Uninsured motorist coverage rules in Louisiana

If a driver with little or no insurance hurts you on a Louisiana road, the coverage that actually pays your medical bills is often sitting on your own policy. It's called uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage, or UM/UIM, and Louisiana handles it differently than most drivers assume.

Crashes here are common. In Baton Rouge alone, thatcarhitme.com logged 15,038 crashes in 2025¹ and another 1,108 in May 2026.² Louisiana also lets people drive with thin liability coverage. The legal minimum is $15,000 for injury to one person, $30,000 per accident, and $25,000 for property damage, the 15/30/25 limits set by La. R.S. 32:900(B)(2).³ When the person who hit you carries only that, or carries nothing, your UM/UIM coverage is what stands between you and an unpaid hospital bill.

Louisiana can't make you buy it, but it makes your insurer offer it

Louisiana does not require every driver to carry UM/UIM coverage. What the law requires is the offer. Under La. R.S. 22:1295, every auto liability policy issued in the state is treated as including UM coverage at limits equal to your bodily injury liability limits, unless you formally choose otherwise.⁴

You have three ways to change that default. You can reject UM coverage completely, keep it at limits lower than your liability coverage, or pick "economic-only" coverage, which pays measurable losses like medical bills and lost wages but not general damages such as pain and suffering.⁴ Any of those choices has to be made in writing, on a form the Commissioner of Insurance prescribes, and signed by the named insured.⁴ If nobody ever signed that form, you have full UM coverage at your liability limits, whether or not you remember paying for it.

The rejection form has to be almost perfect

This is where a lot of Louisiana claims turn. Because waiving UM coverage gives up a protection the legislature wants drivers to have, courts read the waiver rules strictly. In Duncan v. USAA Insurance Co., the Louisiana Supreme Court set out six things a valid UM selection or rejection form must contain: initialing the option chosen; the dollar amount, if lower limits are selected; the printed name of the insured or legal representative; that person's signature; the policy number; and the date.⁵

Leave one out, and the waiver can fail. In Duncan the form left the policy number blank, and the court held the rejection invalid, so the driver had UM coverage at full limits after all.⁵ A correctly completed form only creates a rebuttable presumption that you knowingly rejected the coverage, which shifts the burden but does not settle the question for good.⁴ If an insurer tells you there is no UM coverage after a wreck, it is worth pulling the actual signed form and checking it against those six points.

How underinsured coverage fills the gap

The underinsured half matters because of those low minimum limits. When the at-fault driver has insurance but not enough, your own coverage pays the difference between what their liability policy covers and what you are legally entitled to recover, up to your UM/UIM limits.⁴ Suppose your injuries are worth $60,000 and the other driver carries the $15,000 per-person minimum.³ Their insurer pays $15,000, and your UIM coverage can cover the shortfall up to your limit. The same coverage responds when the other driver had no insurance at all.

No stacking across your vehicles

Louisiana does not let you stack UM limits. Insuring several vehicles on one policy does not multiply your UM limit by the number of cars, and when more than one UM policy could apply, the statute decides which one pays first and caps the total recovery.⁴ Buying one higher limit protects you more than expecting separate policies to add together.

Two deadlines, both now two years

Louisiana runs two clocks after a crash, and both are easy to miss.

A regular injury claim against the at-fault driver is a delictual (tort) action. Under La. Civ. Code art. 3493.1, that prescriptive period is two years from the date of injury for accidents on or after July 1, 2024.⁶ Wrecks before that date fell under the old one-year rule, so the accident date decides which deadline applies.

A UM claim works on its own track. It is a contract claim against your own insurer, and La. R.S. 9:5629 gives you two years from the date of the accident to file suit under a UM provision.⁷ Both periods now sit at two years, but they are separate deadlines, and settling with the at-fault driver's insurer does not buy you more time against your own UM carrier.

Your own share of fault now has a cutoff

What you collect, from the at-fault driver or from your UM carrier, depends on your share of the blame. Louisiana used to follow pure comparative fault, where a driver who was 90% at fault could still recover 10% of their damages. That has changed. La. Civ. Code art. 2323, as amended by Acts 2025, No. 15 and effective January 1, 2026, bars recovery for anyone found 51% or more at fault and reduces damages in proportion to fault below that line.⁸ If you are 20% responsible, your recovery drops by 20%. At 51%, it drops to nothing.

What UM coverage doesn't replace

Louisiana is an at-fault (tort) state. It has no no-fault system and no personal injury protection (PIP) requirement, so there is no mandatory coverage that pays your medical bills regardless of who caused the crash. Medical payments coverage, or MedPay, is available as an optional add-on, but the state does not require it.⁹ Of the first-party options a Louisiana driver can carry, only the UM offer is something the insurer must make.

UM/UIM covers bodily injury. Damage to your car is a separate claim. If your vehicle lost resale value after being wrecked and repaired, that is a property issue, and the rules for a Louisiana diminished value claim are covered on our Louisiana diminished value page.

Before you settle

Two documents carry a lot of weight on a UM claim: your own declarations page, which shows whether you carry UM/UIM and at what limits, and the official crash report, which you can obtain through our Louisiana crash report guide. A defective waiver, a missed two-year deadline, or a fault finding at 51% can each decide whether you collect anything, so many injured drivers have a lawyer read the policy and the signed waiver form before accepting an offer. You can find one through our legal directory.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. thatcarhitme.com, Baton Rouge, LA Crash Report, 2025. https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/louisiana/baton-rouge/2025-annual-report

2. thatcarhitme.com, Baton Rouge, LA Crash Report, May 2026. https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/louisiana/baton-rouge/may-2026-report

3. Louisiana Revised Statutes 32:900(B)(2), Required security and minimum liability limits. https://legis.la.gov/Legis/Law.aspx?d=88632

4. Louisiana Revised Statutes 22:1295, Uninsured motorist coverage. https://www.legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=508161

5. Duncan v. USAA Insurance Co., 2006-0363 (La. 11/29/06), 950 So. 2d 544. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1908070/duncan-v-usaa-ins-co/

6. Louisiana Civil Code article 3493.1, Delictual actions from motor vehicle accidents. https://www.legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=1386443

7. Louisiana Revised Statutes 9:5629, Uninsured motorist insurance claims. https://www.legis.la.gov/Legis/Law.aspx?d=108288

8. Louisiana Civil Code article 2323, Comparative fault, as amended by Acts 2025, No. 15. https://www.legis.la.gov/Legis/law.aspx?d=109387

9. Louisiana Department of Insurance, Consumer's Guide to Auto Insurance. https://www.ldi.la.gov/docs/default-source/documents/publicaffairs/consumerpublications/consumer's-guide-to-auto-insurance.pdf?sfvrsn=c0907c52_83