Florida Auto Insurance Requirements: PIP, PDL, and FR-44 Rules

If you register a car, truck, or SUV in Florida, state law requires two coverages: Personal Injury Protection (PIP) with a minimum of $10,000 and Property Damage Liability (PDL) with a minimum of $10,000. Those are the only two coverages the state mandates for standard personal vehicles with four or more wheels, and understanding Florida auto insurance requirements means understanding both what those minimums do and, just as importantly, what they leave uncovered.¹

What Personal Injury Protection Pays

PIP is the backbone of Florida’s no-fault system. It pays benefits to you and your passengers regardless of who caused the crash. Your policy covers you, relatives living in your household, anyone driving your insured vehicle, passengers in it, and pedestrians struck by it.²

PIP does not pay 100% of your costs. It covers 80% of reasonable medical expenses and 60% of lost wages from an inability to work, both subject to the $10,000 policy cap. The policy also provides $5,000 in death benefits.²

The 14-Day Treatment Deadline

This is where most PIP claims fall apart. You must receive initial medical treatment within 14 days of the accident, or you forfeit your PIP benefits entirely. No grace period. No exception for delayed symptoms. If you walk away feeling fine and pain shows up three weeks later, your PIP insurer owes you nothing.²

The $2,500 Cap on Non-Emergency Injuries

Even if you make the 14-day window, how much medical coverage you get depends on your diagnosis. If a licensed physician or dentist determines you have an emergency medical condition, you receive the full $10,000 in medical benefits. If your condition is not classified as an emergency, that ceiling drops to $2,500.² The documentation from your initial provider drives that outcome. A soft-tissue injury a chiropractor treats without an emergency finding can leave you capped at $2,500 on what is often a much larger bill.

What Property Damage Liability Pays

Every Florida policy that includes PIP must also include PDL.³ PDL pays for damage you cause to someone else’s property: their car, a fence, a building, a guardrail. The minimum is $10,000 per crash.¹

That $10,000 is thin. The average new vehicle in the United States sells for well over $40,000, and even a moderate collision can exhaust the limit instantly. If you cause $30,000 in property damage and carry only the minimum, the other driver can pursue you personally for the remaining $20,000. Florida law does allow you to satisfy both PDL and Bodily Injury Liability through a single combined policy of at least $30,000.¹

What Florida Does Not Require

Florida is one of only two states that do not require Bodily Injury Liability insurance for standard personal vehicles. BIL pays for injuries you cause to other people: their medical bills, their lost wages, their pain and suffering. Without it, if you cause a serious injury crash, the other driver’s only immediate recourse is their own PIP coverage, capped at $10,000. Anything above that they pursue from you directly.

Florida also does not require collision coverage (damage to your own car) or comprehensive coverage (theft, weather, and similar non-collision losses). A lender or lease company will almost always require both, but the state does not.

The gap is significant. A driver carrying only the mandated minimums has $10,000 in PIP for their own injuries, $10,000 in PDL for the other person’s property, and no coverage at all for the other person’s injuries. Anyone driving regularly in Florida should seriously consider adding BIL even though it is not mandatory.

Uninsured Motorist Coverage

Any Florida policy that includes Bodily Injury Liability must also include Uninsured Motorist (UM) coverage unless you reject it in writing, and your insurer must remind you of the option at least once a year.⁴ UM protects you when the at-fault driver has no insurance or not enough insurance to cover your injuries.

Because BIL is not required, many Florida policies do not include it by default, and so the UM offer never triggers. If you voluntarily add BIL, the insurer must then offer UM. It is easy to end up with a bare-minimum policy that leaves you exposed to exactly the risk UM is designed to cover.

Proof of Coverage

Your insurance identification card must show the insurer’s name, your policy number, the effective dates, and the year, make, and Vehicle Identification Number of up to two insured vehicles.⁵ You can present it to law enforcement or at a registration office in paper or electronic form. Digital proof on a phone carries the same legal weight as a printed card as long as it contains all the required fields.

