Uninsured Motorist Coverage in South Carolina

Uninsured motorist coverage pays when the driver who caused your crash counts as uninsured under state law, and that definition reaches further than a missing insurance card. Frost Law Group can start an uninsured claim with that definition. It decides whether your own carrier owes anything at all.

Mandatory uninsured coverage can be no lower than the Section 38-77-140 minimums. For bodily injury, the floor is $25,000 per person, with $50,000 as the total for one crash. For your own car, the property piece of that coverage must be at least $25,000, and the policy may carve out the first $200. The Department of Insurance calls that $200 a deductible. It says you should get it back if your carrier later collects from the uninsured driver.

Uninsured coverage also does not pay twice for the same dent. Section 38-77-210 excuses it from covering property damage that insurance or some other source already paid. So if your collision coverage fixed the car, the uninsured property piece may add nothing for those repairs.

Underinsured motorist coverage is optional, and it starts only after the at-fault driver's liability coverage runs out. Section 38-77-30(15) describes an underinsured vehicle as one insured at least at the state minimum, but for less than your damages. Before anyone counts on that second layer, Frost Law Group can compare the two policies.

Imagine a driver with minimum limits who turns left across your path on Old Trolley Road. Your surgery and lost pay run past $25,000. That driver's carrier may pay up to its per-person limit. After that, underinsured coverage you bought may reach the rest, up to your own underinsured limit. Section 38-77-160 also says offered underinsured coverage can reach damages beyond a statutory cap on recovery.

Uninsured motorist coverage can still pay, as long as the claim meets Section 38-77-170, which lawmakers rewrote effective May 20, 2024. The definition in Section 38-77-30 treats an unknown driver as uninsured, and Section 38-77-170 then adds three conditions. Frost Law Group handles hit and run crash claims built around those conditions, starting with when police heard about the crash.

First, you or someone speaking for you must tell a police agency about the crash, and the timing has to be reasonable in light of everything that happened. No clock in hours appears in the statute. Inside Summerville, that usually means the town police department on North Cedar Street. Second, the claim needs one of three kinds of proof. Third, your failure to identify the other car and driver at the scene cannot stem from your own negligence.

The proof can be contact between the two vehicles, an eyewitness, or a recording. Any eyewitness except your car's owner and driver can qualify by signing an affidavit that carries a printed warning about false statements. If that person refuses, a court may order a deposition before suit under Rule 27. The 2024 rewrite added recordings, so a doorbell camera on Old Trolley Road that caught the fleeing car causing the crash could satisfy the statute.

Sometimes, but only a Class I insured may stack, and Section 38-77-160 caps how far the coverage reaches. To stack is to combine coverage from more than one vehicle or policy toward a single claim. The South Carolina Supreme Court limited it to Class I insureds in its 1998 Concrete Services decision.

The statute ties coverage beyond the basic limits to the vehicle involved in the crash. If none of your household's insured vehicles was in the crash, the ceiling becomes the coverage on a single vehicle carrying the higher or underinsured amount. Frost Law Group can read each declarations page in the household before anyone says whether a second policy adds anything. No one can promise a stacked recovery, since the answer turns on policy terms and facts.

Often yes for a Class I insured, because the statute covers such a person, in its words, "while in a motor vehicle or otherwise." That phrase comes from Section 38-77-30(7). In the South Carolina Supreme Court's 2013 opinion in Carter v. Standard Fire, the court repeated that underinsured coverage, like uninsured coverage, is "personal and portable." As a general rule, it follows the insured person rather than the insured car.

That matters in Dorchester County. The 2024 Fact Book counted 36 pedestrian victims and 18 bicyclist victims there, with 4 pedestrians and 1 cyclist killed. Frost Law Group represents pedestrians hit by cars. When the driver had little or no insurance, a household auto policy can be the first place to look for uninsured motorist coverage in South Carolina.