With all of the snow that we had this past weekend and are projected to get for the rest of the week, how could we not talk about snowmobiles.  I’m sure some people may have even given or received a snowmobile as a gift this past holiday season. 

I know my neighbor received a snowmobile for Christmas, I could tell by all of the tracks in his front yard.  Good thing he received a trailer to haul his snowmobile because I don’t think he’ll get his riding fix on our city sized lot.  So that brings up the questions of insurance and registration, if he is going to take his snow mobile off of his property what does he need to do?

NYS says that if you plan to ride your snowmobile on your own private property or someone elses that you have express permission to ride on you are not required to register your snowmobile with the DMV.  But if you are planning to ride on public trails you do need to register your snow mobile with the DMV and pay a $100 fee.  Now if you are a Snowmobile Club Member your registration fee is only $45.  You can find a local club to join at http://www.snowmobilingusa.com/Snowmobile_Clubs.htm. 

Surprisingly, the DMV doesn’t require snowmobilers to carry insurance.  This opens riders up to a huge risk because if you are injured by another rider most likely they won’t have insurance to cover your medical bills and you won’t have any insurance to cover them yourself.  Snowmobile insurance policies are similar to motorcycle policies in the fact that they don’t automoatically provide any medical coverage to the rider, it needs to be selected and you pay an additional premium for it. 

Now you can insure your snowmobile relatively inexpensively by adding them to your homeowners or auto insurance and these will provide you with limited liability coverage in case you injure someone else.  You can even insure your sled for any physical damage caused by an accident.  Adding your snowmobile to your auto or homeowners insurance is better than having no insurance at all, but we recommend purchasing a separate snowmobile insurance policy.  It is a little more expense, but the coverage it provides you is better because you can select medical coverage to help pay for your hospital bills if you are injured while riding.

Tags: Snowmobiles

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Recreational Vehicles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.