By the Drivers Compass editors · Updated October 31, 2026
The jurisdictions that require uninsured and/or underinsured motorist coverage are Connecticut, DC, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming (Insurance Information Institute, via Insurance Business Magazine, 2022-01). Everywhere else, uninsured motorist coverage is something you buy or decline at the quote stage, not something the legislature mandates.
Two of those jurisdictions work differently from the rest: in New Hampshire and Virginia, buying auto insurance at all is not mandatory, but if a driver purchases a policy it must include uninsured motorist coverage (Insurance Business Magazine, 2022-08-19). Requirements are revised by legislatures, so treat the groupings below as a starting point and confirm the current statute for your state before you set limits.
Minimum Liability Limits, All 50 States
The UM/UIM column below reflects the jurisdictions named by the Insurance Information Institute (via Insurance Business Magazine, 2022-01). The PIP column reflects the 12 no-fault states that require personal injury protection, the no-fault jurisdictions that make it optional, and the tort states that require PIP while allowing a no-fault election (The Hartford, 2025-12-15).
Split limits are shown only where a dated source supports the exact figure. Where the cell reads "see state guide," the split is set by that state's own code and is linked in the last section — a rounded or invented figure is worse than no figure when you are buying to a statutory minimum.
| State | Bodily Injury/Property Damage Split | PIP Required (Y/N) | UM/UIM Required (Y/N) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | See state guide | N | N |
| Alaska | See state guide | N | N |
| Arizona | See state guide | N | N |
| Arkansas | See state guide | Y | N |
| California | See state guide (raised 2025) | N | N |
| Colorado | See state guide | N | N |
| Connecticut | See state guide | N | Y |
| Delaware | See state guide | Y | N |
| District of Columbia | See state guide | N (optional) | Y |
| Florida | 0/0/10 | Y | N |
| Georgia | See state guide | N | N |
| Hawaii | See state guide (raised 2026) | Y | N |
| Idaho | See state guide | N | N |
| Illinois | See state guide | N | Y |
| Indiana | See state guide | N | N |
| Iowa | See state guide | N | N |
| Kansas | See state guide | Y | Y |
| Kentucky | See state guide | Y | N |
| Louisiana | See state guide | N | N |
| Maine | See state guide | N | Y |
| Maryland | See state guide | Y | Y |
| Massachusetts | See state guide (raised 2025) | Y | Y |
| Michigan | See state guide | Y | N |
| Minnesota | See state guide | Y | Y |
| Mississippi | See state guide | N | N |
| Missouri | See state guide | N | Y |
| Montana | See state guide | N | N |
| Nebraska | See state guide | N | Y |
| Nevada | See state guide | N | N |
| New Hampshire | No liability minimum; a policy is not mandatory | N | Y, if a policy is purchased |
| New Jersey | See state guide (raised 2026) | Y | N |
| New Mexico | See state guide | N | N |
| New York | See state guide | Y | Y |
| North Carolina | 50/100/50 (raised 2025) | N | Y |
| North Dakota | See state guide | Y | Y |
| Ohio | See state guide | N | N |
| Oklahoma | See state guide | N | N |
| Oregon | See state guide | Y | Y |
| Pennsylvania | 15/30/5 | Y (First Party Benefits) | N |
| Rhode Island | See state guide | N | N |
| South Carolina | See state guide | N | Y |
| South Dakota | See state guide | N (optional) | Y |
| Tennessee | See state guide | N | N |
| Texas | See state guide | Y | N |
| Utah | See state guide (raised 2025) | Y | N |
| Vermont | See state guide | N | Y |
| Virginia | See state guide (raised 2025) | N (optional) | Y |
| Washington | See state guide | N (optional) | N |
| West Virginia | See state guide | N | Y |
| Wisconsin | See state guide | N | N |
| Wyoming | See state guide | N | N |
Notes on the table:
- Florida's 0/0/10, with no statutory minimum bodily injury liability requirement and PIP required, is as listed by CarInsurance.com, 2026-09-21. Pennsylvania's 15/30/5 with PIP (First Party Benefits) required, and North Carolina's 50/100/50 with UM and UIM required, are from the same listing (CarInsurance.com, 2026-09-21), as is the fact that New Hampshire is the only state that does not require drivers to carry liability car insurance (CarInsurance.com, 2026-09-21).
