"Full coverage" isn't actually a thing. No insurer sells a product by that name, and there's no legal definition for it. What most people mean when they say full coverage is a policy that combines liability, collision, and comprehensive together. Understanding what each piece does is the only way to answer whether you actually need all of it.
What "full coverage" actually means
When most drivers say full coverage, they're describing three types of coverage bundled together.
Liability coverage. Required by Illinois law. This pays for damage you cause to other people and their property. It covers their medical bills, their vehicle, their fence, and their pain and suffering. It doesn't pay a cent toward your own car or your own injuries.
Collision coverage. Pays for damage to your own vehicle when you hit another car or object, regardless of who's at fault. If you slide on ice on I-88 and take out a guardrail, collision pays to fix your car. Liability won't touch it.
Comprehensive coverage. Pays for damage that isn't a collision. Theft, hail, flooding, a falling tree, a deer strike, vandalism. In Illinois, comprehensive matters a lot because of what the weather does here. The state ranked second in the country for hail damage totals in 2024. Comprehensive is what pays when a storm pits your hood and dents every panel.
So "full coverage" is really just having all three. Not a special tier. A combination.
When you don't get to choose
If your car is financed or leased, the lender decides for you.
When you take out an auto loan, the lender has a financial stake in your vehicle until the loan is paid off. If the car gets totaled and you're only carrying liability, you're still on the hook for the loan balance even though the car is gone. Lenders protect themselves by requiring collision and comprehensive for the duration of the loan. Most leases require it too.
If you drop collision or comprehensive on a financed vehicle, your lender will likely force-place a policy. That means they buy coverage for their asset, not yours, and bill you for it. Force-placed insurance is typically far more expensive than what you'd buy yourself and covers only the lender's interest. Don't let that happen. If you own your car outright, the decision is entirely yours.
The Illinois weather case for comprehensive
Even on a paid-off vehicle, comprehensive coverage makes a strong argument in this state.
DuPage County and the Chicago suburbs get hit with significant hail several times a year. The kind that pits hoods, cracks windshields, and leaves roofs and panels looking like golf balls. A single hail event can cause $3,000 to $8,000 in vehicle damage. Drive through any Naperville neighborhood after a bad storm and you'll see roofing and body shop crews on every other block.
A comprehensive deductible in Illinois typically runs $100 to $500. With a $200 deductible, a $4,000 hail claim costs you $200 out of pocket. Without comprehensive, it's $4,000.
Illinois also has meaningful rates of vehicle theft and break-ins, especially in the Chicago metro area. Comprehensive covers theft of the entire vehicle and damage from a break-in. If someone smashes a window to grab something from your back seat, comprehensive covers the repair. Liability-only doesn't.
For most vehicles worth $10,000 or more, comprehensive coverage in Illinois is worth carrying. The combination of hail frequency, weather events, and regional theft risk makes the math work in ways it might not in drier, lower-risk states.
The collision math
Collision is the one most people debate dropping once a car is paid off.
Collision pays when you damage your own vehicle in an accident. Average collision deductibles in Illinois run $500 to $1,000. The annual premium for collision alone on a typical vehicle in the Chicago suburbs ranges from $400 to $800 per year, depending on the car, your driving history, and your location.
The standard rule of thumb: if the annual cost of collision coverage plus your deductible exceeds 10 percent of your car's actual cash value, it may not be worth carrying.
Say your car's worth $8,000 and collision costs $600 per year with a $500 deductible. You're paying $600 annually for a maximum payout of $7,500 ($8,000 minus the deductible). If you go three years without a collision claim, you've paid $1,800 in premiums and your car is worth less than it was when you started. The math starts turning against you.
Run the same numbers on a $25,000 car with a $700 annual collision premium. Your maximum payout is $24,500. That's a very different calculation.
As a car ages and its value drops, there's typically a point where collision stops making financial sense for people who have savings to cover a loss. That crossover point is different for everyone and depends on your actual numbers.
What Illinois minimum coverage actually includes
Illinois requires every driver to carry:
- $25,000 bodily injury per person
- $50,000 bodily injury per accident
- $20,000 property damage
Written as 25/50/20, this covers damage you cause to others. It doesn't cover your vehicle at all.
