In addition to the normally required liability coverage, Colorado car insurance requires you to carry coverage to protect yourself as well.

Enjoy the beauty of Colorado from your legally insured vehicle.

Colorado car insurance requirements are about average when they are compared to other states. The only difference is that Colorado is one of the few states that also require that you carry some insurance coverage to protect yourself in the event that you are injured in a car accident. Well, the requirement is actually more of a strong suggestion with how the state allows for the option of declining this “required” coverage.

Required Colorado Car Insurance

Vehicle owners in the state of Colorado are required to carry no less than the following Colorado car insurance:

• $15,000 in liability property damage coverage; for damages you cause to another person’s vehicle or property.

• $25,000 in liability bodily injury coverage; this is for medical expenses that arise if you injure or kill another person with your vehicle.

• $50,000 in liability bodily injury coverage; this is coverage for the medical expenses that may arise if you injure or kill two or more people.

Required but Optional Colorado Car Insurance

Medical Payments (med-pay) coverage is also required as part of your Colorado car insurance. Med-pay coverage provides you and your passenger coverage for the medical expenses you may have after an accident.

Even though you are required to have this coverage, the state does allow you to opt out. You just need to sign a document stating that you are refusing this specific coverage. Doesn’t sound all that required now, does it?

No Colorado Car Insurance Penalties (Traffic Stop)

If you are pulled over and do not have Colorado car insurance, you will be given 7 days to either request a hearing or to get insurance (including SR-22 insurance). If you take no action, then your driver’s license will be suspended.

If you haven’t got it through your head that you have to have Colorado car insurance to drive, the penalties get worse the more times you get caught.

Suspension #2 – Your driver’s license is suspended for four months.

Suspension #3 – Your driver’s license is suspended for eight months.

No Colorado Car Insurance Penalties (Accident)

If you get into a car accident and don’t have Colorado car insurance at the time of the accident, you will be under a Financial Responsibility Act Suspension. You will have the right to request a hearing, but if the hearing officer finds that you did not have Colorado car insurance at the time of the accident and you were responsible for the accident; your driver’s license will be suspended.

To get your license back you have to do one of the following:

• Allow three years to pass after the accident without a lawsuit resulting from the accident being filed.

• Provide proof of a sufficient bond

• Provide proof that you were found not responsible for the accident in a lawsuit.

• Provide proof that you have been released by the parties you caused damage to of any liability.

The surcharge disclosure plan for an insurance company varies by company and even by state.

When you get into an accident or earn a traffic violation, your insurance company will eventually find out about it. Once they do, you will most likely see your insurance premium increase; depending on what your insurance company’s surcharge plan is.

A surcharge plan is:

• The dollar amount that your insurance company will pay up to for an accident, before they apply a surcharge.

• Accidents that they do not apply a surcharge to.

• Traffic violations they apply a surcharge to.

• The amount of time that they will keep the surcharge on your insurance policy for, after a traffic violation or accident.

• The surcharge rate for the initial accident or traffic violation, and each one after that.

Now, the surcharge disclosure is a written statement that specifically states the surcharge plan of your insurance company. In most states the disclosure plan has to be provided to the consumer prior to purchase. For example, in Minnesota the law states:

“Before accepting the initial premium payment, an insurer or its agent shall provide a surcharge disclosure statement to any person who applies for a policy which is effective on or after January 1, 1983. If the insurer provides the surcharge disclosure statement on the insurer’s Web site, the insurer or agent may notify the applicant orally or in writing of its availability for review on the insurer’s Web site prior to accepting the initial payment, in lieu of providing a disclosure statement to the applicant in writing, if the insurer so notifies the applicant of the availability of a written version of this statement upon the applicant’s request. The insurer shall provide the surcharge disclosure statement in writing if requested by the applicant. An oral notice shall be presumed delivered if the agent or insurer makes a contemporaneous notation in the applicant’s record of the notice having been delivered or if the insurer or agent retains an audio recording of the notification provided to the applicant.” (2011 Minnesota Statutes 65B.133 Surcharge Disclosure)

For the specific surcharge disclosure for your insurance company, you will have to contact your insurance agent or insurance company directly.

Arkansas car insurance requirements run about average compared to other states.

“The Natural State” to make sure that you have car insurance on your vehicle.

Drivers in the state of Arkansas are required to carry about the same liability coverage as drivers in other states are. Where Arkansas drivers luck out, is that the state gives you the option to opt out of additional coverages that are starting to be required in other states. These mandatory, but yet optional coverages have more to do with protecting you than other people you may be in an accident with.

Mandatory Arkansas Car Insurance

Arkansas car insurance laws require that you carry 25/50/25 in liability coverage. This is about average for the nation, with most states requiring the 25/50 for liability bodily injury coverage.

Broken down, this is what the 25/50/25 means:

25 = That no less than $25,000 in coverage is allowed on your Arkansas car insurance policy, to pay for the medical expenses of a person you injure or kill in an accident.

50 = No less than $50,000 in coverage on your Arkansas car insurance can be purchased to cover the medical expenses for two or more people that you injure or kill.

25 = This last 25 represents the required liability property damage coverage that you are required to have on your insurance policy. You can purchase no less than $25,000 in coverage and it covers the damages that you may cause to another person’s property. This property can be their vehicle or a more stationary object, like a house or traffic sign.

Mandatory Rejection for Arkansas Car Insurance

Personal injury protection, uninsured motorist and underinsured motorist coverages all have to be offered to you at the time you purchase the required liability insurance. You will then have the option of purchasing this additional coverage or rejecting it. If you reject the coverage you have to do so in writing.

If you purchase it, the coverage will be added to whatever other insurance you have purchased. This will give you additional coverage to protect you in the event of an accident.

