If you are a Pennsylvania car owner, at some point you made a choice: full tort or limited tort. You probably have no idea what that means, but it’s likely you were told that you’d save 10 percent on your insurance bill if you chose limited tort. Saving 10 percent sounds like a good idea, and many people choose limited tort coverage when they buy their auto insurance. Other people may want “full coverage” and their insurance agent will set them up with full tort.

So what is limited tort and why should you care? Limited tort restricts (limits) one’s right to sue for damages. It means that you have chosen to have a limited right to sue should you be injured and that you may not be able to make a claim for damages if someone else injures you in a car accident. Clearly, the choice of limited tort can have a huge effect on your ability to seek justice and compensation if you are injured in a car accident.
 
Sounds serious, right?

Well, it is serious. In exchange for saving 10 percent on your insurance bill, you may be giving up the chance to recover damages when you’ve been injured.

In the meantime, you have bills to pay and kids to take care of. You go to work and you take care of your family, and you really don’t change your activities—you just do what you would normally do. But in everything you do, you still have the pain caused by the injuries you sustained in the car accident. Your medical bills will be paid, and if you have wage loss coverage you may get reimbursed for lost earnings, but you will NOT get any compensation for the adverse impact on your life. Your pain may go on for months, or even years, but if you have limited tort coverage you will have no right to make a claim for damages beyond lost earnings and unpaid medical bills

Is limited tort a good deal? In the short term, it may seem to be, but in the long term I do not think that you should choose limited tort coverage for your Pennsylvania auto insurance.