My daughter was rear-ended, knocked unconscious, and woke up holding two tickets — do the tickets destroy her claim?

Attorney Answer

Two traffic tickets do not decide who caused a rear-end collision — but in New York they can matter twice: as evidence about your daughter's own conduct, and, in a case filed today, because a claimant found more than half at fault in a motor-vehicle case recovers nothing at all. The claim itself belongs to your daughter, not to you, unless she is a minor or is unable to act for herself.

An injured adult brings her own claim in New York: she signs the retainer and speaks to the insurer. A parent acts for a minor through a guardian, and a court process exists where an adult cannot manage her own affairs.

The rear driver's duty is statutory. Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1129(a) provides:

The driver of a motor vehicle shall not follow another vehicle more closely than is reasonable and prudent, having due regard for the speed of such vehicles and the traffic upon and the condition of the highway.

New York courts also apply a well-known rule calling on a driver who rear-ends a stopped or stopping vehicle to explain the collision. It comes from decided cases rather than a statute, and a sudden turn or lane change in front of the rear driver is exactly the fact that gets argued about.

Because she was hurt in a motor-vehicle collision, the threshold applies. Insurance Law § 5104(a) provides:

Notwithstanding any other law, in any action by or on behalf of a covered person against another covered person for personal injuries arising out of negligence in the use or operation of a motor vehicle in this state, there shall be no right of recovery for non-economic loss, except in the case of a serious injury, or for basic economic loss.

Pain and suffering is recoverable only for a "serious injury"; medical bills and lost earnings are meant to be paid first as no-fault first-party benefits, which are overdue thirty days after proof of the loss is supplied under Insurance Law § 5106(a). Has a lawsuit already been started? That date, not the date of the crash, decides the rest. For an action commenced on or after May 26, 2026 — when Part EE of chapter 58 of the Laws of 2026 took effect — Insurance Law § 5102(d) reads:

(d) "Serious injury" means a personal injury which results in death; dismemberment; significant disfigurement; a fracture; loss of a fetus; permanent loss of use of a body organ, member, function or system; permanent consequential limitation of use of a body organ or member; or significant limitation of use of a body function or system.

For an action already on file before that date, the former text governs and adds a ninth category for a medically determined non-permanent injury preventing substantially all usual daily activities for at least ninety of the first one hundred eighty days. The fault rule splits on the same date: an action commenced on or after May 26, 2026 is subject to CPLR 1411(b), which bars a claimant whose culpable conduct is greater than the defendant's or than the defendants' combined conduct, while an action commenced earlier ran under CPLR 1411 (former text), where a share of blame only reduced the recovery. For an action commenced on or after that date, Insurance Law § 5104(d) also limits non-economic recovery to $100,000 for certain at-fault injured people — a narrow set of classes that does not reach every claimant.

The tickets are a separate legal matter. How a traffic charge is resolved can affect the injury case, and neither the charges nor any plea should be handled on the strength of a web page.

What you can do

1. Have your daughter obtain the police report, the tickets, and every medical record from the loss of consciousness forward, including imaging and any head-injury evaluation.

2. Ask her doctors to document objective findings and measured limitations, dated — the categories above turn on findings, not on how she felt.

3. Preserve any camera, dash or phone footage and the names of witnesses.

4. Have her tell a New York attorney whether any lawsuit has already been commenced on her behalf, and on what date.

5. Have her speak to an attorney about the tickets before entering any plea.

⏱ Time limits apply. CPLR 214(5) allows three years for "an action to recover damages for a personal injury except as provided in sections 214-b, 214-c, 214-i and 215", measured from the date of the collision, and CPLR 208 can extend that period for a person under a disability when the claim accrued. Because this collision was not recent, have a New York attorney review the remaining time on her actual facts right away — this page does not calculate dates.