Financial responsibility can be established by either getting an auto liability insurance policy or by making a cash deposit or surety bond of $60,000 in the treasurer of state office. It is required at all times to carry with you proof of owning the correct car insurance policy. Law enforcement officers are entitled to request seeing it whenever they pull you over or if you are involved in an accident. Fines for not complying with this can be of $300 or higher, also you can lose your vehicle registration.

Minimum Auto liability insurance coverage is of:

• $20,000 per person to pay for bodily injury or death
• $50,000 per accident to pay for bodily injury or death and,
• $10,000 for property damage in an accident.

Your insurer company is required to electronically submit your auto insurance information to the New Mexico Insurance Identification Database (IIDB), this way, when your policy is searched within this database to determine if you do own liability, your information will be available. It takes a day for this information to be uploaded to the Database.

New Mexico Law establishes that vehicles lacking of minimum liability insurance are enabled to have their registration suspended. If renewal is requested it will be denied until this situation is solved. The New Mexico Mandatory Financial Responsibility Act indicates that the owner of an uninsured vehicle must turn in the vehicles license plates and registrations within 10 days after the notification from the Motor Vehicle Department (MVD).

In addition to the minimum liability coverage required, insurance companies may also offer other types of coverage, to aggregate to your existing coverage.

Most commonly acquired additional insurance coverages are Uninsured / underinsured Motorist, Comprehensive and Collision.

Uninsured / Underinsured Motorist coverage will help you in the event of an accident of which you are not responsible, but the responsible person has too little liability coverage to pay for your injuries and damages caused to your property or, as its name establishes, the person responsible is totally uninsured. In most hit and run situations, Uninsured motorist coverage is used to pay for your injures and damages.

Collision and Comprehensive coverage will not pay for any medical or legal expenses; however they will help restore your vehicle when damaged by an accident or collision. Comprehensive coverage will pay for those odd events in which you probably are not driving your car at the moment they occur, such as bad weather (floods, high winds, tornados, etc) , fire, vandalism and theft. It will also help pay your vehicle's reparation when it was damaged by a collision with wildlife.

Collision is there to help pay fix your car after it has been in a collision. It will not matter if the collision was caused by backing up into your garage door, or a light pole in a parking lot. Or if you were involved in a high speed accident on a highway. Collision coverage will provide financial aid to fix your vehicle.