What to Do After a Car Accident in New York: A Step-by-Step Guide

The moments right after a car accident are chaotic — adrenaline is high, your car may be damaged, and you’re likely dealing with pain, confusion, or shock. What you do (and don’t do) in the first hours and days afterward can directly affect your health, your safety, and your ability to recover fair compensation later.

Here’s a clear, step-by-step guide to follow.

Step 1: Check for Injuries and Call 911

Before anything else, check yourself and any passengers for injuries. Call 911 immediately — this gets police and medical help on the way, and it’s required under New York law for accidents involving injury, death, or significant property damage.

Even if you feel “fine,” stay put and let paramedics evaluate you. Adrenaline masks pain. Concussions, whiplash, and internal injuries frequently don’t show symptoms until hours or days later.

Step 2: Move to Safety (If You Can)

If your vehicle is drivable and blocking traffic, move it to the shoulder. If it’s not safe or possible to move, turn on your hazard lights and stay in your vehicle with your seatbelt on until help arrives, unless there’s an immediate danger like fire or a busy roadway.

Step 3: Call the Police — Even for “Minor” Accidents

Always request a police response, even for accidents that seem minor. A police report is one of the most important pieces of evidence in a personal injury claim — it documents the scene, the parties involved, and often an initial assessment of fault, all recorded by a neutral third party before memories fade or stories change.

If the other driver flees the scene, note as much as you can — our guide on leaving the scene of an accident explains how New York law treats hit-and-run cases and what it means for your claim.

Step 4: Document Everything at the Scene

If you’re physically able, use your phone to photograph all vehicles involved from multiple angles (including license plates), the accident scene itself — skid marks, road conditions, traffic signals, weather — and any visible injuries. Get contact and insurance information from every driver involved, and contact information from witnesses, since they may not be there when an insurance adjuster calls later.

This documentation often matters more than people expect. Insurance companies build their initial offers around whatever evidence exists early — the more you capture now, the harder it is for them to dispute what happened later.

Step 5: Limit What You Say at the Scene

Stick to facts when speaking with police: what happened, where, and when. Avoid speculating about fault, apologizing, or saying things like “I’m fine” or “it was my fault” — even out of politeness or shock. These statements can end up in the police report or be repeated by other drivers, and they can be used against you even if they don’t reflect what actually happened.

Step 6: See a Doctor — Even If You Feel Okay

This step is critical, and it’s one people skip most often. Many serious injuries — concussions, soft tissue damage, whiplash, internal bleeding — don’t produce immediate symptoms. Seeing a doctor within 24 to 48 hours does two things: it catches injuries early, and it creates a documented medical record linking your injuries directly to the accident.

Gaps in treatment are one of the first things insurance companies look for to argue that your injuries weren’t serious, or weren’t caused by the accident at all.

Step 7: Notify Your Own Insurance Company

Most policies require prompt notification of an accident, regardless of fault. Stick to the basic facts — when, where, who was involved — and avoid giving a detailed recorded statement or speculating about injuries until you’ve spoken with an attorney. You are not required to give the other driver’s insurance company a recorded statement at all. New York’s no-fault system also affects how your own initial medical bills get covered — see our overview of no-fault car accident basics for how that works.

Step 8: Keep Every Record

Start a folder — physical or digital — for medical bills and records, repair estimates and receipts, pay stubs or documentation of missed work, photos and the police report number, and any correspondence with insurance companies.

Step 9: Be Cautious of Early Settlement Offers

Insurance companies sometimes move fast with an initial offer — often before the full extent of your injuries or losses is even known. Early offers are almost never their best offers. Once you accept a settlement and sign a release, you generally cannot go back later if your injuries turn out to be worse than expected. Our article on how a personal injury attorney can help you get compensated walks through exactly what negotiating leverage an attorney brings that you don’t have on your own.

Step 10: Contact a Personal Injury Attorney

You don’t need to wait until there’s a dispute to talk to an attorney — in fact, the earlier, the better. An attorney can deal with the insurance companies on your behalf, make sure evidence is preserved, and evaluate whether an early offer actually reflects the full value of your claim.

In New York, most personal injury claims must be filed within three years of the accident, and claims against a government entity require a notice of claim within just 90 days — a deadline that’s easy to miss if you don’t know it exists.

New York is also a pure comparative negligence state, meaning you can still recover compensation even if you were partially at fault. Your award is reduced by your percentage of fault, but it isn’t eliminated. This applies just as much to bicycle and pedestrian accidents as it does to standard car-on-car collisions.

You Don’t Have to Navigate This Alone

At Ianniello Chauvin, LLP, we represent injured individuals and families across Saratoga Springs, Clifton Park, Albany, and Glens Falls as part of our personal injury practice. Our attorneys — including Managing Partner Matthew E. Chauvin, a former Saratoga County prosecutor — know how to build a case that holds up against insurance companies looking to minimize what they pay you.

We work on a contingency fee basis: you pay nothing unless we win. And because accidents don’t wait for business hours, neither do we.

Call (518) 371-5010 for a free case evaluation, or visit our personal injury page to learn more about the types of cases we handle.