Massachusetts Car Accident Laws: Fault, PIP, and Deadlines

Massachusetts car accident laws require you to stop at the scene and exchange information, file a written crash report within five days when anyone is injured or property damage tops $1,000, and turn first to your own Personal Injury Protection coverage before any lawsuit. The state runs a no-fault system with a tort threshold, uses modified comparative negligence to divide blame, and enforces the whole framework with license suspensions, criminal penalties, and insurance surcharges. The mandatory coverage figures were updated effective July 2025, so older numbers you may find elsewhere are out of date.

What the Law Requires at the Scene

Under Chapter 90, Section 24, every driver in a collision must stop, give their name, home address, and vehicle registration number to the other driver and to anyone injured, and render reasonable assistance to the injured.¹ Call 911 if anyone is hurt. A responding officer will write a police report, but that report does not replace the separate report you owe the state.

The Five-Day Crash Report

Chapter 90, Section 26 requires you to file a Motor Vehicle Crash Operator Report within five days of any crash that killed someone, injured anyone, or caused more than $1,000 in damage to any single vehicle or piece of property.² The clock only pauses if your injuries physically prevent you from completing the form.

Copies go to three places: the Registry of Motor Vehicles Crash Records unit, the police department (or state police barracks) with jurisdiction over the crash location, and your own insurer.³ The registrar can suspend or revoke the license of a driver who fails to comply.² Skipping the report also causes trouble with the claim itself, because insurers rely on it to process what you file.

Minimum Insurance and How PIP Pays First

Every registered vehicle in Massachusetts must carry auto insurance, and the state operates a no-fault system under Chapter 90, Section 34M.⁴ The current mandatory minimums are:

Bodily Injury Liability: $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident.
Property Damage Liability: $30,000 per accident.
Personal Injury Protection (PIP): up to $8,000 per person for medical costs, lost wages, and replacement services, regardless of fault.
Uninsured Motorist Coverage: $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident.

Those figures come from the state’s current mandatory coverage schedule.⁵

PIP drives the no-fault system. It pays medical bills, up to 75% of lost wages, and the cost of services you can no longer perform yourself, all capped at $8,000, without anyone having to prove fault.⁶ Medical expenses must be incurred within two years of the accident. Coverage reaches household members, authorized passengers, and pedestrians struck by your vehicle.

The tradeoff: PIP benefits are paid “in lieu of damages otherwise recoverable in tort,” meaning you give up part of the right to sue in exchange for fast payment.⁴ That right returns once your injuries meet the tort threshold below.

Underinsured motorist coverage is optional but valuable. Your insurer must offer it, and if you turn it down, that choice sticks.⁷ UIM pays the gap when the at-fault driver has insurance but not enough to cover what you lost, and many drivers carry only the minimum.

Who Pays: Comparative Negligence

Massachusetts uses modified comparative negligence under Chapter 231, Section 85. You can recover as long as your share of fault is not greater than the combined fault of the defendants. Cross 51% and you get nothing.⁸

When you do recover, your award drops by your percentage of fault. A jury that finds you 30% responsible and awards $100,000 leaves you with $70,000. The statute eliminates the assumption-of-risk defense and treats a traffic violation by the plaintiff as evidence of negligence, not an automatic bar. The burden of proving you were partly at fault falls on the defendant.⁸

Insurance adjusters make an initial fault call, but it is not the final word. If the case goes to trial, the jury assigns percentages from scratch based on the evidence.

When You Can Sue for Pain and Suffering

The no-fault system keeps small crashes out of court. Chapter 231, Section 6D lets you step outside it and sue for pain and suffering if any one of the following is true:⁹

Reasonable and necessary medical, surgical, dental, hospital, and ambulance expenses total more than $2,000.
The injury caused or contributed to a death.
You lost a body member.
You suffered permanent and serious disfigurement.
You lost sight or hearing.
You fractured a bone, including a hairline fracture.

The $2,000 medical threshold is low. A single emergency room visit often clears it on its own, and any fracture qualifies automatically. In practice, only the most minor soft-tissue claims are kept out of court by the threshold.

Damages and the Filing Deadline

If your injuries clear the threshold, you can pursue medical bills beyond what PIP covered, lost wages, reduced earning capacity, and pain and suffering. Comparative negligence still applies, so your award is trimmed by your share of fault.

Punitive damages generally are not available in Massachusetts personal injury cases. The exception is wrongful death: under Chapter 229, Section 2, when a death results from gross negligence or willful, wanton, or reckless conduct, the estate can recover punitive damages of at least $5,000 with no statutory cap.¹⁰ In a standard survivable-injury case, you cannot get punitive damages no matter how badly the other driver behaved.

You have three years from the date of the accident to file a personal injury lawsuit.¹¹ Miss it and the court will almost certainly dismiss the case. The clock can be paused in narrow circumstances, such as when the injured person is a minor, but do not count on that. Start early if you think you have a claim.

Leaving the Scene

Leaving without stopping and identifying yourself is a separate criminal offense under Chapter 90, Section 24. The penalties climb with the severity of the crash:¹

Property damage only: a fine of $20 to $200, imprisonment of two weeks to two years, or both.
Injury not resulting in death: imprisonment of six months to two years and a fine of $500 to $1,000.
Death: state prison for two and a half to ten years and a fine of $1,000 to $5,000, with a mandatory minimum of one year before parole eligibility.

The injury and death penalties carry mandatory prison time, so a judge cannot substitute probation alone. A conviction also triggers license revocation and stays on your record for years.

Driving Without Insurance

Driving uninsured is a crime under Chapter 90, Section 34J:¹²

First offense: a fine of up to $500 and a 60-day license suspension.
Subsequent offenses: a fine of $500 to $5,000, up to one year in jail, or both. A second or later conviction within six years brings a one-year license suspension.

Beyond the criminal penalties, a convicted driver owes the state’s assigned-risk plan the greater of $500 or one year’s premium at the highest-rated territory and class in the state.¹² Cause a crash while uninsured and every dollar of the other driver’s damage and medical care comes out of your own pocket.

How Your Premium Changes After an Accident

Massachusetts adjusts premiums through the Safe Driver Insurance Plan, which assigns points for at-fault accidents and violations:¹³

Minor traffic violation: 2 points.
Minor at-fault accident: 3 points.
Major at-fault accident: 4 points.
Major traffic violation such as OUI: 5 points.

More points mean higher surcharges, and a serious violation like operating under the influence can push a premium up sharply or cause a carrier to drop the policy. Clean records earn credits that bring the premium below the base rate. Points can drop over time under the plan’s “Clean in 3” provision if your record stays clean and the surcharge is old enough, and if a court or the Board of Appeal reverses an at-fault finding or violation, your insurer must recalculate and remove the surcharge.¹³

1
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 90 Section 24
2
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 90 Section 26
3
Mass.gov. Report a Motor Vehicle Crash
4
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 90 Section 34M
5
Mass.gov. Basics of Auto Insurance
6
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 90 Section 34A
7
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 175 Section 113L
8
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 231 Section 85
9
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 231 Section 6D
10
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 229 Section 2
11
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 260 Section 2A
12
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 90 Section 34J
13
Mass.gov. Safe Driver Insurance Plan (SDIP)