ARS 28-663: Duty to Give Information and Render Assistance

Arizona Revised Statutes § 28-663 requires any driver involved in a crash that injures someone, kills someone, or damages a vehicle that a person was driving or standing near to stay at the scene, give their name, address, and vehicle registration number, show their driver license on request, and provide reasonable help to anyone who is hurt. Skipping the information exchange is a Class 1 misdemeanor. Refusing to help an injured person is a Class 6 felony.¹

When the Statute Applies

Your duties under ARS 28-663 are triggered the moment your vehicle is in a collision that produces at least one of three outcomes: a person is injured, a person is killed, or another vehicle that someone was driving or attending gets damaged.¹ Fault is irrelevant. Even if the other driver caused the crash, you still owe these duties.

The location does not have to be a public road. Parking lots, driveways, and gas station lots all count. If the only thing you hit was an unattended parked car or a fixed object like a fence or utility pole, a different statute applies: ARS 28-664 covers unattended vehicles and ARS 28-665 covers fixtures and other property, each with its own notice requirements.²

What Information You Have to Give

Once the statute is triggered, you must give the other people involved your full name, your current address, and the registration number of the vehicle you are driving.¹ If anyone involved asks to see your physical driver license, you have to show it. People entitled to make that request include the person you struck, the driver and passengers of any other vehicle in the collision, and anyone who was attending a vehicle that was hit.

The Duty to Help Injured People

Beyond sharing information, you must give reasonable aid to anyone hurt in the crash. The law does not expect you to perform medical treatment yourself, but it does expect you to recognize when someone needs care and to arrange it, whether that means calling 911, flagging down help, or driving the injured person to a hospital.¹ If an injured person asks you for a ride to get treatment, that request triggers the duty too, even when the injuries do not look serious to you. Calling emergency services is the safest way to satisfy this obligation because it creates a record that you acted.

Good Samaritan Protection

Drivers sometimes hesitate to help because they worry about being sued if their aid backfires. Arizona’s Good Samaritan statute, ARS 32-1471, shields anyone who gives emergency care at an accident scene in good faith and without charge from civil liability, unless the aid rises to gross negligence.³ A conscious injured person can still refuse your help.

Penalties

The statute creates two different criminal classifications depending on which duty you violated, and the gap between them is large.

Failing to Exchange Information

Leaving the scene without providing your name, address, and registration, or refusing to show your license when asked, is a Class 1 misdemeanor.¹ That is Arizona’s most serious misdemeanor level. It carries up to six months in jail⁴ and a fine of up to $2,500,⁵ with mandatory state surcharges adding at least 13% on top of any fine.⁶

Failing to Render Assistance

Refusing to help an injured person is a Class 6 felony.¹ For a first-time offender, the presumptive prison term is one year, with a mitigated minimum of four months and an aggravated maximum of two years.⁷ A felony conviction brings consequences that outlast any sentence, including loss of voting rights during incarceration and lasting difficulty finding employment.

Mandatory Alcohol and Drug Screening

When a driver is convicted of the Class 6 felony for failing to assist an injured person and the court finds, by a preponderance of the evidence, that alcohol, drugs, or vapor-releasing toxic substances contributed to the accident, the court must order the driver into an alcohol or drug screening program.¹ That is a lower evidentiary bar than the one used to secure the underlying conviction, so a screening order can follow even on a thinner factual record.

Autonomous and Occupantless Vehicles

When a fully autonomous vehicle operating without a human driver, or a neighborhood occupantless electric vehicle, is in a crash, subsection B of the statute shifts the duties to the vehicle’s owner.¹ The owner, someone acting on the owner’s behalf, or the vehicle itself must promptly notify law enforcement, and the owner’s name, address, and registration number must be made available to any person struck or to the occupants or attendants of any other vehicle involved. Meeting both conditions satisfies the owner’s obligations under the statute.

How This Differs From Fleeing the Scene

ARS 28-663 and ARS 28-661 are often confused. ARS 28-663 governs what you must do once you have stopped. ARS 28-661 governs whether you stop at all, and the penalties for driving off are much heavier.⁸ A driver who flees a crash involving death or serious physical injury commits a Class 3 felony, which rises to a Class 2 felony if the fleeing driver caused the crash; fleeing a crash with less severe injuries is a Class 5 felony. A conviction under ARS 28-661 also triggers mandatory driver license revocation and runs any prison sentence consecutively to other charges from the same crash. So the practical point is this: staying put and cooperating keeps you inside 28-663 and its narrower penalty scheme.

Civil Exposure

Criminal charges are only one layer. A driver who violates ARS 28-663 by leaving or refusing aid hands the injured person a stronger civil case. In Arizona, violating a safety statute can establish negligence per se, which means the injured party may not need to prove the driver acted unreasonably because the statutory violation itself does that work. Causation and actual harm still have to be shown, but the liability analysis gets simpler.

Post-crash conduct like driving away from a visibly injured person can also support a punitive damages claim. Juries look at whether the driver showed conscious disregard for the safety of others, and ignoring someone bleeding at the roadside fits that description well.

1
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 28-663 – Duty to Give Information and Assistance; Autonomous Vehicles; Neighborhood Occupantless Electric Vehicles; Violation; Classification; Alcohol or Other Drug Screening
2
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 28-665 – Accidents Involving Damage to Fixtures or Property
3
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 32-1471 – Emergency Aid; Immunity From Civil Liability
4
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 13-707 – Misdemeanors; Sentencing
5
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 13-802 – Fines for Misdemeanors
6
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 12-116.02 – Additional Surcharges; Fund Deposits
7
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 13-702 – First Time Felony Offenders; Sentencing; Definition
8
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 28-661 – Accidents Involving Death or Physical Injuries; Autonomous Vehicles; Neighborhood Occupantless Electric Vehicles; Failure to Stop; Violation; Classification; Driver License Revocation; Restricted Privilege to Drive; Alcohol or Other Drug Screening