New York Car Insurance Requirements

What Car Insurance Is Required in New York?

Every registered vehicle in New York must carry liability coverage of $25,000 per person for bodily injury and $50,000 per accident, $50,000 and $100,000 for death, and $10,000 for property damage.

On top of that, $50,000 per person in no-fault benefits and uninsured motorist coverage matching the liability limits.

Those numbers have not moved in decades, and a bill to raise them is still sitting in the Legislature.

The practical problem is simple. A hospital stay with surgery can consume the entire $25,000 before anyone talks about lost income or permanent injury.

Which is why in a serious New York crash, the question is almost never what the at-fault driver carried.

It is what else can be reached: other policies, other defendants, and the underinsured coverage on your own policy that most drivers do not know they can buy.

New York's Required Coverage, Line by Line

The Department of Motor Vehicles sets out the minimums a New York policy has to carry before a vehicle can be registered.^[1]

Note what the required package assumes: that a serious injury costs under $25,000 and that a car costs under $10,000. Neither has been true in New York for a long time.

Why $25,000 Does Not Cover a Serious Crash

The minimum bodily injury limit is $25,000 per person. Consider what a serious New York crash actually produces: an ambulance, an emergency department workup, imaging, an orthopedic surgery, an inpatient stay, and months of physical therapy. A single one of those line items can approach or exceed the entire limit.

Then add what medical bills do not capture: months out of work, a permanent limitation, and the pain and suffering that no-fault refuses to touch.

The Order the Money Comes In

Your no-fault benefits pay the early medical bills and part of your lost earnings, up to $50,000. That coverage is yours regardless of fault, and it usually arrives first. What it does not do is compensate you for the injury itself.

Where the Liability Policy Runs Out

The at-fault driver's $25,000 is the ceiling on what that driver's insurer will pay you, no matter how badly you were hurt. In a multi-vehicle crash, $50,000 total gets divided among everyone injured, which can reduce an individual share to almost nothing.

Why the Carrier Offers the Limit Quickly

When damages clearly exceed a small policy, a carrier will often tender the full limit early. That is not generosity, and it is not a valuation of your case. It is an insurer closing its exposure. Accepting a tender usually requires a release, and signing one before every other source of recovery has been identified can end the case for far less than it was worth.

Uninsured and Underinsured Coverage: The Part That Actually Protects You

New York requires every policy to carry uninsured motorist coverage at the same minimum bodily injury limits. It is the coverage that responds when the driver who hit you had no insurance, or fled and was never identified. If no household policy exists at all, the claim runs through MVAIC instead, on a 90-day notice deadline.

The optional coverage matters more. Supplementary underinsured motorist coverage, known in New York as SUM, responds when the at-fault driver had insurance but not enough. If you carry $250,000 in SUM and the driver who caused your injuries carried the $25,000 minimum, SUM can bridge the difference between what their policy pays and your SUM limit.

A few things about SUM that catch people out:

• It is your own insurer on the other side. A SUM claim turns the company you have paid for years into your opponent. They evaluate, they dispute, and they often demand arbitration.
• Consent is required before you settle. Settling with the at-fault driver's carrier without first getting your SUM insurer's written consent can forfeit the SUM claim entirely. This single mistake destroys more New York underinsured claims than any other.
• Your SUM limit is usually offset. The at-fault driver's payment is typically credited against your SUM limit rather than added on top of it, so the coverage fills a gap rather than stacking cleanly.
• It is inexpensive relative to what it does. Raising SUM limits is generally among the least expensive meaningful changes a New York driver can make to a policy.

If you were hurt by a minimum-limits driver, your own SUM coverage should be checked before anything is signed. It is frequently the largest single source of recovery in the file.

Where the Rest of the Money Comes From

When a catastrophic injury sits across from a minimum-limits policy, the work is finding every other source of recovery. In New York that search is usually productive.

None of this is visible from a police report. It comes from insurance disclosure demands, employment and dispatch records, and an early look at the scene, which is why a serious crash against a small policy needs investigation rather than negotiation.

Will New York Raise Its Minimum Limits?

Not yet. Legislation has been introduced in Albany to raise the bodily injury minimums from $25,000/$50,000 to $50,000/$100,000, and to raise property damage from $10,000 to $25,000. As of July 2026 those bills have not been enacted, and the existing 25/50/10 requirement still governs.

Separately, the 2026 motor vehicle reform did change what New York drivers can recover, though not what they must carry. Insurance Law § 5104(d) now caps non-economic loss at $100,000 for an injured motorist who was driving uninsured, was convicted of driving while impaired, or was committing a felony, with a narrow exclusion for coverage lapses under 30 days.^[2]

That last provision gives an uninsured New York driver a second reason to care about coverage. Driving without it no longer risks only a fine and a registration; it now limits what that driver can recover if someone else causes their injuries.

We update this page when the law moves. Until a bill is signed, the minimums are what they are, and planning around a proposal is not planning.