The Florida no-fault law for personal lines auto sunset on Oct. 1, 2007.

Your insurance company may continue to provide your PIP benefits or they may consider your PIP coverage to be a form of optional medical payments coverage for the remainder of your policy.

After Oct. 1 we expect that most should hold onto Personal Injury Protection (PIP) until the next policy renewal when it is no longer offered. That is how the sunset of the law is intended to work.

There are a variety of reasons to keep PIP on your policy after the law no longer requires it on new policies. Dropping PIP midterm is not the intention of the sunset and may even hurt those who do it.

A driver who drops PIP during the sunset period will not have first-party coverage in the event of an accident with someone who carries Personal Injury Protection and Property Damage only. The sunset is a transition period for all drivers in Florida to become comfortable with life after PIP while they still have the coverage. 

This period gives agents and their customers the time to discuss adding or adjusting other coverages for the next renewal while PIP is still covered.

You may notice a decrease in premium from dropping PIP, but at renewal you will notice a significant increase because of the inevitable changes in Bodily Injury and Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Bodily Injury rates.

Update:While the FL No-Fault law did sunset as of October 1, 2007 a bill to restore Personal Injury Protection, also referred to as no-fault or PIP passed.Governor Crist signed the bill into law October 11, 2007. This bill to reinstate PIP will take effect January 1, 2008.