What Are the Consequences of a Hit-and-Run in Massachusetts?

A hit and run in Massachusetts is prosecuted under General Laws Chapter 90, Section 24, and the consequences climb sharply with the harm caused: a $20 to $200 fine and up to two years in a house of correction for property damage, six months to two years and a mandatory fine for bodily injury, and a mandatory minimum year in prison when someone dies. Every conviction also costs you your license for at least 60 days, and the person you hit can sue you separately in civil court.¹

What Counts as Leaving the Scene

Section 24 imposes two duties the moment a collision happens. You have to stop, and you have to give the other person your name, home address, and vehicle registration number. The duty attaches on any public road and in any place the public can access, including parking lots and private driveways open to visitors.¹

Hitting an unattended car or someone’s property doesn’t let you drive off. You’re expected to make a reasonable effort to find the owner, and if you can’t, to leave a written note with your contact information and a description of what happened.

One word in the statute does a lot of work: “knowingly.” The prosecution has to prove you were aware a collision occurred. You don’t need to have intended the crash, but you do need to have known it happened and left anyway. That knowledge requirement is the hinge of the most common defense, discussed below.

Criminal Penalties by What the Crash Caused

Massachusetts sorts leaving-the-scene offenses into three tiers. The penalties escalate at each one, and the top tier carries a mandatory minimum sentence that a judge has no power to waive.

Property Damage Only

If the accident damaged a vehicle or other property but didn’t injure anyone, the offense is a misdemeanor. A conviction carries a fine of $20 to $200, imprisonment in a house of correction of two weeks to two years, or both.¹ Your license is suspended for 60 days on a first offense, and for one year on a second conviction within three years.

Bodily Injury

When someone is hurt but no one dies, Section 24(2)(a½) applies. The fine runs from $500 to $1,000, and imprisonment is a minimum of six months and a maximum of two years. Both the fine and the jail time are mandatory parts of the sentence rather than alternatives.¹ The license suspension is one year for a first offense and two years if you have a prior leaving-the-scene conviction.

Any injury the victim suffered, from a broken arm to a traumatic brain injury, counts as “personal injury” under the statute. Severity still shapes how prosecutors charge the case and how judges sentence within the range.

Death

Leaving the scene when someone dies is a felony. The sentence is state prison for two and a half to ten years plus a $1,000 to $5,000 fine, or in the alternative, one to two and a half years in a house of correction with the same fine range.²

The statute sets a one-year mandatory minimum. A judge cannot sentence below one year, cannot suspend it, and cannot grant probation. The convicted driver is also ineligible for parole or furlough until that first year is served.² The only exceptions permitting temporary release during that year are attending a relative’s funeral, visiting a critically ill relative, receiving emergency medical care unavailable at the facility, or participating in a work release program.

The death tier adds an element the lower tiers lack: the driver must have left “to avoid prosecution or evade apprehension.” The prosecution has to prove it, but fleeing a fatal crash tends to speak for itself.

License Suspension and Reinstatement

Every hit and run conviction triggers a mandatory suspension on top of the criminal sentence. The schedule gets harsher with repeat offenses:

Property damage, first offense: 60-day suspension
Property damage, second offense within three years: one-year suspension
Personal injury, first offense: one-year suspension
Personal injury with a prior conviction: two-year suspension

Getting the license back isn’t automatic once the suspension ends. You pay a reinstatement fee to the RMV, and depending on the circumstances you may have to carry an SR-22 certificate of financial responsibility for several years. An SR-22 tells the RMV your insurer is covering you at state-required minimums and flags you as a high-risk driver, which usually means significantly higher premiums for years afterward.

Civil Lawsuits on Top of the Criminal Case

Criminal penalties don’t end your exposure. The person you hit can sue you for compensation in civil court even after you’ve paid criminal fines or served jail time. The two tracks run separately.

A civil claim can recover losses that criminal restitution doesn’t touch, including pain and suffering, emotional distress, and diminished quality of life. When the decision to flee reflected reckless or wanton disregard for others’ safety, the injured person may also seek punitive damages. Courts don’t award punitive damages for ordinary negligence, but deliberately leaving an injured person at the scene goes beyond carelessness.

A criminal conviction becomes powerful evidence in that civil case. It doesn’t automatically prove every element of the civil claim, but a guilty plea or verdict makes the defense considerably harder.

If You Were the Victim

If a hit and run driver was never identified, you’re not necessarily left paying your own bills. Every auto insurance policy issued in Massachusetts must include uninsured motorist coverage, and Chapter 175, Section 113L extends that coverage to hit and run accidents. Your own insurer must cover bodily injury, sickness, or disease caused by a hit and run driver, up to your policy limits.³ Report the crash to the police and your insurer quickly; delays open the door to coverage disputes.

For damage to your car when the other driver disappears, you’d rely on the collision portion of your own policy if you carry it. Collision coverage isn’t mandatory in Massachusetts the way uninsured motorist bodily injury coverage is, so whether you have it depends on the policy you bought.

Defenses That Work

The strongest defense in most leaving-the-scene cases targets the knowledge element. The prosecution has to prove you knew an accident happened. In minor collisions, especially at low speeds with road noise, music, or bad weather, a driver can genuinely be unaware contact occurred. That doesn’t excuse inattentive driving, but it does mean prosecutors have to prove more than your presence at the scene.¹

Emergency circumstances can also justify leaving. If you drove off because of an immediate threat to your safety, such as an aggressive person at the scene, or because you needed emergency medical care yourself, your departure may be legally justified. The defense lives or dies on the evidence. Vague claims rarely hold up. Medical records showing you drove to the emergency room, or witnesses describing a threatening confrontation, carry real weight.

On the death-level charge, the statute’s extra element, leaving “to avoid prosecution or evade apprehension,” gives defendants another angle. A driver who left but turned themselves in shortly afterward can argue they weren’t fleeing accountability. The practical value varies case to case, but surrendering to police quickly almost always leaves you in a better position than being tracked down days later.

1
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Code Chapter 90, Section 24 – Failure to Stop After Collision
2
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Code Chapter 90, Section 24 – Failure to Stop After Collision
3
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Code Chapter 175, Section 113L – Uninsured Motor Vehicle Coverage