Minimum Mandatory Car Insurance Requirements By State

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Want to know what the minimum mandatory car insurance requirements are for your state? Well you can find out below. The following table outlines all the basic requirements you need to be able to legally drive where you live. (Explanations below table)

Explanation for mandatory car insurance coverage requirements listed above:

1. No-Fault Insurance: This is an insurance system whereby your insurance company pays you in the event of an accident regardless of whether or not you were found to be at fault. The aim is to reduce insurance fraud. You can learn more from Wikipedia.
2. Liability Insurance: Most states require some form of liability insurance. It pays out to other drivers/victims if you’re at fault in an accident. You can learn more from our What Is Liability Car Insurance Coverage? page.
3. Amount Of Liability Insurance Required: There are always three amounts of coverage (expressed in thousands of dollars) required in the liability portion of your insurance policy. (Unless you get a combined policy, which usually must be at least as much as the second and third numbers added together from the list below). They are:
   • First Number: Individual bodily injury liability amount. This pays for bodily injury and/or death for one person in an accident.
   • Second Number: Per accident bodily injury liability amount. This pays for bodily injury and/or death for all people in an accident.
   • Third Number: Property damage liability amount. This pays for damage to property in the event of an accident.

   So for example, Texas’ liability insurance requirements are listed as 30/60/25. This means you have to have at least $30,000 worth of bodily injury coverage per person, $60,000 bodily injury coverage per accident and $25,000 property damage liability insurance. You should probably get more than this.

4. PIP Or Med-Pay: Med-Pay or medical payments coverage pays for your medical costs that arise from an accident. PIP or Personal Injury Protection, covers medical costs as well as lost wages or other costs as defined in your auto insurance policy. PIP is always mandatory in no-fault states (and is often called no-fault insurance), but it can also be found in some fault states as well. To learn more read our full Personal Injury Protection (PIP) and Medical Payment Coverage explanation.
5. Uninsured Motorist Coverage: This coverage protects you, if you are the victim of an uninsured motorist. You can learn more about Uninsured Motorist Coverage (UM) on our car insurance types page.
6. Contributory Negligence or Comparative Negligence: Finally, Contributory Negligence or Comparative Negligence determine how degrees of fault are dealt with after an accident. They can have a very large impact on how much, or even if, you can collect from an at fault driver. Basically, contributory negligence means you can’t collect if you are even 1% at fault in an accident. Comparative negligence means you collect based in proportion to your degree of fault. Comparative negligence can be modified so that you only collect when you are less than 50% or 51% at fault in an accident. You can learn more from this article: Contributory Negligence vs. Comparative Negligence.

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