Roadside Assistance cover for your car explained

Roadside Assistance cover is an optional cover that sends help to wherever your car has stopped, at any hour. It helps with a breakdown, a flat battery, a puncture, an empty tank or keys locked inside the car. For any of these, you make one phone call and help comes to you. Using it does not affect your No Claim Bonus (NCB), the discount you build for every year you do not make a claim.

Optional covers are also called add-ons, and some insurers call them riders. All 3 words mean the same thing: an extra protection you choose on top of your base plan, for an extra premium. So the roadside assistance add-on and the roadside assistance rider are the same thing as Roadside Assistance cover.

The industry shortens the name to Road Side Assistance (RSA), and many people search for it by those 3 letters. A standard plan pays for damage. It does not send anyone when the car simply refuses to move, and that is the gap this cover fills. Help comes to where the car is, whether that is your basement car park, a highway shoulder at midnight, or a hill road outside the city.

The last point in the definition matters more than it looks. An assistance request is a service rather than a claim, so using it does not reduce the No Claim Bonus you have built. You can use all 4 assistance requests in a year and renew with your discount intact, whether that is a standard bonus or Kiwi Insurance Super NCB, which builds to 90% rather than stopping at 50%.

It attaches to an Own Damage or Comprehensive Plan

Roadside Assistance cover attaches to the own-damage side of a policy, as optional covers do with one exception, Personal Accident cover. You need a Comprehensive Plan or a standalone Own Damage plan first. It cannot be added to a Third-Party plan.

It is the cover that helps most on an older car

Most covers give back less as the Insured Declared Value (IDV) falls. The Insured Declared Value is the current market value of your car, agreed in the policy. Roadside Assistance cover moves the other way and becomes more useful, because breakdowns, battery failures and punctures all become more likely with age, while the price of a tow stays the same.

It is one of the 2 covers worth keeping on a car past 10 years, the other being Personal Accident cover, which pays up to ₹15 lakhs if the owner-driver is disabled or dies in an accident. Personal Accident cover is on this list for a different reason. It is compulsory for the owner-driver, unless you already hold it on another vehicle you own, and it protects the person, not the car. So what it pays does not fall as the car loses value, and it stays on the policy whatever the car's age. You can compare both with every other cover on the optional covers page.

One cover, several names. If a quote from another insurer shows RSA, breakdown assistance or 24x7 assistance, you are looking at this cover. Compare what is inside it, which is the number of assistance requests a year and the tow distance, rather than the name on the label.

The short version. Roadside Assistance cover gets you and the car moving again, or towed to someone who can do it. What the repair itself costs is a separate matter for your plan and your other covers.

It tries the roadside fix first and tows only when that fails. The technician who reaches you carries a jump starter, an air compressor, a puncture kit, a basic tool kit and a small quantity of fuel, so the most common faults are fixed at the roadside. A tow is what happens when the fault is beyond a roadside fix.

The labour for that roadside fix is part of the assistance request, so there is nothing to pay the technician. The line falls at parts. If the battery is dead but can take a jump, you drive away at no cost. If the battery has to be replaced, the new battery is yours to buy and the visit is still free.

Help usually reaches a stopped car within 30 to 45 minutes inside a city during the day, within 60 to 90 minutes on a national or state highway, and within 90 minutes to 2 hours in a small town or on a district road. These are typical times across roadside assistance providers. Kiwi Insurance aims to reach you within [time] inside a city, within [time] on a highway and within [time] in a small town. The moment your assistance request is accepted you are given the technician's name, the vehicle coming, and a live location you can watch, so the wait is a tracked one rather than a promise on a phone call.

Where you are matters far more than the time of day. In a city, technicians are usually close by, so a night request is only slightly slower than a daytime one. A highway stretch between towns is served from the nearest town, and a hill road or a remote stretch can take longer still.

Times are typical across roadside assistance providers and depend on traffic, weather and how reachable the spot is. Your own request shows a live estimate in the Kiwi app as soon as a technician accepts it.

The one thing that slows help down is a location nobody can find. Share your live location from the Kiwi app rather than describing a landmark, stay with the car where it is safe to do so, and keep your phone reachable. The technician will call before setting off.

The tow that Roadside Assistance cover pays for goes to the nearest suitable garage, and where a Kiwi network garage is within the covered distance, the car goes there. You can ask for a garage of your own choice instead, including your regular mechanic or your brand's service centre, and you pay only for the kilometres beyond what the cover allows.

Kiwi covers [number] kilometres of towing on each assistance request, measured from where the car stopped. The distance is written into your policy document.

The covered distance applies to each assistance request, not to the policy year. A second breakdown later in the year comes with its own [number] kilometres.

Say where you want the car to go before the truck arrives. Changing the destination once the car is loaded means a second tow, and that one is charged. If your own garage is further away than the covered distance, ask for the per-kilometre rate when you raise the request so there is no surprise at the end.

Yes, and this is the main thing the cover is for. Roadside Assistance cover is built for the day the car stops with no accident involved at all. A dead battery, a starter motor that will not turn, a seized fuel pump, a snapped belt, a blown fuse, an immobiliser that refuses the key, or an engine that simply will not start are every one of them valid reasons to raise an assistance request.

This is the opposite of how the rest of your policy works. Your base plan needs visible damage before it pays anything, which is why a car that will not start is not an Own Damage claim. Roadside Assistance cover asks only whether the car can be driven, and if it cannot, help is sent.

• Electrical faults. A flat or dead battery, a failed alternator, a blown fuse, faulty wiring, or an immobiliser and smart key that will not talk to each other
• Mechanical faults. A starter motor, a fuel pump, a clutch, a drive belt, a radiator, a gearbox that will not select, or an engine that has stopped and will not restart
• Fuel problems. An empty tank, or the wrong fuel put in by mistake, where the car is towed rather than started
• Tyres. A puncture, a burst, or a slow leak, fixed at the roadside or swapped for your spare
• Keys and locks. Keys locked inside the car, keys lost away from home, or a lock that will not release
• Accident damage. Covered too, for the tow. The repair itself then moves to an Own Damage claim under your base plan

Your base plan needs damage before it pays anything. Roadside Assistance cover needs only a car that will not move.

Where the car stops more than [number] kilometres from the address on your policy and cannot be repaired the same day, Roadside Assistance cover pays for your onward travel, and if the repair runs into the next day, for one night in a hotel. This is the part of the cover people do not know they have, and it is the part that matters most on a long drive.

It applies to everyone in the car, not only to you. The point of it is simple: a breakdown far from home should cost you a day, not a day plus the price of getting 4 people home.

The limits are set out in your policy document. They are paid on the bill, so keep the taxi receipt and the hotel invoice. Travel and stay apply only where the breakdown is more than [number] kilometres from the address on your policy.

Roadside Assistance cover belongs to the car, not to the driver. It works on your car whoever is behind the wheel, as long as that person holds a valid driving licence for it. It does not travel with you into a friend's car, because that car is covered by its own policy and its own optional covers.

This catches people out in both directions. Lending your car is safe, and you should give the borrower the helpline number before they set off. Borrowing a car is the risky one, because the help you are used to is sitting on a policy you have left at home.

Raise the request against the car, not the person. Whoever calls, Kiwi looks up the registration number and sends help to that car. The owner does not need to be present, and the driver does not need to be listed anywhere on the policy.

You can get the money back, within limits. Tell Kiwi within [number] days, send the original bill, and Kiwi Insurance pays back what an assistance request of the same kind would have cost, up to [amount] for each breakdown handled this way. The same limit is written into your policy document. What you cannot do is buy parts and send the bill, because parts were never inside the cover.

The safer route is always to raise the request first and let Kiwi send someone. You pay nothing at all that way, and there is no bill to chase afterwards. The pay-back route exists for the times you had no signal, no time, or a mechanic already standing next to the car.

What is not paid back. The price of any part, fuel beyond the emergency litres, a bill with no name or date on it, work done days after the breakdown, and a tow you arranged yourself after turning away help that was already on its way.

Roadside Assistance cover typically starts at about ₹300 a year, which makes it one of the least expensive covers on the optional covers list. The price does move with the car, because a larger vehicle needs a larger tow truck and an older one needs help more often, but the whole range stays inside a few hundred rupees.

Age raises it a little, and size raises it a little more. An electric car is priced differently again, because a flat traction battery cannot be jump started from another car and almost always means a tow to a charging point or a service centre.

A hatchback here means a small car such as a Maruti Suzuki Swift or a Hyundai i20. A sedan or compact sport utility vehicle (SUV) means a car such as a Honda City or a Hyundai Creta. A large SUV means a car such as a Mahindra XUV700 or a Toyota Fortuner.

Figures are indicative for a car registered in a large city such as Delhi or Mumbai and are confirmed on your own quote. Goods and Services Tax (GST) applies on top. Your price depends on your car, its age and where it is registered.

