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Motorcycle Insurance Requirements by State

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Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in Arizona?Yes — Arizona requires 25/50/15 motorcycle liability insurance. A lapse triggers an MVD intent-to-suspend notice in 7 days. Here is the penalty schedule.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in California?Yes — California requires 30/60/15 motorcycle liability insurance, raised in 2025. A crash while uninsured triggers a one-year license suspension.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in Colorado?Yes — Colorado requires 25/50/15 motorcycle liability insurance. Riding uninsured is a misdemeanor: $500 fine and four license points.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in Florida?Florida does not legally require motorcycle insurance, but an uninsured at-fault rider can lose their license for up to three years.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in Georgia?Yes — Georgia requires 25/50/25 motorcycle liability insurance. Its electronic system flags a 10-day lapse on its own. See the penalty schedule.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in Illinois?Yes — Illinois requires 25/50/20 motorcycle liability insurance. Riding uninsured brings a minimum $500 fine and a three-month license-plate suspension.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in Michigan?Yes — Michigan requires 50/100/10 motorcycle liability insurance, and bikes sit outside the no-fault system. Riding uninsured is a misdemeanor.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in New York?Yes — New York requires 25/50/10 motorcycle liability insurance. A lapse runs an $8-to-$12-a-day civil penalty. Here is the full schedule and what to carry.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in North Carolina?Yes — North Carolina requires 50/100/50 motorcycle liability insurance, raised in 2025. A lapse runs an escalating civil penalty.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in Ohio?Yes — Ohio requires 25/50/25 motorcycle liability insurance. The BMV runs random verification and escalating reinstatement fees of $40, $300, then $600.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in Pennsylvania?Yes — Pennsylvania requires 15/30/5 motorcycle liability insurance. A lapse means a 3-month registration suspension or a $500 civil penalty.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in Tennessee?Yes — Tennessee requires 25/50/25 motorcycle liability insurance. The James Lee Atwood Jr. Law verifies coverage electronically.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in Texas?Yes — Texas requires 30/60/25 motorcycle liability insurance. The TexasSure database flags uninsured bikes in real time. Here is the penalty schedule.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in Virginia?Virginia requires 50/100/25 motorcycle liability insurance, raised in 2025. A lapse now costs a $600 fee and a three-year SR-22.Do You Need Motorcycle Insurance in Washington?Yes — Washington requires 25/50/10 motorcycle liability insurance. A no-insurance ticket runs about $550 for a first offense.
FTC disclosure. motoinsure earns a commission when riders quote through some of the providers listed. Rankings are editorial and never paid. See our methodology and full disclosure.

Almost every state requires you to carry motorcycle liability insurance to register and legally ride. The exceptions are narrow: Florida does not mandate motorcycle liability insurance at all, and New Hampshire lets a rider skip insurance if they can otherwise prove financial responsibility. Everywhere else, a minimum liability policy is the law. The minimum limits vary state to state — most sit at 25/50/25, a handful run higher — and every figure on this page traces to that state's Department of Insurance.

Do you legally need motorcycle insurance?

In 48 states and the District of Columbia, yes — riding a registered motorcycle on public roads requires a liability insurance policy that meets the state minimum, and proof of that coverage is tied to registration [Insurance Information Institute, 2024]. Liability insurance is third-party protection: it pays the people you injure and the property you damage in an at-fault crash, and it pays nothing toward your own bike or your own injuries.

Two states break the pattern. Florida does not require motorcyclists to carry bodily-injury or property-damage liability insurance — a rider can register and legally ride uninsured, though a financial-responsibility law still applies after an at-fault crash [Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, 2024]. New Hampshire does not mandate insurance for any motor vehicle, but an uninsured rider must be able to demonstrate financial responsibility — meaning the personal assets to cover crash damages — or face license and registration penalties [New Hampshire Department of Insurance, 2024].

The legal floor and the right amount of coverage are two different things. A state minimum is the least the law accepts, not the coverage most riders should carry. A serious motorcycle crash routinely generates medical bills past a $25,000 or $50,000 per-person cap, and once the policy limit is spent, the at-fault rider is personally liable for the rest. The coverage guide explains what each coverage type does and where the minimum leaves a rider exposed.

