The name makes it sound like protection against an unusual event. In practice it is the coverage that most often determines what an injured person in Nevada can actually recover, because the limits on the other driver’s policy are frequently the ceiling on everything else.
Nevada law requires insurers to put this coverage in front of you — not once, but with every renewal. What the law does not do is undo a decision made years ago by someone who may no longer remember making it.
Key Takeaways
- Nevada insurers must offer uninsured and underinsured coverage at limits equal to your bodily injury limits.
- The offer form has to accompany every renewal, so the opportunity recurs.
- A rejection or reduction, once made, carries forward through renewals and replacement policies until someone affirmatively reverses it.
- The statute frames the coverage around bodily injury, and caps recovery at your own limits.
- Nevada gives two years to bring an action for injury to a person.
What Nevada Requires Insurers to Do
NRS 687B.145 sets the obligation directly. Insurance companies transacting motor vehicle insurance in Nevada “must offer, on a form approved by the Commissioner, uninsured and underinsured vehicle coverage in an amount equal to the limits of coverage for bodily injury” carried on the policy.
Two things in that sentence deserve attention.
The offer is not of some token amount. It is of coverage matching the bodily injury limits already on the policy, which means the baseline Nevada law puts in front of you is parity with what you carry to protect everyone else.
And the offer is not a single event. The statute provides that “Each renewal must include a copy of the form offering such coverage.” Whatever was decided when the policy was first written, the form comes back.
The Election Sticks Until Someone Reverses It
This is the part that quietly decides outcomes years later.
Insurers use election forms approved by the Commissioner for this purpose. One such approved form lets an insured either choose lower limits or reject the coverage, and records that the choice “shall be binding on all persons insured under the policy.” It also provides that the election “shall apply to any renewal, reinstatement, substitute, amended, altered, modified, or replacement policy” unless a named insured submits a request to add the coverage and pays the additional premium.
Read that alongside the renewal requirement and the position becomes clear. The offer returns every renewal; the earlier answer also returns every renewal. The form arriving in the post does not reset anything. Reversing a rejection takes an affirmative request and a premium payment, by a named insured.
The practical consequence is that a decision made at one policy’s inception — possibly by a different person, possibly years ago, possibly without much thought — remains the operative decision until someone goes looking for it. Which is why the useful time to look is now rather than after a collision.
Why the Limits Question Matters More Than Whether You Have It
The statute describes what the coverage does in terms that make the ceiling explicit. It allows an insured to recover, “up to the limits of the insured’s own coverage,” amounts of damages for bodily injury that exceed the at-fault driver’s bodily injury limits.
So the structure is: the other driver’s policy pays to its limit, and your own coverage addresses what lies beyond that, bounded by your own limit. Having the coverage answers one question. What it is worth in a serious case is answered by the number next to it. Our page on Nevada car accident claims sets out how that plays out alongside the other coverages in a collision.
This is why “do I have it” is the less useful question. On a policy carrying the coverage at a modest figure, a severe injury can exhaust both policies and still leave real loss uncovered.
What the Statutory Offer Does Not Reach
The Nevada requirement is framed around bodily injury. An approved election form is likewise expressed in bodily injury terms, protecting the insured, resident relatives and occupants of a covered vehicle who “sustain bodily injury.”
Damage to the vehicle itself sits outside that framing and is governed by whatever else the policy provides. It is worth checking rather than assuming, because readers often arrive at this subject expecting one coverage to answer both questions, and the statutory requirement addresses only one of them. Our Nevada car accident page sets out which coverages do answer the vehicle question after a collision here.
The Deadline
Nevada allows two years. NRS 11.190 provides, under the heading for actions that must be brought within two years, for “an action to recover damages for injuries to a person or for the death of a person caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another.”
A claim against your own insurer also has the policy’s own notice and cooperation requirements running alongside that period, set by the contract rather than by the statute. Those are worth identifying early, because they are easy to overlook while attention is on the other driver. How the statutory period applies across Nevada claim types is set out on our Nevada personal injury page.
Talk to a Nevada Injury Lawyer
Two things are worth checking before anything happens rather than after: whether the coverage is on the policy at all, and what figure sits beside it.
Vaksman Khalfin, PC acts for injured people across Nevada from the firm’s Las Vegas office at 10161 Park Run Drive, Suite 150. The first consultation is free, and injury claims are handled on a contingency-fee basis: there is no upfront cost, attorney’s fees are owed only out of a recovery, and fees and case costs are separate items set out in the written agreement. Wider material sits in the Nevada personal injury guides.
Reviewed by Robert B. Vaksman, Partner, Vaksman Khalfin, PC (admitted in Nevada). Last reviewed: 10/23/2026
Frequently Asked Questions
The coverage Nevada requires insurers to offer is framed around bodily injury. An approved election form describes it as protecting the insured, resident relatives and occupants of a covered vehicle who sustain bodily injury in an accident involving a driver who does not have insurance or does not have enough of it.
The statutory offer requirement does not extend to damage to your vehicle, which is governed by other parts of the policy. The coverage is also bounded: recovery is available only up to the limits of your own coverage, so it does not make a policy limitless.
Insurers are required to offer it. NRS 687B.145 requires companies transacting motor vehicle insurance in Nevada to offer uninsured and underinsured coverage, on a form approved by the Commissioner, at an amount equal to the bodily injury limits on the policy — and to include a copy of that form with each renewal.
Usually cost at the moment the policy was written. What matters more is what happens afterwards: an approved form records that an election to reject or reduce is binding on everyone insured under the policy and carries forward to renewal, replacement and amended policies unless a named insured requests the coverage and pays the additional premium.
Unless someone has since asked for it in writing and paid for it, the earlier election is the one that applies. The form's own terms carry it forward through renewals and replacement policies, and the arrival of a fresh offer form at renewal does not by itself change anything.
They answer different questions rather than competing. The Nevada offer requirement concerns bodily injury; collision coverage concerns the vehicle. What any particular policy provides, and at what limits, is a question for the policy documents and the insurer rather than one that can be settled in the abstract.
That is a decision for you and your insurer or broker, not something a law firm can set. What the law makes available as a baseline is instructive: Nevada requires the offer to be made at limits equal to the bodily injury limits already on the policy.
NRS 11.190 provides a two-year period for an action to recover damages for injuries to a person or for the death of a person caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another. A claim against your own insurer also runs alongside the policy's own notice requirements, which come from the contract.
