If you were just in a crash, the clock has already started. That’s not meant to scare you, just to anchor your next steps in reality. Deadlines after a car wreck come in layers. Some are internal rules set by insurance companies. Others are hard legal limits set by your state. A few have exceptions that sound simple until you try to use them. The difference between filing on time and missing the mark can mean full recovery of your losses or no recovery at all.
This is where a seasoned car accident lawyer earns their keep. I’ll lay out the timelines the way I do when talking with a new client, including the traps I see again and again, and the decisions that matter in the first weeks. Laws vary by state, but the framework below will help you get oriented and protect your claim.
Where the clock starts: two parallel timelines
After a collision, two key timelines begin to run at almost the same moment. The first is the insurance reporting timeline, which is largely contract-driven and shorter than people expect. The second is the statute of limitations, the deadline by which you must file a lawsuit in court if the case doesn’t settle.
Most people treat the insurance piece like a formality and the statute like a distant worry. It’s the opposite. The insurance deadlines can affect whether your claim even gets considered, and the statute sets the outer edge of your leverage.
Insurance policies often require “prompt notice” or notice “as soon as practicable.” That phrase is vague, but carriers use it to deny or delay if notice drags on without a good reason. In practice, notifying your own insurer within a few days is safe, within a couple of weeks is defensible, and beyond that invites arguments. If the claim involves uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage, several states require formal written notice or even a sworn proof-of-loss within defined windows. Miss those and you can lose coverage you paid for.
The statute of limitations, by contrast, is a state law that sets a clear deadline to file suit. Common ranges: two years for personal injury in many states, three years in others, one year in a handful. Property-only claims sometimes have longer limits. Claims against a city, county, or state agency carry much shorter “notice of claim” requirements, sometimes 60 to 180 days, and you must use precise forms. A car accident attorney looks for this in the very first call because it changes the entire approach.
The insurance side: what needs to happen quickly
You do not need every medical bill, every photo, or a police report to notify insurance. You only need enough to preserve your rights and open a claim. When I help a client after a wreck, the sequence is simple but disciplined.
First, notify your own insurer promptly, even if the other driver is clearly at fault. This keeps your personal injury protection or medical payments benefits available and protects you if the other carrier stalls. If you end up using uninsured or underinsured coverage, early notice matters.
Second, put the at-fault driver’s insurer on notice once you have the policy information. If the crash report isn’t ready, exchange information at the scene or retrieve it from the officer’s card or your phone photos. A short notice with the date, location, and parties is enough to prevent “late notice” excuses.
Third, avoid giving recorded statements to the other insurer before you understand your injuries. Insurers push for statements within days. They frame it as routine. In practice, early statements cause trouble when symptoms evolve, new diagnoses emerge, or the adjuster uses leading questions. A personal injury lawyer can handle communications so you don’t box yourself in.
On the property damage side, insurers often demand that you bring the car to an approved shop or allow an appraiser to inspect it. That’s normal. Keep your own photos and copies of all estimates. If the car is totaled, know that the “actual cash value” is negotiable if you can show comparable listings and condition. Towing and storage fees accumulate daily and create pressure. An attorney or savvy claimant moves quickly to shift those costs to the responsible party or make a practical decision about release.
The statute of limitations: state rules and the gray areas
Statutes of limitations are not suggestions. File too late and the court will dismiss the case, even if liability is obvious. The ranges below are common, but you must confirm your state’s rules:
- Many states use a two-year limit for personal injury from a motor vehicle crash. Some, including several in the Northeast and Pacific Northwest, allow three years for personal injury. A small number set one year, which catches out-of-state drivers off guard. Property-only claims sometimes have three to six years, but verify before you plan around that. Wrongful death claims run on their own clock, commonly two years, and sometimes shorter if a government vehicle was involved.
The “gray areas” are tolling rules and special situations that can extend or shorten the deadline. If the injured person is a minor, most states pause the injury claim clock until the child turns 18, although some allow parents to recover medical expenses on a shorter timetable. If the at-fault driver leaves the state for a period, some jurisdictions toll the statute while they are absent. If the defendant is a governmental entity, special notice-of-claim rules kick in that are much shorter than the standard statute. Missing those notice deadlines can bar the claim completely, even if you could still file a lawsuit within the general timeframe.
There is also a quiet trap tied to workers’ compensation. If you were on the job when the crash happened, you likely have workers’ comp coverage, and the comp carrier may have a lien on any third-party recovery. Several states require you to file the third-party action within a certain time or the right transfers to the comp carrier. It’s obscure, but I have seen it derail cases that looked straightforward.
