States that ban not-at-fault accident surcharges: the statute text, state by state

Of the states checked, Arizona, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia each bar an insurer, in text published on a government site, from raising the price of a car policy because of an accident the driver did not cause. Louisiana attaches the sharpest penalty: the insurer refunds the overcharge and pays the greater of triple the refund or $1,000, and the driver can recover attorney fees on prevailing.

The money at stake is concrete. On a hypothetical $1,800 annual premium, a 25% surcharge is $450 a year, or $1,350 across a three-year surcharge period, and that is the sum at stake when an accident is wrongly coded as the driver's fault. The seven texts agree on the principle and part ways on three questions: who decides fault, how much shared blame forfeits the protection, and what a driver can do about a charge that is already on the bill. Five more states reach part of the same result through a rating plan that scores only at-fault accidents or through limits on cancelling a policy, and they are in the table too. New York's and California's rules are set out in the at-fault accident guide.

Estimates and published averages, not a quote. Not insurance advice. State rules and insurer rules vary. Confirm requirements with your state insurance regulator or a licensed agent in your state.

Four kinds of rule, and where each checked state falls

A statutory ban is a sentence in the insurance code that says an insurer shall not increase a premium for an accident the insured did not cause. A regulatory ban says the same thing in an administrative rule written by the state insurance department. A rating-plan rule is looser: the state requires, or publishes, a surcharge schedule in which the only accidents that carry points are at-fault ones, and a surcharge for anything else would fall outside the plan the insurer has on file. A cancellation shield is the narrowest: it stops an insurer from dropping a policy because of a not-at-fault accident but says nothing about the price.

Twelve states appear in the table, and each row cites the official page it came from. Every text was checked on 2026-11-03 except Ohio's, which is a labelled Wayback copy of the state's own page. A state missing from the table is not a finding that the practice is allowed there: no official text was confirmed for it, and the insurance department can say whether a rule exists.

Three differences between the seven bans decide how much protection a driver gets in practice. The first is scope. Kentucky's sentence reaches only the premium on an automobile liability policy, so a collision-coverage increase is outside its words. Louisiana's reaches rates, surcharges, cancellation and non-renewal, and its subsection D adds new-business pricing. Among the seven, Pennsylvania's is the only text that also speaks to comprehensive claims, by saying a comprehensive claim cannot carry a surcharge unless the insured caused the loss on purpose.

The second is the fault test. Arizona asks whether the insured significantly contributed to the accident, Kentucky whether the insured was negligent at all, Ohio whether the insured's action was a proximate cause, Pennsylvania whether the insured caused or contributed, and Virginia whether the insured caused it wholly or partially. Oklahoma uses the bare words "was not at fault", which the section does not define, and takes the protection away from an insured convicted of homicide, assault or an impairment offense arising from driving. A driver who bears ten percent of the blame is outside the protection in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Virginia on the plain words, and may be inside it in Arizona, where the contribution must be significant. The text does not define significant, and a driver in that position should ask the insurer in writing how it applied the word.

The third is the remedy. Only Arizona, Louisiana and Virginia write a refund into the text, and only Louisiana adds a payment above the refund. In Ohio, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania the section states a rule and no procedure, which leaves the driver with a complaint to the state insurance department and the argument that the rule has been broken.

Arizona: any increase tied to the accident, with the reason in writing

Arizona's A.R.S. 20-263 is two short subsections. Subsection A says no insurer shall increase the motor vehicle insurance premium of an insured as a result of an accident not caused or significantly contributed to by the actions of the insured, and that an insurer which increases a premium as a result of accident involvement shall notify the insured of the reason. That second sentence applies to every accident-driven increase, not only the unlawful ones. If a renewal notice arrives higher and the insurer ties the increase to an accident, the reason is owed to the policyholder, and the reason is the document that shows which accident was counted and who was assigned the fault.

Subsection B gives the Director of Insurance the enforcement role. After a hearing, the director shall order an insurer that raised a premium in violation of subsection A to refund the amount attributable to the increase, and shall impose a civil penalty not to exceed $300. The statute does not say who receives the penalty, and it does not give the insured a private right to recover more than the refund. The practical path is a written complaint to the state insurance regulator, with the reason letter and the police report attached, because the hearing the text names is where the director's refund order comes from.

The statute speaks of an increase as a result of an accident, not of a claim. A driver who never files a claim, but whose insurer learns of the accident from the other driver's insurer, is within the words. A driver whose premium rose for a different reason, such as a rate change that applied to every policy in the same class, is not, because that increase is not a result of the accident. The reason letter separates the two.

