The first automobile insurance policy in the United States was issued in 1897.
Travelers is widely credited with issuing the first U.S. automobile insurance policy in that year. The policy appeared only a few years after automobiles began moving from experimental machines toward practical transportation. Early motor vehicles were unusual, expensive, and mechanically unreliable, so automobile coverage initially developed as a specialized form of accident and liability insurance rather than as the mass-market product drivers know today.
The 1897 milestone does not mean every American driver immediately had to carry insurance. Compulsory insurance came much later and developed state by state. Massachusetts became the first state to require automobile liability insurance as a condition of vehicle registration in 1925; other states followed with compulsory-insurance or financial-responsibility systems.
Modern auto policies combine several protections that early policies did not necessarily bundle together: liability for injuries or property damage, collision damage, comprehensive losses such as theft or hail, and sometimes medical or uninsured-motorist coverage. The 1897 date identifies the first policy, not the beginning of mandatory nationwide coverage.