When delayed injuries collide with strict deadlines
People rarely feel every injury at the scene of a crash. A concussion may look like a headache for a day or two. A small herniation may feel like stiffness until you lift something a week later and your leg goes numb. Insurance adjusters know this and sometimes close files quickly, then use mental anchoring to keep the settlement low when new injuries appear.
The law does not move the statute just because you discover additional injury later, except in narrow circumstances like delayed discovery of a malpractice event. In a car crash, the injury and its cause are obvious as soon as the collision happens. The safe move is to get a full medical evaluation early, document symptoms as they evolve, and resist the urge to settle until your doctors give a clear prognosis. A personal injury attorney can pace the claim so you do not miss the statute while still allowing enough time to understand your damages.
A common scenario: a client calls 16 months after a crash, symptoms ongoing, no lawsuit filed because they hoped to recover and avoid legal action. We move aggressively. Order records, secure expert opinions if needed, and file well before the two-year mark. Waiting until the last weeks invites mistakes, failed service of process, and defense arguments that evidence went stale.
Claims against government entities change everything
If a public employee in a city truck or a state trooper causes a collision, your deadlines shrink and your paperwork must follow a statute. Many states require a notice of claim within 90 or 180 days. The notice must include specifics, often a dollar amount, and it must be served on a particular office, not just mailed to an adjuster. Miss any of these details and the defendant will ask the court to dismiss the case later, sometimes after months of negotiation that felt productive.
Even where the general statute of limitations is two years, the suit against a government body may need to be filed sooner or only after the agency denies the claim. These rules differ dramatically across jurisdictions. A car accident attorney who routinely handles governmental claims will know whether you need to send a sworn notice, what to include, and how to calendar the follow-on deadlines.
The role of evidence and why time kills value
Think about what proves a crash case: skid marks, vehicle damage, ECM data, dashcam footage, doorbell camera video, 911 audio, eyewitness recollections, medical imaging, and employment records. All of it decays. Pavement markings fade within days. Surveillance systems overwrite in 24 to 72 hours. Memories blur within weeks. Even medical records lose context if you wait months to complain about pain that actually began on day one.
When I’m retained early, we send preservation letters to businesses near the scene, request the 911 call immediately, and capture vehicle data before the car is salvaged. If we’re hired late, half of that is gone. You can still win with testimony and medical evidence, but the settlement value is often lower because jurors and adjusters trust contemporaneous proof.
Timing also shapes medical care. If you lack health insurance or face large deductibles, you might delay seeing a specialist. That pause not only hurts your recovery, it gives insurers room to argue that your injuries were minor or unrelated. A personal injury lawyer can coordinate care through providers who accept liens, meaning they are paid from the settlement, or help you use med-pay or PIP benefits to bridge the gap.
When you should file suit even if negotiations seem promising
Insurers often request “more time” when the statute of limitations is approaching. They might ask you to sign an agreement tolling the statute for 60 or 90 days. Sometimes that makes sense, for instance, if liability is admitted and you’re waiting on a final surgery report. Other times, it’s better to file suit to preserve leverage. Filing does not mean you will end up in a courtroom. Most cases still settle. It does mean you control the calendar instead of the adjuster.
There is no universal answer, but here are the signals that tell me to file: the adjuster won’t acknowledge clear medical causation, the offer barely covers medical expenses after months of patience, liability is disputed with no credible basis, or the statute is close and the defense has been slow to produce documents. Filing also opens the doors to formal discovery, which can break a stalemate when a witness’s statement is necessary.
Comparative negligence and how deadlines interact with fault
Most states use comparative negligence rules. If you are partly at fault, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault. In a few states with modified comparative rules, you recover only if you are less than 50 or 51 percent at fault. A very small number still apply contributory negligence, where any fault can bar recovery.
Why does this matter for timelines? Because evidence that counters a fault argument is fragile. Intersection cameras overwrite. An independent witness moves and can’t be found. Road construction plans that explain a confusing lane shift get archived. If you wait 18 months to pursue a claim, and the other side insists you made a sudden lane change, you will wish you had pulled the traffic engineer’s plans or canvassed for doorbell cameras the week after the crash.
Medical milestones and reasonable pacing
The sweet spot for settling a bodily injury claim is after you reach maximum medical improvement or a surgeon gives a prognosis with reasonable certainty. Settle too early and you risk leaving money on the table if you need more treatment. Wait too long and the statute tightens around your options.
In real cases, I watch for certain milestones: discharge from physical therapy with a stable outcome, a specialist’s narrative tying injury to the crash, and a clear plan for future care with cost estimates. For a concussion, that may be a neuropsychologist’s report after cognitive testing. For a spine injury, that could be imaging plus an orthopedic surgeon’s opinion on permanent impairment. These are not luxuries. They are the backbone of a persuasive demand package that convinces an adjuster or a jury.
