If the driver who caused a wreck near Five Points, on the beltline, or downtown carries no coverage, or too little coverage, the policy that can still pay is often your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage. North Carolina requires uninsured-motorist coverage on a motor-vehicle liability policy issued in the state, and, after the July 1, 2025 change, underinsured-motorist coverage is included on new or renewed policies as well. The details live in G.S. 20-279.21 and in the Department of Insurance explanation of the 2025 rating changes.
Uninsured-motorist bodily-injury coverage is, as a default, equal to the highest bodily-injury liability limits for any one vehicle insured under the policy. Those uninsured limits may not go below the bodily-injury floors required by the statute, and an insurer is not required to sell uninsured-motorist bodily-injury coverage above one million dollars per person and one million dollars per accident. A named insured may buy greater or lesser limits inside that range. Uninsured-motorist property-damage coverage follows a similar pattern, tied to the highest property-damage limits on the policy, not below the statutory property floor, and not required to be sold above one million dollars per accident.
When a vehicle counts as underinsured
The 2025 legislation changed the underinsured test. A highway vehicle is underinsured when the liability coverage applicable at the time of the wreck is less than the damages the injured person actually sustained. In a wreck with more than one injured person, a vehicle can also be underinsured as to one of those people if the applicable liability coverage has been exhausted and the amount actually paid to that person is less than the damages that person sustained. The older approach of judging the question only by lining up limit figures is not the whole test anymore. The damages matter.
The amount of underinsured-motorist coverage applicable to a claim is not reduced by a setoff or credit against other coverage, including liability coverage, except for workers’ compensation as the statute provides. If the claimant has underinsured-motorist coverage on separate or additional policies, the applicable amount is the sum of the highest limit available under each policy. What you cannot do is add the underinsured limits for two vehicles that sit on the same policy. The statute says those intra-policy limits shall not be combined with or added to one another.
Read every household policy, not only the policy on the car you were driving. A person who was walking across Fairview, or riding as a passenger on Wade Avenue, may still have uninsured or underinsured coverage under a household auto policy. That is often the practical backstop in a contributory-negligence state, because a liability claim against the other driver can end over a small share of fault. First-party coverage on your own policy is not automatically defeated by that defense in the same way. The policy language still has to be read.
Notice steps that are easy to miss
Before an insured starts a lawsuit against an uninsured motorist, the statute calls for 60 days’ notice to the uninsured-motorist insurer, sent to the address shown on the policy or delivered personally, stating the belief that the prospective defendant is uninsured. The insurer’s consent is not required to start the suit. If that 60-day notice was not given, the case is not dismissed for that reason. The insurer’s time to answer is instead extended to 60 days after service of the summons and complaint on the insurer. Give the notice anyway, and put the date on your list.
Hit-and-run coverage has an extra reporting step. Where the insured claims bodily injury from a collision and the identity of the operator or owner of the other vehicle cannot be ascertained, the insured may proceed directly against the insurer, provided the accident is reported within 24 hours or as soon as practicable to a police officer, peace officer, other judicial officer, or the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles, and the insurer is given notice within a reasonable time. A Raleigh wreck should also be reported to the Police Department under G.S. 20-166.1 if it is a reportable crash. Get the city report early, as the report guide on this site explains.
Those notice steps do not pause the lawsuit deadline. The ordinary personal-injury window is still the three-year period in G.S. 1-52(16). For a death, G.S. 1-53(4) supplies two years counted from death. Sending a claim to an uninsured-motorist insurer is not the act that starts the lawsuit.
Rideshare, truck, and government files
A transportation-network driver must carry combined uninsured and underinsured coverage that complies with G.S. 20-279.21(b)(3) and (b)(4), both while logged on and while engaged in TNC service, in addition to the primary liability figures in G.S. 20-280.4. A truck operating in interstate commerce may have its own federal financial-responsibility coverage. A city or state vehicle is a different path entirely. None of those files make the household uninsured or underinsured endorsement irrelevant. They just add other policies to the same date list.
Collect every declarations page, the crash report, any hit-and-run report number, and the dates a notice went out. Ask which uninsured or underinsured coverage actually applies, whether more than one household policy can be added together under the 2025 rules, and whether a setoff is being claimed. Then read the answer against G.S. 20-279.21 and the Department of Insurance page linked above, rather than against a claims letter alone.
A wreck on Glenwood, on I-440, or in a nearby town can involve more than one household. A spouse’s policy, a parent’s policy, or a policy on a second vehicle that sits on a different sheet of paper may all need to be read. The 2025 rule about adding the highest limit from each separate policy is easy to miss if you only hand the insurer the card that was in the car. Ask for every auto policy in the household, and keep a copy of each declarations page with the crash report.