Assigned Risk Arkansas Car Insurance

Some people just either have very bad luck or they are very bad drivers. If you ask them directly, they would probably say that all of the tickets and accidents on their driving record was the result of bad luck. The insurance companies, however, don’t agree and say it is bad driving.

If you have enough of this bad driving (or bad luck) on your record, the insurance companies aren’t going to want to sell you insurance coverage.

But, wait a minute! Don’t you have to have insurance coverage to be able to drive in Arkansas?

Yes, you do. This is why there is Assigned Risk.

Assigned Risk is when insurance companies are forced by the state of Arkansas to give you insurance coverage, even though they don’t want to. Because they don’t want to and they are being forced to; you can expect very high insurance premiums if you end up in Assigned Risk.

Then you will have to decide if driving is still worth the price you have to pay on your Arkansas car insurance.

Nebraska car insurance follows the vehicle owner, not necessarily the driver of the vehicle at the time.

Covered wagons may not have needed liability insurance, but our faster moving cars do today.

Buying Nebraska car insurance coverage all falls onto the shoulders of the vehicle owner, not the driver. So, if you own a vehicle in the state of Nebraska, you have to make sure that you have insurance coverage on it if it is registered in the state. If you don’t, you are going to lose your driving privileges; even if it was someone else that was driving your car when it was discovered that there was no insurance coverage for it.

Nebraska Car Insurance Coverages

The state of Nebraska requires that you carry liability coverage on your vehicle in order to drive in this state. They require that you have at least $25,000 in bodily injury liability coverage for the medical expenses for one person and $50,000 for two or more people.

They also require that you carry no less than $25,000 in property damage liability coverage on your Nebraska car insurance. This is to cover the damage that you do to another person’s property in the event of a car accident.

Tracking Nebraska Car Insurance

Nebraska car insurance is tracked through an electronic database. The insurance companies are required to submit information to this database so that the state can keep track of the registered vehicles that do and do not have the required insurance coverage.

The database is not updated daily, so if you do have insurance coverage it could take the state a couple of days to see that information.

Penalties for No Nebraska Car Insurance

If you are found guilty of having “No Proof of Insurance”, your driver’s license and/or operating privileges will be suspended. The state does not recommend that you plead guilty to a “No Proof of Insurance” ticket if you are not the owner of the vehicle. This specific citation is only given to the person that owns the vehicle, even if the owner was not the one driving.

If there is coverage for the vehicle, but the insurance card was not present when asked for, you will have a chance to provide proof. For acceptable proof, your insurance company has to write the state a letter saying that you had insurance coverage on the specific day that it was asked for.

Nebraska Car Insurance and SR-22 Filing

Once you have been caught without insurance, you will have to purchase SR-22 insurance for the next 3 years. This insurance is an additional charge on top of what you will pay for the regular insurance coverage. It’s basically proof to the state that you have insurance coverage. If you ever drop the SR-22 insurance before the 3 years are up, the state counts that as having no insurance at all.

Reinstating Driving Privileges with Nebraska Car Insurance

To get your driving privileges restored, you must first get a valid insurance policy in place for your vehicle. In addition to regular insurance, you will now have to have SR-22 insurance as well as pay a $50.00 reinstatement fee to get your driving privileges back.

It would just be cheaper and less hassle for you to keep your Nebraska car insurance active.

New Mexico car insurance has fairly simple requirements that the state keeps track of electronically.

The “Land of Enchantment” and low insurance requirements.

The state of New Mexico doesn’t ask for much. They only require that you carry a small amount of liability insurance; just in case you do cause an accident. For those that live in the state, the minimum New Mexico car insurance requirements may seem like a lot; but compared to what other states require, it’s not.

Minimum New Mexico Car Insurance Requirements

New Mexico car insurance requirements only call for bodily injury liability coverage and property damage liability coverage.

The bodily injury liability is the coverage that pays for the medical expenses of the other person that you hit. New Mexico car insurance law only requires that you carry $25,000 in coverage for the medical expenses from one person. For the total medical expenses for all parties that were not in your vehicle, you are required to have $50,000 in coverage.

Property damage coverage for New Mexico car insurance is at a measly $10,000. This is barely enough coverage at all and would hardly cover the cost to repair a single vehicle. This is definitely not enough coverage to pay for damages to multiple vehicles or if the vehicle you hit is a total loss.

If you are looking to save money just by going with the minimum New Mexico car insurance requirements, you need to be putting the money you saved away. Because if you get in an accident, you will need that saved money to pay for the damages you cause that are beyond the $10,000 your insurance company will pay for.

If you aren’t good at saving money for a rainy day, you may want to purchase more coverage than this.

Tracking New Mexico Car Insurance

The New Mexico Insurance Identification Database tracks all of the registered vehicles in the state and whether they have insurance coverage or not. The database can be accessed by the Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) of the state, the court, and police officers.

If you receive a Notice of Noncompliance from the MVD, you will have to work with your insurance company to have them send the state your insurance information. Without this proof of coverage from your insurance company, the state will suspend your vehicle registration.

Penalties for No New Mexico Car Insurance

If you are driving or have a vehicle registered in New Mexico and you do not have insurance coverage your vehicle registration will be suspended. You could also face other fines and criminal penalties, depending on the situation. The state or the officer working on your case will advise you of the penalties that you face.

To get your vehicle registration reinstated after suspension, you have to purchase an insurance policy that meets the minimum New Mexico car insurance requirements. Once you have purchased this policy, your insurance agent will update the Insurance Identification Database telling the state that you have insurance.

Now that you have New Mexico car insurance, you can visit any MVD office (24 hours later) to reinstate your vehicle registration after paying the $30.00 fee.