A Broken Leg Costs More Than Idaho’s Minimum Car Insurance Covers

The three numbers on your insurance card are ceilings, the most each coverage will pay. Idaho law requires every driver to carry $25,000 in bodily injury coverage per person, $50,000 per accident, and $15,000 for property damage, 25/50/15. Carry it and you are fully insured in the eyes of the state, even though one emergency room visit, one surgery, and one ambulance ride in 2026 routinely generate a bill larger than the entire per-person cap.

The ceilings, one number at a time

The first number, $25,000, is the maximum the at-fault driver’s insurer will pay for your injuries. The Idaho Department of Insurance puts it plainly on its consumer page: the coverage limit “is the maximum amount of money the insurance company is obligated to pay.” The second, $50,000, is the total for everyone hurt in the same crash, which means two injured people split it. The third, $15,000, covers every car, fence, guardrail, and utility pole damaged in the accident, combined.

Nothing adjusts those figures. The statute that sets them, Idaho Code section 49-1229, sits inside the 1988 rewrite of Title 49, and the dollars in Idaho’s financial responsibility framework have not changed since. In the same period, the state’s lawmakers have updated the code for plate stickers, school zone speed enforcement, and 80 mph semis.

What $25,000 buys in a real injury crash

Take the most common serious outcome of a Boise passenger-car collision: a broken leg that needs surgery. The stack below uses conservative midpoints of current published price ranges; the worst cases cost more. An ambulance ride, an ER visit, imaging, an open-reduction surgery with plates and screws, the surgeon’s separate fee, and a course of physical therapy.

The surgery alone, at the middle of its published range, costs more than the entire per-person limit. And the billed total is only the floor of what a claim is worth: injury settlements also compensate for missed work and pain and suffering. Attorneys who publish settlement data put the average value of a tibia or fibula fracture case at $70,000 to $90,000, roughly three times the cap. A minimum-coverage policy pays the medical middle of a modest case and none of the rest.

The $15,000 property problem

The bodily injury numbers get the attention, but the third number is even further behind the economy. Idaho’s $15,000 property damage limit has to cover every vehicle and object struck in a single crash. The average car on the road now costs far more than that.

Idaho is also the low outlier in its own neighborhood on this number. Every bordering state except Washington requires at least $20,000 in property damage liability, and Utah requires $25,000 along with higher bodily injury limits.

The math nobody updates

In 1988, the year Idaho’s current vehicle code was adopted, $25,000 went further toward covering a serious medical claim. Measured by the Consumer Price Index, that same purchasing power is about $68,000 today. The limit was never raised, so the number that survived into 2026 is worth roughly a third of what it was when written.

Medical care, car parts, and labor have all climbed since then. The one thing that has not climbed is the amount the law requires the at-fault driver’s insurer to pay you.

The squeeze is tightening right now. After a rare year of falling premiums in 2025, Insurify’s August 2026 mid-year report found the national average full-coverage premium back up 1% to $2,237 a year, with rate increases projected in 32 states by the end of 2026. The report attributes the climb in part to auto repair costs that have risen 45% in five years, double the pace of overall inflation. When premiums rise, more drivers cut coverage to the state minimum or drop it entirely, which puts more minimum-coverage drivers on the road at exactly the moment each dollar of coverage buys less.

The driver to worry about carries the minimum

Idaho’s uninsured-driver rate is low: 6.4% of drivers, the third-lowest in the country behind Maine and Utah, according to the Insurance Research Council’s most recent study. Nationally the figure is 15.4%. So the classic fear, the driver with no insurance at all, is a smaller risk in Idaho than almost anywhere.

Idaho logged 8,370 injury crashes in 2025, roughly one person hurt on state roads every 44 minutes, according to ITD’s crash report.

Where the money comes from when the cap runs out

If a minimum-coverage driver injures you, their insurer writes checks up to the limits and closes the file. What happens to the remaining bill depends on decisions you made years ago, most of them by signing or not signing a form.

The line in that chart to remember is the form. Idaho requires insurers to offer uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on every policy, but you are allowed to reject it, and rejection is done in writing on the Idaho Uninsured Motorist and Underinsured Motorist Disclosure Form. Many drivers signed it years ago at an agent’s kitchen table and do not remember. If you cannot recall whether you have UIM, assume nothing until you see your declarations page.

Idaho UIM policies come in two forms: excess coverage, which pays on top of the at-fault driver’s limits, and difference-in-limits or offset coverage, which is reduced dollar for dollar by what the other insurer pays. On a state-minimum driver’s crash, an offset policy held at the same $25,000 limit pays exactly zero, so ask your agent which one you have, in writing.

Closing the gap costs about $1.40 a day

In Idaho, the market says closing the gap is not expensive. Idaho drivers pay among the lowest premiums in the country, and the step up from minimum to meaningful coverage is small.

Forty-three dollars a month, about $1.40 a day, is the distance between a policy that stops at $25,000 and one that carries 50/100/50 limits with collision and comprehensive. Adding UIM on top typically tracks the liability limits you choose. The state’s average driver would pay a little over half again as much as bare minimum to carry coverage that survives a modern crash.

Check your own policy for these

• Find your declarations page and read the three liability numbers. If they say 25/50/15, you are carrying the legal minimum and nothing more.
• Look for the UM/UIM rejection form. Idaho insurers must present it, and if you declined the coverage you signed for that decision. If you did not keep UIM, you can add it back at renewal.
• Ask whether your UIM is excess or offset. Offset coverage equal to the other driver’s limit pays nothing in a minimum-policy crash; excess coverage pays the difference.
• Match your limits to your life. Insurers and consumer guides consistently recommend liability limits at least equal to your net worth, since a judgment above your policy limits follows your assets. For many Idaho households that means 100/300 or an umbrella policy.

If you are hurt by someone else, their insurer owes you a fair claim up to the policy limit, and your injuries may be worth more than that limit. Knowing where that limit sits before the crash helps you plan for it.