Louisiana: the only checked text that prices a violation

R.S. 22:1284 is titled consideration of nonfault incidents prohibited, and subsection A lists four actions an insurer may not take on that basis: increase the rate, increase or add a surcharge, cancel, or fail to renew. Subsection B defines a nonfault incident as an accident, collision or other incident involving a covered vehicle in which the driver of the insured vehicle was not at fault, regardless of whether it was reported to any law enforcement agency. The last clause matters. A driver who exchanged details in a parking lot and never called the police is protected the same as one with a crash report.

Subsection C is what makes the Louisiana rule different from the others. An insurer that violates the section must refund the premium paid above what it would have charged had it complied, together with a penalty equal to triple the refund or $1,000, whichever is greater, and the insured is entitled to attorney fees on prevailing. Subsection D adds that a nonfault accident cannot be the sole basis for denying an application and cannot be considered in determining the rates for the policy, and that an insurer cannot require the coverage to be placed with another insurer based solely on such an accident.

The penalty floor of $1,000 changes the economics for small overcharges. Three surcharge levels on a hypothetical $1,800 premium show the effect. A 10% overcharge of $180 triggers the $1,000 floor because triple the refund is only $540. A 25% overcharge of $450 produces a $1,350 penalty, because triple the refund is above the floor. The refund and the penalty are both owed, so the insurer's total exposure is the sum of the two columns.

A second Louisiana point is worth knowing. A 2026 bill, Senate Bill 177, restyles the wording of several automobile insurance sections, including subsection A of this one. In the bill's original text the prohibition stays and only the phrasing moves, from “No insurer shall” to “An insurer shall not”. The text quoted here is what the Louisiana Legislature's law page shows on the check date, and a reader who sees different wording later should compare it with the bill before assuming the rule changed.

Kentucky: a liability-premium rule built on the word solely

KRS 304.20-045(1) says no insurer shall increase the premium on an automobile liability insurance policy solely as a result of a claim for an automobile accident filed by an insured if the insured was not at fault nor contributorily negligent. Three limits sit inside that sentence. It covers a policy of automobile liability insurance, so the collision portion of a full-coverage package is not named. It prohibits an increase made solely as a result of the claim, so an insurer that points to a second reason for the increase, such as a rate change for the class or another incident on the record, is outside the prohibition on its face. And it speaks of a claim filed by the insured, so the trigger is the driver's own claim rather than an accident that never became a claim.

Subsection (2) supplies the remedy. An insured who believes the premium was raised in violation may notify the commissioner in writing, and the commissioner shall investigate the complaint, take appropriate action and send written notice of the action to the insured. No refund formula and no penalty appear in the section. The text was created by a 1978 act and last amended in 2010, and House Bill 362 of 2021 would have extended the rule to uninsured and underinsured motorist premiums, but the General Assembly's bill record shows its last action as a referral to the Committee on Committees on 02/03/21. The statute page shows no later amendment, so the liability-only wording stands.

The combination of solely and not at fault nor contributorily negligent makes the Kentucky text the one to read most closely before relying on it. A Kentucky driver hit by someone who ran a red light, with no dispute about fault, should fall inside it. A driver in a two-car crash with shared blame, or one whose insurer cites more than one reason for a higher renewal, should expect an argument over every word. The first move is the same as in other states: ask the insurer to state the reason for the increase in writing, and then compare that reason to the three conditions in subsection (1).

Ohio: one accident per policy period, and a conviction ends the protection

R.C. 3937.22, in a Wayback copy of the state's own page saved 2026-02-14, reads as a two-part test. No insurer shall increase the cost of a private passenger automobile insurance policy based on the insured's involvement in a single motor vehicle accident during the policy period when both conditions apply: the insured's action is not a proximate cause of any loss, damage, injury or death arising out of the accident, and the insured has not been convicted of, pleaded guilty to, or pleaded no contest to a violation of law as a result of the accident. The page shows the section effective October 20, 1994, with Senate Bill 20 of the 120th General Assembly as the latest legislation, and it lists no later version.

Both halves of the test can fail without the driver being at fault in the everyday sense. A driver who was rear-ended while stopped meets the first condition. If that driver was also cited for an equipment violation at the scene and pleaded guilty, the second condition fails, because the statute asks whether a conviction or plea came as a result of the accident, not whether the violation caused it. The text does not say how closely the violation must relate to the crash. An Ohio driver who is offered a plea on any citation issued at the scene should ask a licensed attorney, before accepting it, what the plea does to a premium protection like this one.

