Your auto policy is probably the most under-thought coverage you own.

Maryland's minimum is 30/60/15: $30,000 per injured person, $60,000 per crash, $15,000 of property damage. Kensington is a small town, roughly 2,000 residents across 320 acres, but the roads running through it are not small. MDOT SHA's 2024 counts put Connecticut Avenue at 48,340 vehicles a day right at Plyers Mill Road, University Boulevard between 18,730 and 19,970, Georgia Avenue at 33,320 north of University and 53,400 further south, and the Beltway segments either side of the Connecticut Avenue interchange at roughly 207,000 to 208,000.

Two of those corridors sit on Montgomery County's Vision Zero High Injury Network inside the Kensington area: Connecticut Avenue between Knowles Avenue and Washington Street, and University Boulevard from Decatur Avenue to Drumm Avenue. The Town's own corridor study, covering 2016 through 2020, found the highest crash rates at Connecticut Avenue's intersections with Plyers Mill Road, Knowles Avenue and Perry Avenue, and found that most pedestrian crashes in the corridor happened at Connecticut Avenue and Knowles Avenue.

Commuting here is ordinary in a way that still matters. ACS 2024 five-year figures for Kensington town show a mean one-way trip of 28.8 minutes, 56.4 percent of workers driving alone, only 4.9 percent using transit, 6.2 percent walking, and 24.5 percent working from home. Most households keep two cars and about a quarter keep three or more. The Kensington MARC station is weekday and peak only, about sixteen trains a day with nothing at all on weekends, so the car does not really get a day off.

So our recommendation here starts at 250/500 liability with uninsured and underinsured motorist limits matched to it, Personal Injury Protection kept in place rather than waived, and an umbrella sitting above both the auto and the home. On a corridor where the Town's own study counted 20 crashes involving someone walking or biking across five years, the state minimum is not a plan. It is just the number that keeps you legal.

Usually yes. Maryland requires carriers to offer PIP, but you can sign a waiver to remove it. The waiver saves a few dollars a month but eliminates first-dollar coverage for your medical bills and lost wages after an accident, regardless of fault.

If you have low-deductible health insurance and reliable income protection, the waiver might be fine. For most people, keeping PIP at $2,500–$5,000 is worth the small premium.

Often, yes — though there's a lot of room to manage the increase if it's done thoughtfully. The structure matters: which vehicle the teen is "primarily assigned" to, whether they're a listed driver or excluded driver, what discounts they qualify for (good student, driver's ed completion), and what carrier you're on.

This is one of the conversations where a real advisor pays for themselves several times over. We've helped families cut the teen-driver premium increase by 30–50% just by restructuring the policy correctly.

Sometimes on the initial quote — and that's part of how captive carriers compete. The honest answer is that year-one pricing is not the same as year-three or year-five pricing, and captive carriers often price-cut at acquisition then increase rates over time.

The bigger difference, though, is the structure. A captive agent can only sell their company's auto product, even if it doesn't fit your situation. We work across Erie, Chubb, Cincinnati, and others — and recommend what actually fits, which is sometimes more expensive on day one and almost always less expensive over a five-year horizon.

Kensington has no municipal police force. The Town's own guidance says it is assigned to the Montgomery County Police Department's 2nd District in Bethesda, so a county officer responds to a crash here, and a serious one goes to the county's Collision Reconstruction Unit. That is what happened after the July 2025 fatal pedestrian crash at Connecticut Avenue and Plyers Mill Road. The Town does employ its own enforcement officer, but for parking rather than traffic, and its code formally asks the County to enforce speed limits.

Practically, that means the report you will eventually need comes from Montgomery County police rather than from Town Hall, and it can take days to become available. Ask for the report number at the scene. It is the single thing that makes everything after it faster.

Then the ordinary sequence, in order. Photograph everything before any vehicle moves, including lane position, because Maryland's contributory negligence rule can bar recovery entirely if you are found even partly at fault. Exchange information. Call us rather than only the carrier's claims line, so we can open the claim and stay in it with you. Personal Injury Protection begins paying medical bills and lost wages regardless of who was at fault. Collision or comprehensive handles the car while liability is still being argued about.

One local wrinkle on the repair side. Kensington's commercial core has a long history of auto repair and body shops along Plyers Mill Road, an area locals call Gasoline Alley, so there is real repair capacity a few blocks from home. In Maryland you choose your own shop rather than being obliged to use a carrier's preferred vendor, and we will tell you honestly when the preferred shop is the faster route and when it is not.

Maryland is an at-fault (tort) state: the driver who causes an accident is responsible for the resulting damages. Maryland also requires insurers to offer PIP for first-party medical coverage, and follows a strict contributory-negligence rule, which makes carrying strong liability and UM/UIM limits especially important.