Lapse of Auto Insurance in Las Vegas equals huge DMV fines!

Huge Fines for lapses in insurance, even for one day.

It used to be that if you accidentally let your auto insurance in Las Vegas lapse, you would get a letter from the dmv with a fine of 250 dollars.  If this weren’t bad enough, the Nevada Senate created a new bill raising those rates on repeat offenders and those that let the lapse go on for a long time.  Senate Bill 323, passed during the 2011 Legislative Session, replaces the former $250 reinstatement fee for an insurance lapse with a tiered system of fees and fines.  Basically what this bill does is not only fine any lapses in coverage, it fines a higher amount for every 30 days you don’t have insurance, and fines an even higher amount for repeat offenders of those that don’t have insurance.  

You can see the exact breakdown of the fees at  the dmv of Nevada.  The only way to avoid this fine is to make sure you have adequate insurance of the minimum liability insurance in the state of Nevada.  The minimum state limits of liability are $15,000 single incident per person max, $30,000 total per incident max, and $10,000  property damage per incident max.  Chester Corpuz, the owner of Nevada Auto Insurance has said that he has seen people come into his agency with fines in excess of $1,000.  There is little that the dmv will do to release you from this responsibility if you get this fine.  The only leeway the dmv will work with the fine is extenuating circumstances.  The dmv website defines extenuating circumstances as: If the owner of the vehicle experienced extenuating circumstances beyond their control, the owner may complete an affidavit and present original receipts and/or documentation to verify circumstance and time frames.

Financial hardship does not qualify. Examples of extenuating circumstances are hospitalization, illness or a death in the family. You must apply at a DMV office or a County Assessor that offers vehicle registration services.  As you can see, financial hardship does not qualify as a hardship so don’t bring that to the dmv office.  Chester Corpuz advises, make sure your insurance company has a warning system to give you a heads up that your insurance is about to lapse.  Corpuz says that his customer services reps always call their clients a couple days ahead of time to make sure the insurance policy doesn’t cancel.  Corpuz also advises if you do have to let the insurance on your car lapse, make sure you cancel your registration first.  As long as their isn’t a registration on your car, the dmv can not issue a fine on your car for not being uninsured.  The only problem with that though, is that your car can not be driven.

 Repeat offending of letting your insurance lapse seems to be where the fines hit the hardest.  An example of this is if you let your insurance lapse for the third time, your fine starts at $750 dollars.  The $750 dollars will automatically keep going up in increments of a couple hundred dollars every thirty days after that.  The lesson here is do not let your insurance lapse.  Talk to an auto insurance agent in las vegas that understands the severity of the penalties of not having insurance and has systems in place to not let that happen to you.  Finally, make sure that you understand the procedures of what to do if you do have to let your insurance lapse.