Your own policy takes over. Washington folds uninsured and underinsured coverage into one product under RCW 48.22.030, and it sits above the at-fault driver’s limits rather than replacing them. Your insurer was required by law to offer it, and you only lost it by rejecting it in writing when the policy was first issued.
The moment you learn the other driver had nothing, the case changes shape completely. Until then, you had a claim against a stranger, handled by their insurance company, with your own insurer as a bystander. Now you have a contract claim against your own insurer, and Washington law treats that relationship as adversarial and at arm’s length.
Understanding what changes at that moment is most of what a Spokane driver needs to know. What follows walks the coverage, the math, and the shift in who you are actually negotiating against. To have Ritchie-Reiersen Injury and Immigration Attorneys look at your own policy, call (253) 766-5783.
Washington Rolls Uninsured and Underinsured Into One Coverage
Many states run separate uninsured and underinsured motorist coverages. Washington does not. RCW 48.22.030(1) defines a single term, “underinsured motor vehicle,” and the definition already contains the driver with nothing.
The statute covers a vehicle where “either no bodily injury or property damage liability bond or insurance policy applies at the time of an accident,” or where the total available liability limits are “less than the applicable damages which the covered person is legally entitled to recover.”
Read that second clause slowly, because it is more generous than it looks. Washington compares the at-fault driver’s limits against your damages. It does not compare their limits against your coverage. Washington’s minimum liability limits are $25,000 per person, $50,000 per accident, and $10,000 in property damage under RCW 46.29.090, figures that have not moved since 1980. Anyone whose damages exceed $25,000 and who was hit by a minimum-limits driver is dealing with an underinsured motor vehicle under this statute, even though that driver was fully legal.
You Probably Have This Coverage Even if You Do Not Remember Buying It
Washington makes the offer mandatory. Section 48.22.030(2) states that no new policy or renewal “shall be issued” without coverage against underinsured motor vehicles, hit-and-run motor vehicles, and phantom vehicles.
Losing that coverage requires an affirmative act. Section 48.22.030(4) allows a named insured or spouse to reject it “in writing,” and a rejection carries forward to renewals. What matters for most drivers is the sentence that follows, which limits the written rejection requirement to the original issuance of a policy and not to any renewal or replacement policy. If you never signed anything rejecting it, you almost certainly have it.
How much you have is also set by statute. Section 48.22.030(3) provides that coverage “shall be in the same amount as the insured’s third party liability coverage” unless you rejected part of it. So a driver carrying $100,000 in liability generally carries $100,000 in underinsured coverage without ever having chosen a number.
Two exclusions sit in the same section, and the statute permits an insurer to write them rather than imposing them automatically. One removes coverage while you are operating or occupying a motorcycle. The other, the owned-vehicle exclusion, removes it while you are in a vehicle you own or regularly use that is not insured under the liability coverage of that same policy. Whether either one applies to you is a question about your policy language, not about Washington law, and it is the question that most often defeats claims in households running several cars on several policies.
How the Money Adds Up, and Why the Word Stacking Misleads Washington Drivers
Washington underinsured coverage is what the courts call a floating layer above the tortfeasor’s liability policy. Liability insurance is primary. Your coverage is secondary and sits on top.
The mechanism matters. Your insurer credits the at-fault driver’s full liability coverage against your damages, not against your policy limit. Work an example. Your damages total $150,000. The at-fault driver carried the state minimum and pays $25,000. Your own underinsured coverage is $100,000. Your insurer subtracts the $25,000 from the $150,000 in damages, leaving $125,000, and pays its $100,000 limit. Your total recovery is $125,000.
In a state that reduces the underinsured limit by the liability payment instead, that same crash would net $100,000. The Washington structure is worth $25,000 more on those facts, and considerably more as damages climb.
Do not call this stacking. In Washington, stacking refers to combining multiple policies or multiple vehicles, and sections 48.22.030(5) and (6) expressly permit an insurer to prohibit that. The excess structure above is a different thing and remains available even where a policy contains anti-stacking language.
Hit and Run Is Covered, and a Phantom Vehicle Comes With Two Conditions
Section 48.22.030(2) names three categories, and the difference between two of them decides real claims.
