Reader question:
What are the car insurance requirements in Nevada?
Abigail
Great question, Abigail.
Auto insurance vary from state to state, but there is actually more to be considered when thinking about state auto insurance laws than just the amount required. Another important factor is how the laws of the state are enforced. In some states, like Texas, nobody knows that you don’t have insurance until you get pulled over without it and give them a reason to start checking up on you. In Nevada, there is a special way of making sure that people have insurance.
First of all, what’s required:
Liability for bodily injury, at $15,000; for bodily injury or death f 2+ people, double that; $10,000 for damage or destruction of personal property. This is the only kind of coverage required by law, also known as minimum liability.
Now, with cooperation between insurance companies and the Department of Motor Vehicles, Nevada has a program to make sure you have insurance, called the Insurance Verification Program, or IVP. This, basically, is a program in which insurance companies are required to report to the DMV every month who has opened a new policy and who has cancelled one. This is all organized in a computer database, and VINs and names that show up as having terminated a policy but have no record of having opened a new one are flagged, and the DMV follows up on these flags.
If your car is flagged, they’ll mail you a letter requesting verification of your insurance. You have 20 days to send this in. If you don’t send it in within the 20 days, your car’s registration will be canceled, and in order to get it back you’ll have to appeal the cancellation.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama