The last two times I bought a car, the insurance on my previous car carried over with a 30 day grace period. My very first car was while I was living at home so I believe the insurance allowed for my mother’s policy to cover it for a few days until we got everything sorted out.
This was in Illinois.
It’s a Virginia judge, and he wants to get paid. . .*
ETA: *His salary that is, didn’t mean to imply otherwise.
Maybe the Virginia judge won’t laugh, but the PA judge it has to go through will.
Thanks for all the info, everyone. Another question: what about having needing insurance before test driving the car?
If you are financing a vehicle, new or used, the lender will require the dealer to make sure you have insurance, and the dealer thus requires it of you. This is in case the vehicle is wrecked or stolen during the term of the loan; the lender needs to make sure it’s going to get paid.
If you’re paying cash, the state you live in will care but the dealer will not. And obviously there’s no lender to care.
It’s utterly irrelevant whether you have had insurance in the past, though having insurance on your trade greatly simplifies the process of getting it on the bought vehicle.
When I sold cars, we didn’t check for insurance before letting the customer take a test drive with the salesmen in the car. If we were puppy-dogging the vehicle – that is, letting the prospect take it home for a few days to try it out and thus get emotionally attached to the car – we required proof of insurance ahead of time, so someone with no insurance was out of luck there. The same thing applied if you were taking the car to your mechanic to get it evaluated, though there was an easy work-around that case: you’d designate what mechanic you wanted to do the pre-purchase inspection, and someone from the dealership would drive it there and get it back.