I was hit in a hit-and-run in New York but I left the scene too — what should I do?

Attorney Answer

There are two separate legal questions in that sentence and they pull in opposite directions, so they should be taken to a New York attorney together and before anything is said to anyone else. As the person who was struck, you may have a claim against the driver who hit you. Separately, Vehicle and Traffic Law § 600 imposes duties on a person operating a motor vehicle who knows or has cause to know that an incident has caused damage or injury — so whether that section reaches you at all depends on a fact your message does not give: whether you were on foot, on a bicycle, or driving. Get advice before you make a report, give a statement or write an account.

Vehicle and Traffic Law § 600 sets out what an operator must do after an incident. In general terms, subdivision 1 addresses damage to property and subdivision 2 addresses personal injury, requiring the operator to stop, to exchange identifying and insurance information with the party affected, and, where that party is not present, to report to the nearest police station or judicial officer; the section attaches consequences to a failure to do it. How it applies to a particular person is exactly the sort of question that should go to a lawyer rather than be worked out alone.

That is why the order of operations matters more than usual here. Reporting an incident is often what makes a claim provable — and it is also a statement, made by you, about what happened and what you did. Where a person may have exposure of their own, the safe course is not silence forever; it is that the account is given on advice, in the form and at the time a lawyer chooses. Preserving evidence that already exists carries none of the same risk and is usually urgent.

What is not settled is the rest of it. Whether you were a pedestrian, a cyclist or a driver changes which rules govern the claim you may have, and your message does not say whether you were injured or what was damaged. Whether the driver can be identified changes what a claim is worth pursuing at all, and whether your own insurance responds is a question about your policy rather than about any statute here. Those are questions for a New York attorney with your actual facts, not questions this page can settle.

What you can do

1. Speak with a New York attorney before making any report, giving any statement to police or an insurer, or posting anything online — and ask specifically about both sides of this, the claim and your own position.

2. Ask that attorney whether a criminal defense lawyer should be involved as well; whether, when and how to report is a strategy decision, not a form to complete.

3. Get medical attention if you have not, and let the record show how you were hurt.

4. Preserve what already exists: photographs, damaged clothing or a damaged bicycle or vehicle, medical records, and the contact details of anyone who was there.

5. Write down the observed details of the vehicle that struck you — plate, colour, make, direction of travel — and give them to your lawyer, and ask that lawyer to seek nearby camera footage promptly, because most systems overwrite within weeks.

⏱ Time limits apply. In New York a personal injury action must generally be commenced within three years under CPLR 214(5), and an action for injury to property within three years under CPLR 214(4), each measured from the date of the incident. Shorter periods apply where a public corporation is a defendant, under General Municipal Law § 50-e(1)(a) and § 50-i(1)(c). A court can extend the time to serve that notice in some circumstances under General Municipal Law § 50-e(5), so a missed ninety days is not automatically the end of a claim. Any proceeding under the Vehicle and Traffic Law runs on its own timetable, which is one more reason to have both sides of this reviewed at once. This page will not calculate any date for you. A brief consultation with a local New York attorney is worth more than any general guidance, including this page.