Uninsured Motorists Statistics: 2022 U.S. Report

Nearly three-quarters of drivers in the U.S. have some form of uninsured motorist coverage, which is separated into bodily injury coverage and property damage coverage.

Of these policies, nearly three-quarters are six months long, while nearly a third are annual.

Not all states require uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, but it’s necessary to get your losses covered in an accident that an uninsured or underinsured driver caused.

What Is Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Coverage?

Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage exists to reimburse you for your bodily injury and property damage losses from an accident caused by someone who drove without insurance or lacked limits high enough to cover your losses completely. In many states, uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage includes hit-and-runs, accidents in which the driver flees the scene without leaving any insurance or contact information.

How It Works

If someone hits your car or hits your parked car, uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage would reimburse you for your losses (detailed below). Sometimes uninsured motorist coverage is bundled with underinsured motorist coverage, and sometimes they’re separate.

What It Covers

Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage covers the following:

• Any other damage to your property
• Any other out-of-pocket expenses
• Car repairs
• Collision insurance deductible
• Funeral expenses
• Loss of income
• Lost wages
• Medical bills
• Pain and suffering
• Rental car cost¹

Cost

Despite the increasingly high cost of car insurance, uninsured motorist coverage is relatively inexpensive for both bodily injury and property damage coverage. The median price of uninsured motorist bodily injury coverage is just $50 a year.

The median price of uninsured motorist property damage coverage is even less at $38 annually.

All in all, you can get away with paying a median price of $90 a year for uninsured liability coverage.

Coverage Limits

The coverage liability limits are how much insurance companies will pay under covered insurance claims. For example, with a 100/300 limit, an insurance company would pay up to $100,000 for accidents involving one person, or $300,000 for accidents involving two or more people.

The most common liability limits for uninsured motorist bodily injury coverage are $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident, which 27 percent of our survey respondents have.

For property damage coverage, one-third of respondents have $25,000 limits — a plurality but not a majority.

Deductibles

Under a covered uninsured motorist claim, the deductible is the amount you’ll pay before your insurance provider contributes. Over one-third of survey respondents with uninsured motorist property damage coverage have $0 deductibles, meaning they don’t have to pay anything out of pocket before they’re compensated for their property damage losses, while 1 in 5 have $250 deductibles.

As of 2019, the last time the Insurance Research Council published national data, an estimated 12 percent of drivers in the U.S. lack car insurance. That means over 29 million licensed drivers do not have any financial liability protection when driving, an average of 581,080 drivers per state.

The state with the highest percentage of uninsured motorists is Mississippi, where 1 in 3 drivers lack insurance. Accordingly, drivers are required to carry at least $25,000 of uninsured motorist coverage per person and $50,000 per accident⁴. But surprisingly, car insurance in Mississippi costs 10 percent less than the national average at only $975.58 annually, according to 2019 National Association of Insurance Commissioners data.⁵

Why is the ratio of uninsured drivers versus insured drivers so high in Mississippi? Perhaps it’s because Mississippi drivers don’t need to show proof of insurance when purchasing a car, renewing their license plates, or updating their driver’s licenses, making the laws difficult to enforce.⁶

Unfortunately for those who follow the law, uninsured drivers increase the cost of car insurance for everyone else. Based on the Federal Highway Administration’s estimated number of licensed drivers in the U.S. in 2019, this is what uninsured motorist coverage costs Americans:

• $1.1 billion in uninsured motorist bodily injury coverage
• $664 million in uninsured motorist property damage coverage
• $1.97 billion in combined uninsured bodily injury and property damage coverage bundles

When you drive without insurance, not only are you risking fees, jail time, community service, and a license suspension or revocation, you’re also forcing other people to pay in the billions for your liability. To explore more of our original data, read our car insurance research.

After sourcing respondents on Prolific, we conducted a survey on SurveyMonkey from March 10 to March 14, 2022, getting responses from 228 U.S. adults. The respondents had car insurance from six different companies, and we provided them with information on how to access their policy declarations pages, which cover limits. We chose these insurance companies based on their market share and the availability of online instructions for accessing the declarations pages.

We also used third-party data from these sources:

• Federal Highway Administration
• GEICO
• Insurance Research Council
• Mississippi Department of Commerce
• Richard Schwartz & Associates Injury Lawyers
• U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration