Open this photo in gallery: You don’t need to tell your insurance company when you borrow a car – even if it’s a car share or a rental – but you should tell them if you crash it, insurance experts said.Jeff Vinnick/The Globe and Mail My daughter is at university in British Columbia and I visit her every couple of months for a few days at a time. When I’m there, I use Evo Car Share. When I signed up for Evo, they asked me for my Ontario licence and driving record. Do I need to let my insurance company know that I’m using a car-sharing service? I’m afraid if I don’t and I’m in a collision while using it, I won’t be insured. – Kate, Burlington, Ont. You don’t need to tell your insurance company when you borrow a car – even if it’s a car share or a rental – but you should tell them if you crash it, insurance experts said. “The [car-share] vehicle will be covered under the vehicle owner’s policy [and not yours],” Brett Weltman, spokesman for the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC), said in an e-mail. “But if you have an at-fault accident with any vehicle – yours, a friend’s, a car-sharing company’s – it could affect your insurance history and your insurance rates [so] it’s always a good idea to let your insurance company know.” Car-sharing companies – including Evo in B.C., Communauto in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia and Zipcar in Toronto – and car-sharing co-ops offer their members short-term car rentals that typically include insurance and gas or charging. With Evo, for instance, you can borrow cars in and around Vancouver and Victoria for minutes, hours or days. You don’t need to own or lease a car and pay your own insurance to join: anyone with a valid driver’s licence can join, as long as they have more than two years of driving experience and a fairly clean driving record. If you get into an at-fault crash in an Evo vehicle, you’re covered by Evo’s insurance – which includes $5-million in liability coverage – but you will have to pay a $250 damage fee, said the British Columbia Automobile Association (BCAA), which owns Evo. You cannot opt out of Evo’s coverage to use your own car insurance, Keiko Jacobs, a BCAA spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. That’s different from a traditional car rental. Although rental cars are insured, the rental agreement usually leaves you on the hook for the full cost of damages or replacement in an at-fault accident – unless you bought a collision damage waiver at the rental counter or you have rental coverage through your credit card or through your own car insurance. With Evo, you may not be covered in a collision if you break the membership agreement. So, how often do Evo users get into crashes and need the coverage? “Of the millions of trips taken per year in an Evo, less than 1 per cent result in a claim,” Jacobs said. We checked with some other car-sharing companies. Zipcar, which is owned by Avis Budget Group, said that if you have car insurance, you can choose to use it instead of the coverage they provide. Communauto said you can’t use your own car insurance. Communauto’s website states that you can opt out of their coverage and use your credit card’s coverage instead. Oversharing? If you don’t tell your insurance company about an at-fault crash you had in a car-sharing vehicle, they could eventually find out on their own if they check records when it’s time to renew your policy, IBC’s Weltman said. But, if you used the car-sharing company’s insurance, your name may not appear in databases of insurance company claims, said Adam Mitchell, chief executive officer of Whitby, Ont.-based Mitchell & Whale Insurance Brokers Ltd., which operates as Mitch Insurance. “It would rely on their insurance company or the other party in the accident reporting it to the accident bureau," he said. Evo’s Insurance is through the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC), the province’s government-run insurer – which said it will only share claims information with another insurance company if a customer requests a claims history letter. That letter, which is sent directly to the other company, would include at-fault claims you had while driving an Evo vehicle, ICBC said in an e-mail. In Ontario and most other provinces with private insurance, you are required to tell your insurance company about recent at-fault claims and traffic tickets. If you don’t, your policy could be cancelled, Mitchell said. Also, your insurance company can use at-fault collisions and traffic tickets to raise your rates. “You absolutely have contractually agreed to tell them that [tickets and at-fault claims] are there,” Mitchell said, adding that insurance companies have to pay every time they search your records, so they may not do it every year. “But most people don’t call up and say ‘I got a stop sign ticket.’ It’s the luck of the draw if the insurance company finds it.” Have a driving question? Send it to globedrive@globeandmail.com and put ‘Driving Concerns’ in your subject line. E-mails without the correct subject line may not be answered. Canada’s a big place, so let us know where you are so we can find the answer for your city and province.