Penalties for Driving Without Insurance in Maine
A first offense for driving uninsured in Maine carries a fine of $100 – $500. License or registration suspension: License and registration suspended 30 days after the adjudication reaches BMV.
- First offense — fine
- $100 – $500
Driving without the required financial responsibility is a traffic infraction carrying a forfeiture of not less than $100 and not more than $500. Maine sets no separate figure for a repeat offense — the subsection that once did was repealed in 1997.
- License / registration suspension
- License and registration suspended 30 days after the adjudication reaches BMV
Thirty days after receiving the abstract of adjudication, the Secretary of State suspends the license, the registration of a vehicle the person owns, or the right to apply for either. The suspension continues until proof of financial responsibility is filed (29-A M.R.S. §1601(6)).
- Vehicle impoundment
- Not a penalty for driving uninsured
Nothing in the financial responsibility chapter authorizes impoundment. The only impoundment and forfeiture provisions in Title 29-A are for OUI (§§2421, 2422). A vehicle can still be towed at an officer's request after a crash, which is why Maine now requires $500 of towing and storage coverage.
- Annual surcharge
- None
Maine charges no annual surcharge or reinstatement-linked civil penalty. The state's own charges are the court forfeiture and the $50 reinstatement fee; the rest of the cost is the premium for keeping an SR-22 on file.
- SR-22 required afterwards
- Yes
A person who violates section 1601 is subject to the proof of financial responsibility requirements of section 1605 (§1601(7-A)), and after reinstatement must keep that proof on file for at least 3 years (§1603(3)).
Maine sets $100 — higher than 2 of the 35 jurisdictions on this site. The range runs from $30 to $1,500.
How Maine compares with every other state
What it actually costs
A first offense runs $100 to $500, and where you land inside that band is the court's call. The fine is also rarely the expensive part.
Add what comes after the fine: $50 to be restored, the figure on the coverage lapse page, and 3 years during which your insurer has to keep a certificate on file with the state, and cannot quietly let the policy drop. Those are the figures that decide what driving uninsured actually costs, and they are the ones left out of the headline penalty almost everywhere.
The part that stops you driving tomorrow is not the fine but the suspension: License and registration suspended 30 days after the adjudication reaches BMV. Buying a policy the next morning is not the same as being restored — restoring the license or the registration is its own step, and the figures above are what it takes.
Why the rule looks like this
- What Changed in 2026Liability minimums doubled in Hawaii, two states dropped pure comparative fault, New Hampshire stopped inspecting cars, and three crash reporting thresholds moved — a dated account of the 2026 changes, and the ones already signed for 2027 and beyond.
- The Fine Is the Cheapest PartA first-offense fine for driving uninsured runs from $30 in Florida to a $1,500 floor in Delaware — but South Carolina's $100 fine arrives with a $700 reinstatement fee, and the reinstatement is usually the bigger number.
- When a State Contradicts ItselfA state's statute and that same state's own agency page often give different answers on the same day. Seven cases we hit reading all 51 jurisdictions, why it happens, and where the agency is the one that's right.
- What a Gap in Coverage Actually CostsA lapse is billed differently in every state — by the day in New York and Maryland, by the reinstatement in Florida, by a registration fee in Tennessee, by a $600 noncompliance fee in Virginia, and in Ohio by a fine that does not appear at all.
More on Maine
Checked against the primary sources above on September 29, 2026. If a figure here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it — what we have corrected so far is public.