Nevada Car Accident Laws: Reporting, Fault, and Damages

Nevada car accident laws require you to stop at the scene, exchange information, help anyone injured, and file a written report with the DMV within 10 days if the crash caused injury, death, or property damage of $750 or more. What you can recover depends on two things: how fault is divided (Nevada bars recovery if you were more than 50 percent to blame) and the insurance that was in place. The rules below cover both sides — what you owe after a crash and what you can collect.

What You Must Do at the Scene

If anyone is hurt or killed, stop immediately at the scene or as close to it as you safely can, and stay until you’ve met every duty the law lists.¹ If the crash caused only vehicle or property damage, you still have to stop, but you should move your car out of traffic lanes if you can do so safely.²

Share your name, address, and vehicle registration number with anyone injured and with the driver of any other vehicle involved. Give the same information to a police officer on the scene, and show your license on request. You also have a legal duty to help anyone who is injured, which can mean driving them to a hospital or arranging other transportation for care.¹

If no officer shows up to a crash that involved injuries, death, or that happened on a highway, you have to report the crash yourself to the nearest police station or Nevada Highway Patrol office as soon as possible.¹

The 10-Day DMV Report (Form SR-1)

You must file a written crash report with the Nevada DMV within 10 days of any accident that caused injury, death, or property damage that appears to total $750 or more.³ This is separate from any police report taken at the scene. The DMV provides Form SR-1 for the filing.

You’ll need the names, addresses, and registration numbers of everyone involved, plus the date, time, and location of the crash. If your vehicle was damaged, attach a repair estimate from a licensed garage or an insurance adjuster.³

Miss the 10-day deadline and the DMV can suspend your license for up to one year if the failure was willful. The suspension stays in place until the report is received or you can show the failure wasn’t intentional. Filing a false report is a gross misdemeanor.⁴

Penalties for Leaving the Scene

Leaving the scene of a crash that caused injury or death is a category B felony. The punishment is 2 to 20 years in state prison plus a fine between $2,000 and $5,000, and the judge cannot suspend the sentence or grant probation. Each injured or killed person counts as a separate offense, so the penalties stack.⁴

Leaving the scene of a property-damage-only crash is a misdemeanor.² The jump between the two is enormous: the moment anyone has even a minor injury, driving away becomes a felony.

How Fault Affects What You Can Recover

Nevada uses modified comparative negligence. You can pursue compensation only if your share of fault is not greater than the combined negligence of the defendants. At 50 percent you can still recover; at 51 percent or more you’re completely barred.⁵

If you are partially at fault but still eligible, your award is reduced by your percentage of responsibility. A jury that finds $80,000 in total damages and puts you at 30 percent fault will produce a $56,000 recovery after the court applies the reduction.⁵

When more than one defendant is at fault, Nevada generally uses several liability. Each defendant pays only the portion of the judgment matching their percentage of fault, so a defendant found 10 percent responsible owes 10 percent of the total even if the other defendants can’t pay. Narrow exceptions trigger joint and several liability — strict liability claims, intentional torts, toxic substance injuries, concerted acts, and defective products — and these matter most when a crash involves something like a defective vehicle part or an intentional act such as road rage.⁵

Insurance Every Nevada Driver Must Carry

Every owner of a vehicle registered in Nevada must maintain continuous liability insurance with minimum coverage of:

$25,000 for bodily injury or death of one person per crash
$50,000 for bodily injury or death when two or more people are involved in one crash
$20,000 for damage to another person’s property per crash

This is commonly called 25/50/20 coverage. The policy must come from an insurer licensed to do business in Nevada and must remain in effect whenever the vehicle is present or operating in the state.⁶

These minimums are low enough that a single serious crash can exceed them easily. A broken leg, surgery, and a few months of missed work will blow past $25,000 before you get to property damage. Carrying only the minimum is legal, but it leaves you personally exposed for anything above those limits.

Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Coverage

Nevada insurers must offer uninsured and underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage at limits equal to your bodily injury policy limits. You aren’t required to buy it, but the insurer must present the offer on a state-approved form with every renewal.⁷

UM coverage applies when the other driver has no insurance. UIM coverage applies when the other driver’s limits aren’t enough to cover your injuries. Given the state’s $25,000 per-person minimum, running into an underinsured driver is common. UM/UIM pays the difference between the at-fault driver’s limits and your actual damages, up to the limits of your own policy.⁷

What You Can Recover

Economic Damages

Economic damages cover documented financial losses: medical treatment (emergency care, surgery, physical therapy, prescriptions, future care), lost wages and lost earning capacity, vehicle repair or replacement, rental car costs, and related out-of-pocket expenses.

Non-Economic Damages

Non-economic damages compensate for losses without a price tag: physical pain, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, and physical impairment or disfigurement. Nevada does not cap non-economic damages in standard car accident cases.

Punitive Damages

Punitive damages are unusual in car accident cases. They’re available only when the defendant’s conduct involved oppression, fraud, or malice, proven by clear and convincing evidence. Drunk driving and extreme recklessness are the typical triggers.⁸

Nevada caps punitive damages against the size of your compensatory award:

If compensatory damages are $100,000 or more, punitive damages cannot exceed three times the compensatory amount.
If compensatory damages are under $100,000, punitive damages cannot exceed $300,000.

The caps don’t apply to certain claims, including defective products, bad-faith insurance practices, and toxic substance exposure. Punitive damages are decided in a separate proceeding after the jury has set compensatory damages, and evidence of the defendant’s wealth isn’t admissible until that second phase.⁸

Deadline to File a Lawsuit

You have a limited window after a Nevada crash, counted from the date of the accident:

Personal injury or wrongful death: 2 years
Property damage: 3 years

Miss these deadlines and the court will almost certainly dismiss your case regardless of its merits.⁹ Two years feels like a long time until you factor in medical treatment and insurance negotiations. Most claims settle without a lawsuit, but the deadline applies to filing suit itself. If settlement talks drag on and you haven’t filed, you can lose the right to sue entirely.

Settlement Taxes and Medicare Liens

How the IRS treats your settlement depends on what it compensates. Damages for personal physical injuries or physical sickness are excluded from gross income, which covers medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering tied to a physical injury.¹⁰ Emotional distress damages that flow from a physical injury are generally excluded with the rest. Emotional distress damages not rooted in a physical injury are taxable, with one narrow exception for amounts reimbursing medical care costs related to the distress that you didn’t deduct on a prior return. Punitive damages are always taxable, even in a case involving physical injuries.¹¹ How the settlement agreement allocates money among these categories matters, so look at the allocation before signing.

If you’re on Medicare and Medicare paid for crash-related treatment, federal law obligates you to reimburse Medicare from your settlement. Medicare makes conditional payments while a liability claim is pending and has a statutory right to recover them once the claim resolves. Ignoring this can expose you to a government recovery action for double the amount owed, and the insurer handling the claim has its own reporting obligations to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Account for the lien before distributing settlement funds.

1
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Code 484E.030 – Duty to Give Information and Render Aid
2
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Code 484E.020 – Duty to Stop at Scene of Crash Involving Damage to Vehicle or Property
3
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Code 484E.070 – Written or Electronic Report of Crash to Department by Driver or Owner
4
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Code 484E – Crashes and Reports of Crashes
5
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Code 41.141 – When Comparative Negligence Not Bar to Recovery
6
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Code 485.185 – Insurance for Payment of Tort Liabilities Arising From Maintenance or Use of Motor Vehicle
7
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Code 687B – Contracts of Insurance
8
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Code 42.005 – Exemplary and Punitive Damages
9
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Code 11.190 – Periods of Limitation
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 104 – Compensation for Injuries or Sickness
11
Internal Revenue Service. Tax Implications of Settlements and Judgments