Uninsured and underinsured coverage: special notice traps
Uninsured motorist (UM) and underinsured motorist (UIM) claims can save a case when the at-fault driver has minimum coverage or flees the scene. They also come with unique contractual requirements. Some policies require you to obtain the insurer’s consent before settling with the at-fault party. Others demand arbitration instead of a lawsuit, with shorter timelines to initiate. In several states, you must put your UM/UIM carrier on notice very early, sometimes within 30 days, if you suspect the at-fault limits won’t cover your damages.
A personal injury attorney reads your policy and sets internal deadlines: notice letters to your carrier, requests for underinsured limits, and procedures for protecting the right to stack coverages if allowed by state law. If you sign a release with the at-fault carrier without addressing your UM/UIM rights, you can accidentally waive them. I have seen that happen, and it is a painful conversation.
The human side: what delays look like in real life
A client I’ll call Denise called three months after a rear-end crash. She tried to tough it out and hoped the neck pain would pass. By the time we met, she had one urgent care visit and a bottle of muscle relaxers. We set up a proper evaluation, and the MRI showed a cervical disc herniation with nerve impingement. We notified both insurers immediately, preserved store camera footage that still existed because the crash happened in a shopping center, and moved efficiently through care.
Now imagine Denise had waited nine months. The store’s video would be long gone. The defense could argue that anything seen on MRI was degenerative. That argument might still fail with good medical testimony, but the case would be harder and the numbers lower.
Another case involved a delivery van owned by a city contractor. The deadline to file a notice of claim was 120 days. We were hired at day 96. We prepared and served the notice on day 110 with confirmed delivery. If that call had come at day 160, no amount of good facts would have cured the missed statutory requirement.
How a car accident attorney manages the calendar
Here is the internal rhythm that keeps cases on track without turning clients into paperwork machines.
- Immediate actions: secure insurance claim numbers for both sides, send preservation letters, request the crash report, and review your policy for med-pay, PIP, UM/UIM, and notice clauses. First 30 to 60 days: ensure consistent medical follow-up, obtain early imaging if red flags exist, gather initial wage loss proof, and identify potential government or contractor defendants. Midcase pacing: update the insurer with concise medical summaries, push for full property damage resolution, and monitor the statute of limitations alongside any special notice deadlines. Decision window before the statute: evaluate whether to file suit, seek a tolling agreement you can trust, or set a firm settlement demand with a deadline that allows time to file if needed.
That’s as close to a checklist as I will get, because every case breathes differently. The point is not to bury the insurer with paper. It is to move steadily, keep proof fresh, and maintain options.
Why contacting counsel early usually pays for itself
I meet people who worry they’ll look “too litigious” if they consult a lawyer early. The opposite is true. Early involvement from a personal injury lawyer keeps communications clean, documents notice properly, and prevents missteps that cost far more than a fee ever would. A car accident attorney knows which forms matter, which deadlines are real, and how to car accident lawyer avoid accidental waivers. If you’re the type who keeps a neat folder, you can still run point on several tasks. But have someone watching the statute, reading the policy fine print, and anticipating the insurer’s next move.
Fee structures are designed for this. Most personal injury attorneys work on contingency, so you pay nothing upfront and fees come from the recovery. If you handle the claim yourself and later realize that the statute is approaching with unresolved issues, an attorney can still step in, but they will have to work faster and with fewer tools.
Signs you might be close to a deadline
Calendar your crash date. Then watch for these signals that should prompt immediate action:
- An adjuster mentions a “limitations date” in passing or refuses to extend a low offer. You’re approaching one year in a state with a two-year statute and still in treatment with no lawsuit filed. A government or public contractor is involved and no formal notice of claim has been sent. You’re considering a settlement release while still in active treatment or before consulting your UM/UIM carrier.
If any of those fit, pause, gather your documents, and talk with counsel before signing anything.
Final thoughts and a practical path forward
Deadlines after a car crash are not just legal technicalities. They shape the quality of your evidence, your medical care, and your negotiating power. Act quickly on insurance notice to keep benefits available. Confirm your state’s statute of limitations and any special notice requirements, especially if a government entity is in the mix. Pay attention to UM and UIM rules inside your own policy. Do not rush to settle before you understand your medical trajectory, and do not drift past the statute hoping for a better offer later.
If you feel overwhelmed, that is normal. Hand the calendar to a professional. A seasoned personal injury attorney will keep the timeline straight, protect coverage you already paid for, and carry the load while you heal. If you prefer to handle the early steps yourself, at least get a brief consult with a car accident lawyer. A 30-minute conversation can surface the hidden deadlines and save a claim that might otherwise slip away.
The clock is running, but you still have choices. Make the next one count.