- Minimums changed recently in these states: New Jersey and Hawaii increased their minimum liability limits in 2026, and California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia increased theirs in 2025 (CarInsurance.com, 2026-09-21). If your renewal quote jumped, a raised statutory floor may be part of it.
- "N" in the PIP column means the state is not among those named as requiring PIP; nine states offer PIP as an optional add-on coverage rather than requiring it (The Hartford, 2025-12-15).
- A "Y" in the UM column tells you the coverage must be on the policy. It does not tell you the required limit — Maine requires uninsured motorist bodily injury coverage of $50,000 per person and $100,000 per accident, while Virginia requires $25,000 per person/$50,000 per accident plus $20,000 of uninsured motorist property damage (Insurance Information Institute, via Insurance Business Magazine, 2022-01).
- Nothing in this table is a lender or lessor requirement. No state mandates collision or comprehensive coverage; a finance or lease contract commonly does, often with a maximum deductible written into the agreement. Those are contract terms, enforced by the lienholder, not by the DMV.
No-Fault vs. Tort States
There are 12 states in the US that require no-fault auto insurance coverage (The Hartford, 2025-12-15). How you file after a crash depends on which group your state sits in.
No-fault states that require PIP (12 states, The Hartford, 2025-12-15): Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Utah. In a no-fault state, each driver must file a claim with their own insurance company after an accident, no matter who is at fault (The Hartford, 2025-12-15), so your own PIP or First Party Benefits coverage handles medical bills first.
No-fault jurisdictions where PIP is optional: South Dakota, Virginia, Washington and Washington, D.C. are no-fault states that don't require PIP but offer it as optional coverage (The Hartford, 2025-12-15) — meaning if you decline it, your injury recovery runs through liability, medical payments or UM coverage instead of a first-party PIP claim.
At-fault states that require PIP and allow a no-fault election: Arkansas, Delaware, Maryland, Oregon and Texas are at-fault (tort) states that give drivers the option to buy no-fault insurance while requiring personal injury protection coverage (The Hartford, 2025-12-15), so your own PIP pays early medical costs while the tort claim against the other driver stays available.
At-fault/tort states with no PIP mandate: the remaining states, including Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. In a tort state, at-fault drivers are responsible for paying the other driver's medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering after a car accident (The Hartford, 2025-12-15), so you claim against their liability insurer — and if they have none, your own UM coverage is the only place left to go.
Regional Patterns in Coverage Requirements
The UM/UIM jurisdictions named by the Insurance Information Institute (via Insurance Business Magazine, 2022-01) are not scattered evenly. They cluster:
- New England and New York: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont.
- The Mid-Atlantic and central Appalachia down to the Carolinas: DC, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina.
- The Upper Midwest and Plains: Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming.
- Oregon is the only Pacific or Mountain state on the list.
The overlap with first-party injury systems is the clearest explanation for the northeastern and upper-midwestern cluster. Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and North Dakota all require PIP as no-fault states (The Hartford, 2025-12-15), and all of them also appear on the UM-required list. A legislature that has already decided your own insurer pays your medical bills first has, in effect, accepted first-party recovery as the default — mandating UM extends the same logic to the case where the other driver has no policy to sue.
The gap is just as telling. Mississippi has the highest percentage of uninsured drivers among states at 29.4%, against about 28 million uninsured motorists nationally, equivalent to 12.6% of the driving population (Insurance Research Council, via Insurance Business Magazine, 2022-08-19) — and Mississippi is not on the UM-required list. Across the Gulf South and most of the Mountain West, the coverage that protects you from an uninsured driver is optional precisely where uninsured drivers are most common. Mandating UM adds premium to every policy sold, and in states already struggling with affordability and compliance, that trade-off tends to cut against a mandate.
One more pattern shapes what a mandate is worth: about half of US states prohibit stacking of uninsured motorist liability limits across multiple insured vehicles (Insurance Information Institute, via Insurance Business Magazine, 2022-08-19). In an anti-stacking state, insuring three cars does not give you three times the UM limit for one accident. Whether stacking is available where you live, and whether your insurer's filed policy language permits it, are separate questions — ask both before you assume a multi-car policy multiplies your protection.
Finally, keep the two rulebooks apart. The state sets a liability floor and, in the jurisdictions listed above, a UM requirement. A lender or lessor separately requires physical damage coverage on a financed or leased vehicle. Satisfying one does not satisfy the other.
Look Up Your State's Full Requirements
Statutory splits, UM limits and PIP rules change by legislative session. These single-state guides carry the current figures, the effective dates of recent changes, and the penalties for driving without coverage.
New England
- Connecticut requirements
- Maine requirements
- Massachusetts requirements
- New Hampshire requirements
- Rhode Island requirements
- Vermont requirements
Mid-Atlantic
- Delaware requirements
- District of Columbia requirements
- Maryland requirements
- New Jersey requirements
- New York requirements
- Pennsylvania requirements
- Virginia requirements
- West Virginia requirements
Southeast
- Alabama requirements
- Arkansas requirements
- Florida requirements
- Georgia requirements
- Kentucky requirements
- Louisiana requirements
- Mississippi requirements
- North Carolina requirements
- South Carolina requirements
- Tennessee requirements
Midwest
- Illinois requirements
- Indiana requirements
- Iowa requirements
- Kansas requirements
- Michigan requirements
- Minnesota requirements
- Missouri requirements
- Nebraska requirements
- North Dakota requirements
- Ohio requirements
- South Dakota requirements
- Wisconsin requirements
Southwest
- Arizona requirements
- New Mexico requirements
- Oklahoma requirements
- Texas requirements
Mountain West
- Colorado requirements
- Idaho requirements
- Montana requirements
- Nevada requirements
- Utah requirements
- Wyoming requirements
Pacific
- Alaska requirements
- California requirements
- Hawaii requirements
- Oregon requirements
- Washington requirements
Questions
Why does Florida list no bodily injury minimum while North Carolina requires 50/100/50?
They run on different systems. Florida's minimum liability limits are listed as 0/0/10, with no statutory minimum bodily injury liability requirement, and PIP is required (CarInsurance.com, 2026-09-21) — because in a no-fault state each driver must file a claim with their own insurance company after an accident, no matter who is at fault (The Hartford, 2025-12-15). North Carolina is a tort state: its minimums are 50/100/50, it increased its minimum liability limits in 2025, and it requires uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage (CarInsurance.com, 2026-09-21), because an injured driver there recovers from the at-fault driver's liability policy. A Florida driver crossing into North Carolina is still subject to whatever their own policy's filed language says about out-of-state accidents, which is worth reading before a trip rather than after one.
My state doesn't require UM coverage. Does that mean I don't need it?
The mandate tells you what the legislature requires, not what your exposure is. Mississippi has the highest percentage of uninsured drivers among states at 29.4%, against 12.6% of the driving population nationally (Insurance Research Council, via Insurance Business Magazine, 2022-08-19), and it is not among the jurisdictions listed as requiring UM coverage (Insurance Information Institute, via Insurance Business Magazine, 2022-01) — so a Mississippi driver who wants protection from an uninsured at-fault driver has to ask for the coverage and choose a limit. In North Carolina the same coverage arrives on the policy by law, because UM and UIM are required there (CarInsurance.com, 2026-09-21). Think in terms of limits and coverage types: what the at-fault driver's policy would owe you, what your own UM bodily injury limit is, and whether you also have UM property damage or collision coverage behind it.
If two states both require UM, do they require the same thing?
No. Maine requires uninsured motorist bodily injury coverage of $50,000 per person and $100,000 per accident, while Virginia requires $25,000 per person/$50,000 per accident plus $20,000 of uninsured motorist property damage (Insurance Information Institute, via Insurance Business Magazine, 2022-01). A Maine driver has the higher per-person injury limit but no mandated UM property damage; a Virginia driver has a lower injury floor with a separate property damage component. Stacking rules differ too — about half of US states prohibit stacking of uninsured motorist liability limits across multiple insured vehicles (Insurance Information Institute, via Insurance Business Magazine, 2022-08-19), so the same two-car household can be in very different positions depending on which state issued the policy.
Have any state minimums changed recently enough to affect my renewal?
Yes. New Jersey and Hawaii increased their minimum liability limits in 2026, and California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia increased theirs in 2025 (CarInsurance.com, 2026-09-21). So a California driver and a Nevada driver with identical vehicles and records may see different renewal behaviour for reasons that have nothing to do with either one's driving — one state's floor moved and the other's did not. If you carry minimum limits in a state that raised them, your insurer generally has to bring the policy up to the new statutory floor at renewal, and the premium follows. Check the declarations page against your state's current statutory split rather than against last year's.