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What Car Insurance Does South Carolina Require?
Every South Carolina driver must carry at least 25/50/25 liability coverage: $25,000 per person and $50,000 per crash for injuries, plus $25,000 for property damage.
South Carolina also does something most states do not: it builds uninsured motorist coverage into every auto policy issued here, at those same minimum limits.
If you were hurt by a minimally insured driver, $25,000 may be all their policy will ever pay, no matter what your injuries cost.
The real question after a serious crash is never the minimum. It is how many policies apply, and finding all of them is a lawyer's job.
We find the coverage others miss. Free case review: (888) 713-6653.
SC Auto Insurance Minimums at a Glance
- Bodily injury liability: $25,000 per person / $50,000 per accident
- Property damage liability: $25,000 per accident
- Uninsured motorist coverage: required on every policy at 25/50/25
- Underinsured motorist coverage: optional, but insurers must offer it
- Serious injuries routinely exceed the minimums several times over
The Coverage Every South Carolina Policy Must Include
The requirements come from S.C. Code § 38-77-140 and § 38-77-150:[1]
| Coverage | Minimum Required | What It Pays For |
|---|---|---|
| Bodily injury liability (per person) | $25,000 | Injuries the policyholder causes to one victim |
| Bodily injury liability (per accident) | $50,000 | Total injury payout for all victims of one crash |
| Property damage liability | $25,000 | Vehicles and property the policyholder damages |
| Uninsured motorist (UM) | 25/50/25 | The policyholder's own losses when the at-fault driver has no insurance or flees |
| Underinsured motorist (UIM) | Optional (must be offered) | The gap when the at-fault driver's limits run out |
The mandatory UM requirement is the piece that matters most to victims. Unlike liability coverage, which protects the other guy, UM coverage protects you, and South Carolina made it non-optional at the minimum level. Our full breakdown of UM and UIM coverage in South Carolina covers how those claims actually work, including stacking.
Why $25,000 Fails a Seriously Injured Victim
Twenty-five thousand dollars sounds like money until a crash produces a surgery.
An ambulance ride, an ER workup with imaging, and one night of admission can consume the per-person minimum before a specialist ever gets involved. A fractured hip, a fusion, or a brain injury runs into six figures without trying. When four family members are hurt in one wreck, they share a single $50,000 ceiling.
The liability insurer's obligation stops at the policy limit. Whatever the jury might have awarded, the carrier's checkbook closes at 25/50, and collecting beyond it from an individual driver's assets is usually theory rather than money.
That is why the value of a serious South Carolina injury case so often depends less on what happened than on the coverage hunt: the at-fault driver's policy, your own UM/UIM, a second household policy that stacks, an employer's commercial coverage if the driver was working, a rideshare layer, a dram shop claim against the bar that overserved. Each is its own investigation, and each can multiply what a claim actually collects.
Driving Uninsured in South Carolina: What It Means for Victims
South Carolina requires insurance, and a meaningful share of drivers carry none anyway. Registration suspension and reinstatement fees do not put money back into the hands of the person they hit.
When the at-fault driver is uninsured, your claim does not end. It changes address: the mandatory UM coverage on your own policy, or on a resident family member's policy, becomes the source of recovery. The same is true for hit-and-run crashes, which South Carolina treats as uninsured motorist claims when the driver is never identified.
Two things to know before assuming there is nothing to collect. First, UM claims are adversarial: your own insurer stands in the uninsured driver's shoes and defends the claim the way his carrier would have. Second, coverage often exists in places victims never look, which is why the first task in every serious case is mapping every policy in the household.
Buying Smarter Than the State Requires
This page exists for crash victims, but one paragraph belongs to prevention. The state minimums protect your license, not your family. The coverage that actually protects you in a serious wreck is the optional kind: UIM at real limits, UM above the minimum, and MedPay for the early bills. The premium difference is usually modest; the difference after a catastrophic crash is the whole outcome.
If you are reading this after a crash instead of before one, the question becomes what coverage already exists. The honest answer is that most people do not know what their own policy says until a lawyer reads it, and the declaration page you send us is often worth more than anything the other driver carries.