A hit-and-run vehicle is one that struck you and left. A phantom vehicle is defined by the absence of contact, meaning a car that ran you off Division Street without ever touching you.
Section 48.22.030(8) imposes two conditions, and by its own terms they apply only to phantom vehicles. The facts must be corroborated “by competent evidence other than the testimony of the insured,” and the accident must be reported “to the appropriate law enforcement agency within seventy-two hours.” A driver forced into a guardrail on I-90 by a car that never made contact needs an independent witness, a dashcam, or physical evidence, plus a police report inside three days.
A classic hit-and-run with physical contact does not carry those conditions in the statute. That distinction is worth knowing, because adjusters sometimes apply the 72-hour rule where it does not belong.
Either way, report it. RCW 46.52.030 already requires a driver to file a written collision report within four days unless a law enforcement officer files one, and WAC 446-85-010 sets the reporting threshold at $1,000 in property damage. Report to the chief of police if the crash happened inside a city, or to the sheriff or the State Patrol if it happened outside one.
What PIP Pays While the Claim Runs
Underinsured coverage settles at the end. Personal injury protection pays now, regardless of fault.
RCW 48.22.085 requires that PIP be offered on every auto liability policy, and you may reject it in writing. RCW 48.22.095 sets the minimum benefits at $10,000 in medical and hospital expenses, $2,000 in funeral expenses, $10,000 in income continuation capped at $200 a week, and $5,000 in loss of services capped at $200 a week.
Washington also polices how insurers handle PIP more tightly than most states. WAC 284-30-395 lists the only grounds on which a PIP medical claim may be denied, limited, or terminated. The expense must be unreasonable, unnecessary, unrelated to the accident, or not incurred within three years of it. Nothing else qualifies. The regulation also requires the insurer’s written explanation to include the Insurance Commissioner’s consumer hotline number, and it bars refusing a property damage payment solely because you declined a PIP medical examination.
Your Own Insurer Is Now the Opposing Party
Washington courts describe this relationship in blunter terms than most people expect, and the description is not cynicism. It is doctrine.
A Washington underinsured motorist insurer stands in the shoes of the at-fault driver and may assert every liability defense that driver could have asserted. It can argue you were speeding. It can argue your injuries predate the crash. It can dispute the value of your claim in exactly the way the other side’s carrier would have. Washington courts describe the relationship between an insured and a UIM carrier as adversarial and at arm’s length.
Your insurer also has a statutory right to get its money back. RCW 48.22.040(3) gives an insurer that pays under this coverage the right to “the proceeds of any settlement or judgment” from your recovery against the person responsible. Settling around that right, rather than with written consent, can cost you the very claim you were protecting.
There is one procedural protection worth knowing. WAC 284-30-395(6)(b) requires any arbitration under the policy to take place in the county where the insured resides or resided at the time of the accident. A Spokane resident arbitrates in Spokane, not in Seattle where the carrier’s lawyers are.
What Washington Gives You When an Insurer Acts in Bad Faith
Because the fight is now with your own insurer, Washington provides a remedy that does not exist against a stranger’s carrier.
RCW 48.30.015, the Insurance Fair Conduct Act, was approved by Washington voters as Referendum Measure 67 in November 2007. A first-party claimant unreasonably denied a claim or unreasonably denied payment of benefits may recover actual damages, and the superior court shall award costs and reasonable attorney fees, including expert witness costs. The court may also increase the total award to as much as three times actual damages.
The statute carries a trap that ends cases before they start. Section 48.30.015(8)(a) requires 20 days of written notice before filing, given to both the insurer and the Office of the Insurance Commissioner. Skipping the OIC half of that notice is a common and expensive error. The limitations period is tolled during those 20 days.
Separately, and regardless of any lawsuit, you can complain to the Insurance Commissioner directly. The consumer hotline is 1-800-562-6900, and complaints can be filed online through the agency.