Requirements by state, at a glance

The table below shows minimum liability limits for the 15 states motoinsure covers in depth, written in the standard three-number form: bodily injury per person / bodily injury per accident / property damage. Each state links to its full requirements page. Every figure is sourced to that state's Department of Insurance and was current as of the date shown; statutes change, so confirm against the state DOI before you buy.

| State | Minimum liability | Mandatory? | |---|---|---| | Arizona | 25/50/15 | Yes | | California | 30/60/15 | Yes | | Colorado | 25/50/15 | Yes | | Florida | None mandated | No | | Georgia | 25/50/25 | Yes | | Illinois | 25/50/20 | Yes | | Michigan | 50/100/10 | Yes | | New York | 25/50/10 | Yes | | North Carolina | 50/100/50 | Yes | | Ohio | 25/50/25 | Yes | | Pennsylvania | 15/30/5 | Yes | | Tennessee | 25/50/25 | Yes | | Texas | 30/60/25 | Yes | | Virginia | 50/100/25 | Yes | | Washington | 25/50/10 | Yes |

Three patterns are worth reading off the table. First, the common floor is 25/50/25 or close to it — a thin ceiling that a single serious injury can exhaust. Second, several states have raised their minimums recently: California moved to 30/60/15 in January 2025, North Carolina to 50/100/50, and Virginia to 50/100/25, so a rider relying on an older quote may be carrying a non-compliant limit [California Department of Insurance, 2025]. Third, Florida is the genuine outlier — no liability mandate at all. For the full picture of registration, helmet rules, and provider options in a given state, the state pages cover each one in depth.

What happens if you ride uninsured

In a state that mandates coverage, riding without it is a real penalty, not a paperwork slip. The standard consequences are fines, suspension of the registration and the rider's license, reinstatement fees, and — in many states — an SR-22 filing requirement, a state-filed certificate of financial responsibility that the rider must maintain for years afterward and that raises the premium for the duration [Insurance Information Institute, 2024]. An uninsured rider stopped after a crash faces those penalties on top of the crash itself.

The financial exposure is the larger problem. An uninsured at-fault rider is personally liable for every dollar of the other party's medical bills and property damage. A single multi-vehicle collision can run well into five or six figures, and the injured party can pursue a judgment against the rider's wages, savings, and home. That exposure exists even in Florida and New Hampshire, where insurance is not mandated — the absence of a mandate does not erase the liability, it only removes the requirement to insure against it.

A coverage lapse carries its own cost. A rider who lets a policy expire and then re-applies is quoted as a lapsed risk: most standard carriers surcharge a recent lapse, and a long enough gap pushes the rider to a non-standard carrier at a markedly higher premium. The cost of staying continuously insured is almost always lower than the cost of lapsing and re-buying. For how lapses, limits, and rider profile move the premium, see how much motorcycle insurance costs.

Several states now verify coverage automatically. Georgia, Colorado, Ohio, and Tennessee, among others, run electronic verification programs in which insurers report active policies to the state; when a policy lapses, the state can flag the registration before the rider is ever stopped. New York monitors coverage the same way. The practical effect is that "I'll just ride uninsured and be careful" is no longer a quiet decision in much of the country — the state finds out from the insurer's own data, not from a traffic stop. A rider who has to drop coverage temporarily should also remove the bike from the road and notify the DMV, rather than let a registered, insured-on-paper bike fall into a tracked lapse.

How much coverage to actually carry

The state minimum answers the legal question and stops there. The harder question — how much liability a rider should actually carry — turns on the rider's assets. A rider with a home, savings, and steady income has more for an injured party to pursue after an at-fault crash, and that rider should carry bodily-injury limits well above the minimum: 100/300 is a common recommendation, and the added premium is modest against the exposure it closes. A rider with few assets has less to lose to a judgment, but still benefits from limits high enough to keep a routine crash from generating personal liability.

The bike itself is a separate decision. Liability coverage never pays toward the rider's own motorcycle — that is what collision and comprehensive add. A financed or leased bike must carry both; the lender requires it in writing. A bike owned outright is the rider's call: on a newer or higher-value motorcycle, collision and comprehensive protect a real investment, while on an older low-value bike, the premium for those coverages over a few years can exceed what they would ever pay out. The coverage guide walks through each coverage type and where it fits.