Auto Insurance in Sarasota and Lakewood Ranch

Florida requires less auto insurance than almost any state in the country, and the coverage it does require is not the coverage most people think they’re buying. If you carry the legal minimum here, you are far more exposed than you probably realize.

Here’s what Florida actually requires, what it conspicuously doesn’t, and the gap that catches Sarasota and Lakewood Ranch drivers hardest.

What Florida law requires

Two coverages, and that’s it:

$10,000 in Personal Injury Protection (PIP) — your own medical bills, no matter who caused the crash
$10,000 in Property Damage Liability (PDL) — damage you cause to someone else’s property

Notice what isn’t on that list. Florida does not require bodily injury liability coverage. If you cause a wreck and put someone in the hospital, the state does not require you to carry a dime of coverage for their injuries. That obligation doesn’t disappear — it just becomes yours personally.

Florida is one of a very small number of states that works this way, and it is the single most consequential fact about auto insurance here.

The gap almost nobody explains

Uninsured motorist coverage (UM) pays your injuries when the person who hit you has no insurance or not enough of it. In a state where roughly one in five drivers is uninsured, it’s arguably the most valuable coverage on a Florida auto policy.

Here’s the catch, and it’s written into the statute. Florida law requires insurers to offer uninsured motorist coverage on any policy that provides bodily injury liability coverage. A bare legal-minimum Florida policy has no bodily injury liability on it at all.

Which means no UM offer is owed, and none is made. The driver carrying the state minimum has no protection against the uninsured driver — and was never told, because nobody was required to tell them.

That isn’t a scare tactic. It’s the structure of the law. If you’re carrying minimum limits in Florida and someone uninsured hits you, your $10,000 of PIP is the whole conversation.

UM can be rejected, but the rejection has to be in writing, and it’s worth knowing whether you actually signed one.

Is PIP going away?

No. Repeal bills get filed nearly every session and keep dying in committee — HB 1181 died in the Judiciary Committee in June 2025, and the 2026 attempts died in committee as well. Florida’s no-fault system is still the law as of this writing.

We mention it because a number of Florida websites currently say otherwise, some of them apparently written by AI. If you read somewhere that Florida repealed PIP, it hasn’t.

What we actually recommend

We hand-selected eight auto insurers to work with, because different companies are genuinely better at different things — younger drivers, older drivers, drivers with a ticket or two, drivers with clean records. The spread between the best and worst quote on the same driver is usually large.

What we’d tell almost any Sarasota or Lakewood Ranch driver:

Carry bodily injury liability, even though the state doesn’t make you. It protects everything you own.
Carry uninsured motorist coverage, and match it to your liability limits.
Bundle it with your home if you can. Several carriers give discounts when the same agency writes both, and those discounts are larger than people expect.

We’re not going to quote you a price on a web page. Call 941-312-5771 and we’ll shop it properly — 62 Sarasota Center Blvd, Sarasota, Monday through Friday, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.

Sources: Fla. Stat. 627.727 (uninsured motorist coverage) · Florida DHSMV insurance requirements · Florida Senate bill history, HB 1181 (2025).