The words single motor vehicle accident during the policy period are also literal. The section speaks of one accident in one policy period. It does not say what happens when a driver is in two not-at-fault accidents in the same period, and nothing in the page text says the protection lapses at the second one. The section also states no remedy, so a driver who thinks the rule was broken starts with a written request to the insurer and a complaint to the department. The citation here is to the Internet Archive copy of the state's page, so the Ohio Laws and Administration page itself is the place to confirm that no newer version has been posted since 2026-02-14.

Pennsylvania: a regulation with nine deemed-not-at-fault situations

Pennsylvania writes the rule in the Insurance Department's regulations rather than in the statute. Under 31 Pa. Code 67.33(a)(1) an insurer may assess a surcharge only where payment for at-fault accidents exceeds the insurer's approved dollar threshold, and an at-fault accident is one where the insured was at fault in causing or contributing to the accident and the resulting claim was paid in part or in whole by the insurer. Subsection (b)(1) is the ban: an insurer may not assess a premium surcharge for the payment of a claim arising from one or more accidents where the insured was not at fault in causing or contributing to the accident.

What sets Pennsylvania apart is subsection (b)(2), which does not leave the fault question open in nine common situations. The insured is deemed not at fault when any of the following applies:

• The motor vehicle is lawfully parked and is struck by another vehicle. A parked vehicle that rolls from its position is charged to the person who parked it.
• The insured or the owner is reimbursed by or for a person responsible for the accident, or the insurer is able to subrogate its entire payment to the insured.
• The insured or the owner has a judgment against a person who is responsible for the accident.
• The vehicle is struck in the rear by another vehicle and the insured has not been convicted of a traffic violation in connection with the accident.
• The driver of the other vehicle was convicted of a moving traffic violation and the insured was not convicted of one in connection with the accident.
• The insured's vehicle is struck by a hit-and-run vehicle and the insured reports the accident to the proper authority within 24 hours.
• The accident involves damage by contact with animals or fowl.
• The accident involves physical damage limited to and caused by flying gravel, missiles or falling objects.
• The insured was using the vehicle in response to an emergency as a paid or voluntary member of a police or fire department, first-aid squad or law enforcement agency. The exception ends when the vehicle stops being used in response to the emergency.

Two of those items depend on what happens after the crash, not on the crash itself. The second has two branches: reimbursement by or on behalf of a responsible person, and the insurer's ability to subrogate its entire payment. The text does not say whether a partial reimbursement satisfies the first branch, and a reader should not assume it does. The third item, a judgment against the responsible person, works the same way. Together they mean a driver who recovers from the at-fault side can ask to have the accident recoded. The recovery arithmetic, including which states return the deductible first, is in the guide on getting a deductible back.

The hit-and-run item carries a 24-hour clock. A driver whose car is struck by a vehicle that leaves, and who reports it on the third day, is outside the sixth item on its face, though the first item may still apply if the car was lawfully parked. The reporting steps are in the hit-and-run claim guide. Two more subsections complete the Pennsylvania picture. Subsection (b)(3) bars a surcharge for a comprehensive claim unless the insured intentionally caused the loss. Subsection (b)(4) bars a surcharge solely because of one conviction of an offense listed in 75 Pa.C.S. 1535, and bars increasing an accident surcharge solely because of one such conviction connected with the same accident. The section states no remedy, so a driver who believes it was broken starts with the insurer and then the Pennsylvania Insurance Department.

Virginia: points and premiums, and a 60-day window to appeal

Virginia Code 38.2-1905(A) bars an insurer from increasing an insured's premium or charging points under a safe driver insurance plan as a result of a motor vehicle accident unless the accident was caused wholly or partially by the named insured, a resident of the same household or another customary operator. Two features go beyond the other texts. The rule covers points under a safe driver insurance plan as well as premium. And a second sentence bars an increase or a point charge where the operator causing the accident is a principal operator insured under a separate policy, which protects the policyholder when the person who caused the crash drives a car that is on someone else's policy.

The appeal mechanism is the most detailed in the group. An insurer that increases a premium or charges points as a result of an accident must notify the named insured in writing, and the notice must say the insured may appeal to the Commissioner if the premium or points came without just cause. The appeal must be in writing and made within 60 days of receipt of the notice. On receipt the Commissioner promptly begins a review. The premium increase or point charge stays in force until the Commissioner rules that it be adjusted or removed, because it is not justified or because the points were not assigned under the insurer's filed rating plan. Then the insurer must promptly refund the premiums paid as a direct result and adjust future billing.

