy this is depends on how many foreign (tourist) vehicles enter the country at that location each year.

For example, getting off the ferry from Spain to Morocco, there are a whole bunch of booths selling Moroccan insurance just after you get off the ferry. It's simple and fast because about 100,000 tourists bring their vehicles into Morocco at that port every year.

On the other hand, if you shipped your vehicle by air or boat to (for example) Outer Mongolia or some unknown small island country in the South Pacific, where no tourist vehicle has arrived since Jesus was a baby, it will probably be more difficult to find out where to buy insurance for your vehicle.

Here's links to a couple of discussions that will get your education started:

Here is where you get the cheap european green card insurance (start reading at the beginning of the 2016 responses, don't start at the very beginning of that discussion)

Balkans Insurance - Here's the story, with details & sample documents This explains how it is done in all the former Yugoslavian countries.

If you need information about other countries besides Europe & the Balkans, try searching within this forum, or post a more specific question onto this discussion.

Michael

Thank you! That helps me understand how it works.

Unrelated question...is there a way to track your posts on horizon unlimited? I've made a couple posts, then go back to see if anyone responds and I don't see a tracking feature to find them easily. Does that exist on here somewhere?

There's several things you can do!
1: Subscribe to the thread when you make a post in it, (read the options below "submit reply") or subscribe to a thread you're interested in anytime by clicking "Thread Tools" at the of the thread. You can choose from several options re notifications.
2: Up near the top left, "User Options" and there you'll see "Subscribed Threads" and can check them
3: Click your own user name and you'll see several options, among them "Find all posts by..."


Finally of course, do check out the FAQ - there's a ton of info there!
Hope that helps.