What changed in Vermont
Insurance law does not sit still, but most guides are written once and left alone. Repealed programs and retired forms keep circulating for years. This is what actually changed inVermont, when, and where to verify it.
Every state we cover, in one feed: what changed across the country · RSS
July 1, 2026
Moving hereLoud motorcycle exhausts now fail the annual inspection
Act 153 of 2026 (S.326) added 23 V.S.A. § 1260, effective July 1, 2026. A motorcycle on a Vermont highway must have a muffler, and it fails the inspection required by § 1222 if the internal baffles are missing or removed, if the system has a cutout or bypass, if it has been modified to bypass the muffler, if the muffler does not meet 40 C.F.R. § 205.169, or if it is a straight pipe. Where the muffler's position makes the compliance label unreadable, the mechanic must presume it complies. The same act made the only other 2026 change to § 1222, exempting limited-use specialty vehicles registered under § 375 from the OBD portion while leaving them the annual safety and visual emissions check. The Commissioner is directed to amend the Inspection of Motor Vehicles rules (CVR 14-050-022) accordingly.
2025 Acts and Resolves No. 153 (S.326), Secs. 25, 29, 30, 31 — An act relating to miscellaneous amendments to laws relating to motor vehiclesJanuary 1, 2024
Coverage lapseLicense reinstatement fee raised from $80 to $96
Sec. G.131 of the fiscal year 2024 budget act (2023 Acts and Resolves No. 78, H.494) amended 23 V.S.A. § 675 to raise the fee payable before a suspension or revocation is lifted from $80 to $96, effective January 1, 2024. The exemptions did not change: the fee still does not apply to a suspension issued under chapter 11 — the financial responsibility chapter — nor to one issued for a physical disability or for failing a re-examination. Because 23 V.S.A. § 308(c) pegs the registration reinstatement fee to the § 675 figure, that fee rose to $96 at the same time.
2023 Acts and Resolves No. 78, Sec. G.131 — An act relating to making appropriations for the support of governmentJanuary 1, 2021
SR-22SR-22 period cut from 3 years to 1, and a no-insurance conviction stopped triggering one
Act 170 of 2020 (H.578), signed October 8, 2020 and effective January 1, 2021, rewrote Vermont's proof of financial responsibility rules in three ways. It cut the ordinary filing period in 23 V.S.A. § 809(a) from three years to one, both from the crash, conviction or judgment and from the reinstatement eligibility date where a suspension followed — leaving three years only for careless and negligent operation resulting in death, reckless driving resulting in death, and a second or subsequent DUI. It repealed § 801(a)(1)(F), so a conviction for operating without financial responsibility is no longer an SR-22 trigger at all. And it repealed § 801(a)(1)(G), which had required a driver carrying five points to file an insurance verification certificate after any further moving violation. Sec. 4 directed the Commissioner to release affected drivers from their existing filing obligations by April 1, 2021. Vermont's own Department of Financial Regulation still publishes the pre-2021 answers on its SR-22 page — three years, and driving without insurance as a trigger — so the statute and the DMV's reinstatement page are the ones to follow.
2019 Acts and Resolves No. 170 (H.578) — An act relating to proof of financial responsibility
What this list does and does not cover
Recorded here: changes to the rules this site tracks for Vermont — liability minimums, SR-22 and proof-of-insurance requirements, penalties for driving uninsured, the fault system, what a lapse costs, new-resident deadlines and crash reporting. Each entry names the session law or statute that made the change and the date it took effect, not the date it was signed.
Not recorded: rate filings, individual insurer decisions, court rulings that do not change the text of the law, and changes to rules outside those seven subjects. A short list does not mean a quiet legislature — it means little moved in the parts of Vermont law a driver has to comply with.
A change that has passed but has not yet taken effect is not shown as current anywhere on this site. It sits on the Vermont pages as a dated pending value and replaces the current figure on the morning it comes into force. You can see every pending change across the country at the top of the national change feed, and the sources behind the Vermont figures on its statute index.