The 60 days is the deadline that matters in practice. It runs from receipt of the notice, so the date the notice reaches the policyholder should be kept, together with the envelope or the email header. A hypothetical shows the money. If a 25% surcharge of $450 a year on an $1,800 policy is billed in twelve equal installments of $37.50, and the Commissioner rules, after four installments have been paid, that the charge was not justified, the refund of premiums paid for the charge is $150 (4 x $37.50), and the surcharge portion of the remaining eight installments drops out of the bill. An appeal filed on day 61 is outside the text, so the first step is to file, even if the supporting papers follow.

Subsection D of the section adds a narrow exception unrelated to fault: an insurer may not raise the premium or charge points to a law-enforcement officer for an accident in the course of employment in a vehicle provided by the employing agency while engaged in a law-enforcement activity. The history line ends with the 2016 act, c. 558, so no later amendment is shown.

Rules that fence the practice in without banning the price

Five more state texts matter to a driver who lives outside the seven. Michigan's insurance code does not use the words not at fault in its rating section, but MCL 500.2111(3) requires each insurer to establish a secondary or merit rating plan for automobile insurance, other than comprehensive coverage, and says the plan must provide for premium surcharges based on two listed events: substantially at-fault accidents, and convictions or civil infraction findings under the Michigan vehicle code. Subsection (2) limits the classifications an insurer may use to a closed list that contains no accident factor. Subsection (9) lets an insurer use factors beyond the list if the plan is consistent with the act, so the section is a rating-plan structure and not an express ban on surcharging other accidents.

North Carolina publishes the schedule itself. The Department of Insurance's Safe Driver Incentive Plan page says points are charged for convictions and at-fault accidents during the experience period. It lists a rate increase for each point level: 1 point, 40%; 2 points, 55%; 3 points, 70%. An at-fault accident with total property damage of $2,300 or less is 1 point, one with total damage above $2,300 and under $3,850 is 2 points, and an at-fault accident with death, more than $1,800 of total bodily injury or $3,850 or more of property damage is 3 points. The page also lists conditions under which no points are charged for a property-damage-only accident of $2,300 or less, including that no licensed operator in the household has a conviction or at-fault accident in the experience period. The schedule has no row for an accident that was not the driver's fault.

New York's Department of Financial Services states that surcharges are specifically not permitted in listed cases: the vehicle was struck in the rear without a moving violation conviction against the insured, it was struck while legally parked, the driver was not at fault on a bodily injury or no-fault claim or was struck by a hit-and-run vehicle, the damage was under $2,000 with no injuries (though two or more such accidents are usually surcharged), and the claim was under comprehensive or towing coverage. It adds that in general no policy can be surcharged beyond three times the base premium for the highest-rated vehicle on the policy, that surcharges apply only to liability, no-fault and collision premiums, and that the insurer must show the exact dollar amount of each surcharge on or with the declarations page. Surcharges levied by mistake, or on an accident later shown to fall under an exception in the insurer's merit plan, must be refunded.

Connecticut and Maryland protect the policy rather than the price. CGS 38a-358(7) prohibits declining, cancelling or nonrenewing a private passenger nonfleet auto policy on the basis of the first or second accident within the current experience period if the insured was not convicted of a moving traffic violation and was not at fault. Maryland's Insurance Article 27-501(k) says an insurer may not cancel or refuse to renew based on claims history where two or fewer of the claims in the preceding three years were for accidents or losses where the insured was not at fault. Neither section speaks of rates. The difference between cancelling, not renewing and refusing to sell is explained in the cancellation and non-renewal guide.

The arithmetic of a wrongly coded accident

A surcharge is a multiple of the premium, so the same percentage costs more on a bigger policy and lasts as long as the insurer's experience period. The inputs below are hypothetical: an $1,800 annual premium for one vehicle, a surcharge period of three years, and the percentages shown. Benchmark, not a quote; no actual insurer's schedule is used except where a row names a published schedule.

The cap in New York shows how a ceiling works. Three times the $1,800 base premium is $5,400, so the surcharge could not exceed $3,600 for that vehicle however many chargeable events were on the record. The surcharge also applies only to liability, no-fault and collision premiums. If $300 of the $1,800 is comprehensive, a 40% surcharge applies to the other $1,500 and adds $600, for a total of $2,400 instead of the $2,520 in the table. The comprehensive share of a real policy is on the declarations page, and it is the number to use.