Coverage must stay active for the entire time your vehicle is registered. The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) monitors coverage through an electronic database linked directly to insurance carriers, so a lapse is usually flagged automatically.

Higher Requirements for For-Hire Vehicles

Taxis, limousines, jitneys, and other for-hire passenger vehicles must carry Bodily Injury Liability on top of the standard PIP and PDL. The minimum limits:⁶

$125,000 for bodily injury or death per person
$250,000 for bodily injury or death per accident involving two or more people
$50,000 for property damage per accident

Some operators use a combined single-limit policy instead of split limits. The self-insurance ceiling for for-hire operators is $300,000 per occurrence, and any operator going that route must also maintain excess insurance from a licensed carrier above the base limits.⁶

FR-44 Requirements After a DUI

Florida uses a special financial responsibility filing called the FR-44 for drivers convicted of DUI. Unlike the SR-22 used in most other states for various driving offenses, the FR-44 requires far higher liability limits:⁷

$100,000 for bodily injury or death per person
$300,000 for bodily injury or death per accident
$50,000 for property damage per accident

These elevated limits must be maintained for at least three years from the date your driving privileges are reinstated. Your insurer files the FR-44 directly with the DHSMV, and any lapse during that three-year window triggers automatic license suspension and can restart the filing period.⁷ Because these limits are ten to thirty times higher than the standard minimums, premiums rise substantially. Shopping multiple carriers is worth the effort because FR-44 pricing varies widely.

Florida also uses SR-22 filings for other financial responsibility violations, such as driving without insurance or causing a crash while uninsured. The SR-22 certifies you carry at least the standard BIL and PDL minimums and must be maintained for a set period after reinstatement.

Motorcycles Are Not Covered by the PIP Rule

The PIP and PDL requirements apply specifically to motor vehicles with four or more wheels. Motorcycles are excluded from the mandatory PIP requirement, so motorcycle owners do not need no-fault insurance to register a bike. The trade-off is that a motorcycle rider injured in a crash cannot collect PIP benefits the way car occupants can, leaving the rider dependent on the at-fault driver’s coverage, their own health insurance, or optional motorcycle-specific medical payments coverage.

Penalties for Driving Without Insurance

Driving without the required PIP and PDL coverage is a nonmoving traffic infraction. If you are the vehicle’s owner and cannot show that coverage was active at the time of the stop, the court will order the DHSMV to suspend both your vehicle registration and your driver license.⁸

Reinstating your license and registration means buying a new compliant policy and paying a nonrefundable reinstatement fee:⁹

$150 for the first reinstatement
$250 for the second reinstatement within three years
$500 for each additional reinstatement within three years

After reinstatement you must maintain proof of coverage for two years.⁹ Go three years without another lapse and the fee resets to $150 for any future reinstatement.

One offense escalates quickly: presenting a fake or expired insurance card while knowing coverage is not in force. That is a first-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.⁸ Handing an officer an old card you forgot to replace is not the same as knowingly presenting false proof, but the distinction depends on what a prosecutor can show about your intent.

1
The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 324.022 – Financial Responsibility
2
The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 627.736 – Required Personal Injury Protection Benefits; Exclusions; Priority; Claims
3
The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 627.7275 – Motor Vehicle Liability
4
The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 627.727 – Motor Vehicle Insurance; Uninsured and Underinsured Vehicle Coverage; Insolvent Insurer Protection
5
Florida Administrative Code. Florida Administrative Code 15A-3.006 – Identification Cards
6
The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 324.032 – Manner of Proving Financial Responsibility; For-Hire Passenger Transportation Vehicles
7
The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 324.023 – Financial Responsibility
8
The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 316.646 – Security Required; Proof of Security and Display Thereof
9
Florida Senate. Florida Code 324.0221 – Financial Responsibility; Suspension or Revocation of Driving Privilege or Vehicle Registration