What to Do After a Car Accident in New York
Queens Boulevard, Northern Boulevard, the Van Wyck, the Grand Central Parkway. If you drive in this borough you already know where the pressure points are. What most people do not know is how much of an injury claim is decided in the first few days — long before anyone speaks to a lawyer.
At the scene
Call 911 and report the collision, even if the damage looks minor. A police report gives you an independent record of where and when the crash happened and who was involved. In Queens, an officer from the local precinct will usually respond to a collision involving injury or a vehicle that cannot be driven away.
If you are physically able, do four things before you leave:
- Photograph both vehicles from several angles, including the license plates, and the position of the cars in the roadway before anything is moved.
- Photograph the wider scene — the intersection, the traffic signals, the lane markings, the weather and the light.
- Get the other driver’s name, license number, insurance carrier and policy number. Take a picture of the insurance card rather than writing it down.
- Get the name and phone number of anyone who saw it. Witnesses disappear within minutes and are almost impossible to find later.
Get examined, even if you feel able to walk away
This is the single most important thing on this page. Neck, back and head injuries frequently do not present for hours or days — adrenaline masks a great deal at the scene. A gap between the collision and your first medical record is the most common argument an insurance carrier makes to suggest you were not badly hurt, or that something else caused your injury.
Go to an emergency room, an urgent care, or your own doctor the same day if you can. Describe every symptom, including the ones that seem trivial. Numbness, headaches, ringing in the ears and difficulty sleeping all belong in that record.
The 30-day deadline nobody mentions at the scene
New York is a no-fault state. Your own insurer pays your medical bills and a portion of your lost earnings up to the basic $50,000 policy limit, regardless of who caused the crash. To access that, a no-fault application — form NF-2 — has to reach the insurer within 30 days of the accident.
Thirty days is short, and the clock does not care that you were in a hospital bed for the first week of it. Missing it can mean paying for your own treatment in a crash that was not your fault. If you take nothing else from this article, take that.
What no-fault does not cover
No-fault pays medical bills and lost wages. It does not pay for pain and suffering. To bring that claim you must meet the serious injury threshold in Insurance Law § 5102(d) — a defined category that includes fracture, significant disfigurement, and permanent or significant limitation of use, among others. Whether an injury clears that bar is a legal question decided on medical evidence, not something you should have to judge for yourself in the week after a crash.
If a bus, an MTA vehicle or a city vehicle was involved
Then the timetable changes completely. A claim against the City of New York, the MTA, NYC Transit or a public hospital requires a written Notice of Claim within 90 days of the incident under General Municipal Law § 50-e, with the lawsuit itself due within one year and 90 days. This is the deadline most often already missed on the cases we are asked to take over from somewhere else.
Queens is a transit borough. The E, F, 7 and N lines, the Q-series bus routes and city-owned roadways mean public defendants come up here more than people expect. If any vehicle involved carried a city or MTA marking, treat the 90-day clock as the one that matters.
The report New York requires you to file
Separate from anything the police do, New York requires a driver to file their own report. Under Vehicle and Traffic Law § 605, if anyone was injured or killed, or property damage to any one person exceeds $1,000, you must file form MV-104 with the DMV within 10 days.
It is a short form and people skip it constantly, usually because the police attended and they assume that covers it. It does not. Failing to file can lead to suspension of your license, and the form itself becomes part of the record of the collision — which is a reason to complete it carefully rather than quickly. The blank is on the DMV website.
Our guide to Form MV-104 covers who has to file, what happens if you miss the ten days, and the parts of the form that get used against you later.
Two other clocks are running at the same time: the no-fault application to your own insurer within 30 days, and, where a public body is involved, a notice of claim within 90 days.
What not to do
- Do not give the other driver’s insurer a recorded statement. That adjuster is not neutral. A statement taken before you know the extent of your injuries locks in answers that get quoted back at you months later.
- Do not accept a quick check. Once you sign a release the claim is generally over, even if your condition turns out to be far worse than it looked in week one.
- Do not post about it. Photographs of you at a family event get used to argue you were not really injured, with no interest in what the day cost you afterwards.
Where the case gets filed — and why Queens is different
A personal injury case arising in Queens is generally brought in the Supreme Court, Queens County, Civil Term, which sits in two buildings — the Jamaica courthouse at 88-11 Sutphin Boulevard and the Long Island City courthouse at 25-10 Court Square. You do not have to live in Queens for your case to belong there; venue generally follows where the collision happened. There is more detail on our Queens personal injury page.
When to call a lawyer
Early, and before speaking to the other side’s carrier. The consultation costs nothing, and if the answer is that you do not have a claim worth bringing, that is worth hearing in week one rather than year two. Our office is in Fresh Meadows, minutes from the Jamaica courthouse, and we take motor vehicle cases across Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island.
Talk to us
The consultation is free and there is no fee unless we win. Call (718) 328-8001 or tell us what happened.
More from the blog
- How Long Do You Have to File an Injury Claim in New York?
- Who Pays Your Medical Bills After a Car Accident in New York?
- What Is My Personal Injury Case Worth in New York?
This article is general information about New York law, not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.