What a Spokane Uninsured Driver Claim Looks Like on the Ground
Uninsured driving is not a rare problem in this state. In testimony before the Senate Transportation Committee on a 2026 bill to create an online insurance verification system, witnesses told legislators that roughly 20% of Washington drivers are uninsured and that Washington saw the single largest increase in the nation between 2020 and 2025. The NW Insurance Council, citing Insurance Research Council data, puts the state at 21.7% and well above the national average. Roughly one in five drivers you pass on Sprague Avenue carries nothing.
Spokane County also carries a share of the state’s worst outcomes. The Washington Traffic Safety Commission’s State of the State brief records 40 fatal crashes in Spokane County in 2022, 57 in 2023, and 52 in 2024, and reports that more than half of all fatal crashes in Washington in 2024 occurred in just five counties, Spokane among them.
Who writes your report depends on where the crash happened. Inside city limits it is the Spokane Police Department, whose records office sits at 1100 West Mallon Avenue and which routes collision reports through the State Patrol’s online system when no officer files one. On county roads it is the Spokane County Sheriff’s Traffic Unit, which maintains trained collision investigators, two of them at reconstructionist level, and a laser survey system. On state highways it is the Washington State Patrol.
One medical correction worth carrying, because it comes up in every serious Spokane case. Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center is a Level II adult trauma center, not Level I, and it also holds a Level II pediatric designation. MultiCare Deaconess is Level III. Washington’s only adult Level I center is Harborview in Seattle. Sacred Heart remains the highest-level trauma center in eastern Washington, and for the most severe injuries a transfer across the state is a real possibility that adds a second set of records to any claim.
If the claim becomes a lawsuit, Spokane County Superior Court sits at 1116 West Broadway Avenue, with civil filings going through the County Clerk on the third floor. Under RCW 3.66.020, district court can hear a personal injury claim only up to $100,000, so anything above that belongs in Superior Court.
Where Spokane Drivers Get Stuck
Every one of these traces back to the same shift, which is that the company on the other side of the claim is now your own.
Will Making an Uninsured Motorist Claim Raise My Rates?
Making a claim on coverage you paid for is what the coverage exists to do, and Washington regulates how insurers may treat not-at-fault claims. That said, rating practices vary by carrier, and the right way to answer it is to ask your agent directly rather than to skip a valid claim on a guess. Declining to use the coverage rarely turns out cheaper than the claim was worth.
How Long Do I Have to Bring the Claim?
The tort claim against the at-fault driver runs three years under RCW 4.16.080. A claim against your own insurer is a contract claim rather than a tort claim, and it can be governed by a different period and by your policy’s own terms. Do not assume three years applies to both. Have someone read your policy.
What if the Crash Was Partly My Fault?
Washington uses pure comparative fault under RCW 4.22.005, which reduces your award in proportion to your share but “does not bar recovery.” There is no cutoff. Expect your own insurer to raise the defense anyway, since it stands in the at-fault driver’s shoes.
The Other Driver Had Insurance, but Only the State Minimum. Am I Out of Luck?
No. This is in fact the most common underinsured claim in the state, and the reason sits in how the statute defines the term. Your own coverage responds to the shortfall between what their policy pays and what your damages are.
Can I Settle With the Other Driver and Still Pursue My Own Coverage?
Not without written consent from your own insurer first. This is the single most common way a Washington driver damages a valid claim, and it usually happens because the at-fault carrier moved fast with a small offer. Get the consent in writing before you sign anything at all.
Read the Policy Before You Have to Rely on It
When the other driver has no insurance in Washington, the outcome turns on documents you already own and have probably never read. What your declarations page says, whether anyone ever signed a rejection, whether an owned-vehicle exclusion applies to your household, and how your carrier proposes to credit the liability payment all decide the number at the end.
Ritchie-Reiersen Injury and Immigration Attorneys handles car accident claims across Spokane, Yakima, Tacoma, Kennewick, Wenatchee, and communities throughout Washington, and has recovered over $20 million for clients. Brandon Ritchie has handled over a thousand separate car accidents amounting to well over $15,000,000 in total settlements and is a certified mediator. Eric Reiersen is fluent in English and Spanish.
Have your declarations page and the collision report number in front of you and you will get a straight answer about what your coverage actually does. Reach the firm at (253) 766-5783 or through the contact page.