A liability-only policy in the Chicago suburbs typically runs $600 to $1,000 per year for a driver with a clean record. Full coverage (adding collision and comprehensive) for the same driver typically runs $1,600 to $2,400 per year, depending on the car's value and carrier.
That's a gap of roughly $600 to $1,400 annually. Whether that gap is worth paying depends entirely on what car you're protecting and whether you can absorb the downside if it isn't.
Gap insurance if you're financing a new car
If you're financing a new or recent-model vehicle, there's another layer worth knowing.
When a car is totaled, your insurance company pays actual cash value, not what you paid or what you owe. New vehicles depreciate fast. A car that sold for $35,000 in January might be worth $27,000 to your insurer by December if it's totaled.
If you owe $33,000 on that car, you're $6,000 short. Collision pays $27,000. You still owe $6,000 on a car you no longer have.
Gap insurance covers that difference. Lenders often try to sell it, but most auto insurers offer it for less, typically $20 to $40 per year added to your policy. If you're financing with a small down payment, it's worth having for the first couple of years of the loan.
How your deductible changes the math
If you're keeping collision and comprehensive, your deductible choice matters.
Higher deductible means lower annual premium and more out of pocket at claim time. Lower deductible means higher annual premium and less out of pocket when something happens.
For a standard sedan in the Chicago suburbs:
- Collision: a $250 deductible runs about $100 to $200 more per year than a $1,000 deductible
- Comprehensive: a $100 deductible runs about $50 to $100 more per year than a $500 deductible
If you have $1,000 to $2,000 set aside and don't expect to use these coverages frequently, raising your deductibles is a straightforward way to cut $100 to $300 off your annual premium. Just don't raise it higher than what you could actually write a check for next week.
When dropping collision makes sense
If you own your car outright and have savings to cover a total loss, dropping collision is a legitimate decision for the right vehicle.
The clearest cases:
Older vehicles with low book value. A 12-year-old car worth $5,000 to $7,000 is a reasonable candidate for dropping collision. If it's totaled, you'd get a check for $5,000 minus your deductible. The annual premiums add up fast relative to that maximum payout.
Multiple vehicles in the household. If one car gets totaled and you have another, you're not immediately stranded. That changes the urgency of protecting every vehicle at the same level.
Strong savings cushion. If you have three to six months of expenses saved, absorbing a vehicle loss is painful but survivable. Drivers without that cushion should think harder before dropping collision.
High mileage on a low-value vehicle. If you're putting 20,000 miles a year on a $6,000 car, you're adding risk but the payout ceiling stays the same. That math tends to argue for dropping it.
When keeping full coverage makes sense
There are plenty of situations where carrying everything is clearly the right call, even on a paid-off vehicle.
Your car is your only way to work. If you'd be unable to get to your job without it and couldn't replace it quickly, protecting it matters beyond the actuarial math.
You're in a high-hail area. Naperville, Downers Grove, Wheaton, and most of the collar counties get real hail exposure. The comprehensive piece of full coverage is relatively cheap for the actual risk this region sees.
A total loss would genuinely hurt you financially. If losing the car would be a crisis, collision coverage is the right call regardless of what the math says. Some risks you insure against because you can't afford not to.
You bought the car recently. In the first three to four years of a vehicle's life, the value is high enough that collision coverage is clearly worth carrying. The case for dropping it gets stronger as the car ages and depreciates.
How to decide for your car right now
Pull your current declarations page and find your collision premium, your comprehensive premium, and the deductible for each.
Then get a current estimate of your car's actual cash value. Kelley Blue Book or a quick search for what similar vehicles are selling for locally works fine. That number changes every year as the car depreciates.
Run the math: annual collision premium versus the maximum payout after your deductible. If you'd spend more in collision premiums over the next three years than you'd collect on a worst-case total-loss claim, that's meaningful information.
For comprehensive, the hail risk in the Chicago suburbs usually argues for keeping it, but run your own numbers on your specific deductible and premium.
And if you haven't compared rates in the last two years, the spread between carriers for full coverage in DuPage County can run $500 to $900 per year for the same driver and vehicle. Getting a handful of quotes from multiple carriers is the other lever worth pulling, separate from the coverage decisions themselves.