The Louisiana table above shows the other side of the ledger: the cost to the insurer of getting it wrong. A 25% overcharge on one year of the same premium is a $450 refund and a $1,350 penalty, $1,800 in all, which equals the whole annual premium. If the same 25% charge were refunded for three policy years, the refunds alone would come to $1,350, and the text does not say how the penalty applies across several years. Arizona's exposure for the insurer is the refund plus a civil penalty of up to $300, and the Kentucky and Virginia texts name no penalty at all.

The $1,350 that a 25% charge adds over three years is the figure to hold against the effort of a letter, and in Virginia the letter has a 60-day clock. The harder part is rarely the arithmetic. It is the proof of fault, which is why the first documents to gather are in the last section.

Where a ban stops: fault, discounts and a different reason

Shared fault is the edge that most disputes land on. Every text above protects a driver who did not cause the accident, and none promises that a driver who contributed in a small way stays protected, except Arizona's significant-contribution wording. When police assign fault to the other driver and that driver's insurer accepts liability, the file is simple. When both drivers were cited, or neither was, the insurer's own determination decides the coding, and the comparative negligence guide explains how states split fault percentages after a crash. The parking-lot guide covers the setting where fault is hardest to prove.

A second edge is the word increase. The texts bar an increase in the premium, rate, cost or points as a result of the accident. None of the seven mentions a loss of a claim-free or good-driver discount, a move to a higher rating tier, or a change in the insurer's score for the household, and the texts do not say whether those count. A driver who sees a bigger bill after a not-at-fault accident should ask the insurer to itemize the change: the base rate, any surcharge, any discount removed, and the reason for each. Arizona makes the reason a statutory duty. In other states the request still produces a record, and the record is what a complaint rests on.

A third edge is the other reason. A premium goes up for causes unrelated to the accident, and the insurer may be entitled to use them. A rate change filed for all policies in a class, a change of address, a new driver, a changed annual mileage, a lapse in coverage and a conviction on the driving record are not accident-fault charges. The renewal increase guide lists the factors, and the rate filing guide shows where a state's filed rates can be looked up. Each text ties the bar to the accident as the cause of the increase, so an insurer's usual answer is that the increase has another cause, and the itemized reason is what tests that answer.

The last edge is the claim record. A not-at-fault accident can sit on a claims-history report even when it carries no surcharge, and other insurers read that report. A ban on surcharging a current policy does not control how a different insurer prices a new application, except where, as in Louisiana, the text says a nonfault accident cannot be considered in determining rates for a policy. A driver who finds an error in a claims-history report can use the dispute steps in the CLUE report and MVR guide.

Reversing a charge that should not be there

The order of steps is the same in every state, and the state texts add a deadline or a forum at specific points.

• Ask the insurer for the reason for the increase in writing, naming the accident and the date, and ask whether fault was assigned to the policyholder. In Arizona the insurer owes the reason by statute. In Virginia the written notice of an accident-based increase must carry the appeal language.
• Mark the deadline on the day the notice arrives. Virginia's appeal to the Commissioner must be made in writing within 60 days of receiving the notice. Other states set no deadline in the text checked, which is a reason to move early, not a reason to wait.
• Gather the proof of fault: the police report number, the other driver's insurer's written acceptance of liability, photographs, a witness statement, and any citation issued to the other driver. In Pennsylvania, a conviction of the other driver with none against the insured, a rear-end impact without a conviction, and a full reimbursement each place the accident in the deemed-not-at-fault list.
• Send the documents with a short letter that quotes the state's sentence and asks the insurer to remove the charge and refund what was billed. In Louisiana that letter should state the refund the statute requires and that the penalty and attorney fees follow if the insurer does not comply.
• If the insurer does not remove it, file the complaint the state text points to: the Commissioner appeal in Virginia, the written notice to the Commissioner in Kentucky, a complaint that can lead to a hearing before the Director in Arizona, and a complaint to the insurance department in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the section names no procedure. A licensed attorney in the state can say whether a court action is available, which Louisiana's attorney-fee clause makes explicit.
• After the charge is removed, ask for a corrected declarations page and the corrected claims record, and look at the next renewal notice to confirm the charge did not return.

The same documents also help if the decision is only whether to file a claim at all. A not-at-fault claim on a driver's own collision coverage still triggers the question of the deductible and the delay of a repair, and the surcharge risk is one input among several. The claim-or-pay worksheet puts the payout, the deductible and the price effect on one page, and in a state with an express ban the price-effect line for a clean not-at-fault claim is the one to check against the text above before assuming it is zero.

Questions readers ask

To see how the accident is coded before you write to the insurer, request your claims-history report and driving record; the guide lists both requests and the dispute deadlines for an entry that names you at fault.