At about ₹300 for the year, Roadside Assistance cover costs a fifth of the cheapest tow you would otherwise pay for.

Take a battery that dies overnight in your building's basement car park on a working day, on a car that carries the cover against one that does not.

Without the cover, the morning turns into finding a mechanic who will travel, agreeing a price for the visit, and waiting with no promised time. None of it is a claim on any plan, so every rupee of it is yours.

Amounts shown are an illustrative example and use the lowest figures we see. What you actually pay depends on your car, the fault, and the plan you hold.

A single tow starts at ₹1,500, more than Roadside Assistance cover costs for the whole year. One assistance request pays for the cover, and it does not affect your No Claim Bonus.

If the breakdown turns out to be accident damage, the assistance request hands over to a normal Own Damage claim. Once that claim is registered, a personal Claims Specialist is assigned to it and manages it through to payment. The tow to a cashless partner garage is the same tow either way.

The distinction to hold on to is service against claim. An assistance request costs you nothing and leaves your bonus as it is. A repair claim that follows one is a claim like any other, decided by your base plan and the covers on it.

Kiwi gives you 4 assistance requests in a policy year and [number] kilometres of towing on each one. Both are written into your policy document.

Roadside Assistance cover promises help, not free repairs. Its limits are practical rather than fine print, and every one of them is worth knowing before the day you need it.

The cover is written to get a stopped car going again or towed. The parts and repairs that follow are a separate matter, paid by you, or claimed under your base plan and your other covers where the cause was accident damage.

• Assistance requests are limited to 4 a year. Kiwi gives you 4 in every policy year. Each request after that is chargeable at the rate shown in your policy document
• Tow distance is limited to [number] kilometres. Measured from where the car stopped, on each request. Kilometres beyond that are charged per kilometre
• Parts are not included. A new battery, a new tyre, or fuel beyond the emergency litres is billed to you at the time
• It attaches only at purchase or renewal. It cannot be added from the roadside on the day you are stranded
• It is not an accident repair cover. Damage repair is an Own Damage claim under your base plan and your other covers
• Help needs a reachable location. Assistance travels on roads, so a car stuck genuinely off the road may need specialist recovery instead
• Travel and a stay need distance. The taxi and the hotel apply only where the breakdown is more than [number] kilometres from the address on your policy
• It does not cover a breakdown that began before the cover did. The cover starts on the date shown in your policy document. If the car had already stopped, or a fault had already left it unable to be driven, before that date, that breakdown is not covered. Accident damage that was already on the car is not paid for either, by this cover or by any cover you add later. Add the cover before a long trip, not after the car has stopped
• Repeat faults are not a substitute for a repair. Calling every week about the same battery will get help each time, but the battery still has to be replaced

What you can and cannot change mid-policy

Some things can be changed during the policy year through an endorsement, which is a written change to your policy document. Others wait for your next renewal. This table shows which is which.

For every standard change you can make during the year, see the India Motor Tariff (IMT) endorsements guide.

Renewing from another insurer? Your optional covers do not carry across automatically. Choose Roadside Assistance cover again on the new policy, and bring your No Claim Bonus certificate so the discount you have built comes with you. The discount carries across as long as your old policy is renewed within 90 days of its expiry. After that it is lost.

Premium ranges are indicative for a car registered in a large city, from a small hatchback to a large sport utility vehicle (SUV), before Goods and Services Tax (GST). What you actually pay depends on your car's Insured Declared Value (IDV), its age and your insurer. Prices for the same cover differ between insurers.

Is there a maximum number of optional covers one policy can carry?

There is no maximum. One policy can carry as many optional covers as you want, and Roadside Assistance cover works alongside every other cover on the list without ruling any of them out. Each cover is written for a different gap, so holding several does not mean paying twice for the same thing. The only thing that grows is the premium, because every extra cover costs something. What can rule a cover out is the car itself, since its age decides whether a particular cover can be offered at all.

Most insurers sell a roadside assistance cover. What differs is the night it is needed: who actually arrives, how soon you know they are on the way, and what the insurer adds that nobody else does.

And what comes with every plan, at no extra cost

Kiwi PayFirst, Kiwi Insurance Flexi Repair and Kiwi InstaCash are optional covers, and right now they are included at no extra cost on every plan. The rest below is simply how a Kiwi claim works.

“A car that will not start is not a claim, it is a bad morning. We built Roadside Assistance cover so that the bad morning ends with one call and costs you nothing at renewal.” — Saurav Jaiswal, Co-founder, Kiwi Insurance