Required Car Insurance Coverage — Vermont

Vermont's liability minimums are $25,000 per person for bodily injury, $50,000 per accident for bodily injury, and $10,000 for property damage. These are the floor amounts; your carrier may have sold you higher limits, but anything below 25/50/10 leaves you uninsured under Vermont law. The bodily injury per-person limit is what the insurer pays to any single person you injure in an accident; the per-accident limit is the total the insurer pays when multiple people are injured. The property damage limit covers the other driver's vehicle and any property you damage.

Personal injury protection is mandatory in Vermont regardless of fault. PIP pays your own medical expenses, lost wages, and essential services after an accident, up to the policy limit, without requiring you to prove the other driver was at fault. Uninsured motorist coverage is also required; it pays your bodily injury damages when you're hit by a driver with no insurance or insufficient coverage. Vermont's uninsured motorist rate sits at 11.8%, meaning roughly one in nine drivers you share the road with carries no coverage at all. The PIP and uninsured motorist requirements exist because Vermont operates as a no-fault state for medical expenses but a tort state for liability claims, creating a hybrid system where you need both first-party medical coverage and third-party liability protection.

If your current policy shows only liability coverage without PIP or uninsured motorist listed on the declarations page, your policy doesn't meet Vermont's legal requirements. Carriers licensed in Vermont automatically include these coverages when you buy a policy, but out-of-state policies, lapsed-and-reinstated policies, and non-standard policies sometimes omit them. The DMV doesn't send a courtesy notice when your policy is missing a required component; you discover the gap when a claim is denied or when the DMV suspends your registration during a random compliance audit.

Start with carriers that write SR-22 filings in Vermont and offer online quotes: Geico, Progressive, State Farm, Allstate, Farmers, Dairyland, National General, and The General. Request quotes from at least three carriers, specifying the violation type, conviction date, and SR-22 filing requirement upfront. Carriers price SR-22 filings using separate surcharge multipliers for the violation itself and the filing obligation; hiding the violation during the quote process produces an accurate premium that gets rescinded when underwriting pulls your motor vehicle record.

Verify the quote includes all four required coverage components: 25/50/10 liability, PIP, and uninsured motorist. If the quote shows only liability coverage, ask the agent to add PIP and uninsured motorist before binding. Confirm the carrier will file the SR-22 certificate electronically with the Vermont DMV within 24-48 hours of binding coverage, and request a copy of the filed certificate for your records. The court or DMV may require proof of filing by a specific deadline; the certificate copy is that proof. Bind coverage before your current policy cancels or lapses. A single day without coverage during the SR-22 period triggers suspension, restarts the filing clock, and adds a $96 reinstatement fee on top of the new policy premium.