A lot of terms flying around here and some are being mis-stated. Here are definitions for comprehensive and collision coverage:
With Collision coverage, your insurance company pays for damage to your auto when you collide with another vehicle or object. If you hit a car, a pole or another nonliving object, Collision coverage will apply.
With Comprehensive coverage, your insurance company pays for damage to your auto caused by an event other than a collision, such as fire, theft or vandalism. If you hit an animal, or if your auto is flooded or stolen, Comprehensive coverage will apply.From:
https://www.progressive.com/glossary/comprehensive-and-collision/I think you should almost always carry comprehensive, and it is very inexpensive. Comprehensive for myself and my wife on two vehicles totals $79/yr. YMMV obviously, but relative to collision it is very cheap.
Collision is the expensive coverage. The important thing to understand is that it covers damage from an accident that is
your fault. If the accident is not your fault, you're covered either by the other driver's insurance (hopefully) or the under/un insured motorist coverage that you presumably have. (If you don't, you should. Mine is $16/yr)
So basically if your collision coverage is $300, and your vehicle is 20k, the math is as follows.
20,000/300 is 66.666666.
So every 66.66 years you have paid $20k in insurance premiums for that coverage. If you crash and utilize the coverage more than once every 66.66 years, the coverage was worth having. If you don't crash at least once every 66.66 years, the coverage was not worth it.
Obviously your vehicle depreciates, so that equation isn't perfect. But even if you assumed an average vehicle value over the life of the policy of only 10k for the car, then it's still 33.33 years. In reality your premium decreases over time as the vehicle depreciates and you age (cheaper to insure) so that number goes back up somewhere.
I recently went through a similar thought process and ultimately decided to keep coverage. For me, that number would have to be less than ~10 to be worth it. Totally up to you, but I hope that helps!
Cheers,
James