Does Utah No-Fault Insurance Cover Motorcycles?

If you’ve read anything about Utah’s no-fault insurance system, you might assume it works the same way no matter what you’re driving. It doesn’t. Motorcycles get treated differently than cars under Utah law, and that difference catches a lot of riders off guard right when they need coverage most.

Here’s the short version: no, Utah’s no-fault requirement does not apply to motorcycles. That’s not a technicality, it’s a real gap that every rider in the state should understand before they ever need to file a claim.

Why motorcycles are carved out

Utah requires personal injury protection, or PIP, on every car insurance policy sold in the state. PIP is what makes Utah a no-fault state in the first place, since it means your own insurer pays your initial medical bills regardless of who caused the crash.

Motorcycles don’t get this treatment. Under Utah Code § 31A-22-302, motorcycles are specifically excluded from the state’s PIP requirement, along with off-highway vehicles, ATVs, trailers, and semitrailers. In plain terms, insurance companies aren’t required to build PIP into a motorcycle policy the way they are for a car.

That doesn’t mean PIP is banned on a motorcycle policy. Insurers can still offer it, and some riders add it. It just means nobody’s required to have it, which leaves a real gap for anyone who assumes their motorcycle policy automatically works like their car policy.

So what happens if you’re hurt on your bike

Without PIP, there’s no built-in coverage that pays your medical bills right away just because you were in a crash. Instead, your options generally fall into one of a few categories.

MedPay, or medical payments coverage, is the closest equivalent available for motorcycles. It’s not required either, but riders can add it to their policy, and it works similarly to PIP by covering medical costs regardless of fault, just usually with different limits and terms.

Liability claims against the at-fault driver become the primary path for most injured riders, since there’s no no-fault cushion to fall back on first. This means the process often takes longer, since you’re waiting on a fault determination and dealing with someone else’s insurance company from the very beginning, rather than your own insurer paying quickly while fault gets sorted out later.

Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage still applies to motorcycles, and this is actually one of the more important pieces riders often overlook. Utah requires UM/UIM coverage on every policy, including motorcycle policies, unless the rider specifically rejects it in writing. If the driver who hit you doesn’t have insurance, or doesn’t have enough, this is what can step in to cover the difference.

The liability minimums riders still have to carry

Even without a PIP requirement, Utah still requires every motorcycle on the road to carry liability insurance. As of January 2025, the minimum is the same 30/65/25 structure required for cars: $30,000 in bodily injury coverage per person, $65,000 per accident, and $25,000 in property damage. You can confirm current requirements directly through the Utah DMV’s insurance page.

Those numbers might sound reasonable until you consider how quickly motorcycle injuries can outpace them. A single hospital stay after a serious crash can blow past $30,000 without much effort, and riders who assume the state minimum is “enough” are often surprised at how little cushion it actually provides, whether they’re the one carrying the policy or the one relying on someone else’s.

Why this actually matters more for riders than drivers

Car accidents already come with a built-in safety net most people don’t think twice about, since PIP kicks in automatically and starts paying bills. Motorcycle accidents don’t come with that same starting point. A rider who assumes their own policy will simply “take care of it” the way a car policy would is often working from the wrong assumption entirely.

This is exactly why Utah Code § 31A-22-304, the section setting minimum liability limits, matters just as much as the PIP exclusion itself. Between the missing no-fault cushion and liability minimums that don’t stretch far, riders are often more exposed after a crash than they realize, right up until they’re the ones dealing with the bills.

The practical takeaway

If you ride, it’s worth pulling out your policy and actually checking a few things: whether you added MedPay, what your liability limits look like, and whether you’ve kept UM/UIM coverage in place rather than waiving it. None of this requires a lawyer to check. It just requires a few minutes and a phone call to your agent, and it’s a lot easier to do before a crash than after one.

If you’ve already been in a motorcycle accident and you’re trying to figure out what actually applies to your situation, our team at Creekside Injury Law helps riders throughout the state sort through exactly this kind of question, including in Logan, Roy, Tooele, and Pleasant Grove. More on how we handle these cases is on our Utah motorcycle accident page.

Coverage gaps like this one rarely show up until the moment they matter most. Knowing where yours sits now beats finding out the hard way later.