What To Do After a Car Accident in Arizona (2026)

This is not legal advice. We're not your attorney and nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship. This is practical information from people who've watched thousands of these cases move through intake. If you're seriously hurt, talk to a licensed Arizona attorney before making decisions.

Right Now, In the Next Hour

If you're reading this from the side of the road or a hospital waiting room, here's what matters immediately.

Call 911. Even if the other driver says they don't want police involved, even if the damage looks minor, even if everyone seems fine. You want a police report. In Arizona, you're legally required to report any accident involving injury, death, or property damage over $2,000 to law enforcement anyway. Don't try to guess whether the damage hits that threshold. Just call.

Don't move injured people unless there's fire or immediate danger. Don't apologize. Don't say "I didn't see you" or "I'm so sorry" to anyone at the scene. Arizona is an at-fault state, which means liability is going to matter, and anything you say at the scene can be used to assign fault to you later.

Take photos before anything moves. The other car's position. Your car. Skid marks. The intersection. Every piece of debris. Do this before the tow truck arrives, before anyone moves vehicles to the shoulder, before the scene clears. Your phone camera is your best friend right now.

Get the other driver's insurance card, license, and plate number. Get names and phone numbers from any witnesses. If witnesses leave before you can talk to them, try to get the plate number of their vehicle.

Today: The First 24 Hours

Go to a doctor or urgent care even if you feel okay. Adrenaline is real. Whiplash, soft tissue injuries, and even some traumatic brain injuries don't announce themselves at the scene. They show up the next morning, or three days later. If you wait a week to see a doctor, the insurance adjuster is going to argue your injuries weren't caused by the accident. Get evaluated today.

Report the accident to your own insurance company. Not to the other driver's insurance. Yours. You're required to report promptly under most Arizona auto policies, and failing to do so can give your insurer grounds to deny coverage. Keep this call short and factual: date, time, location, other driver's information. You're not giving a recorded statement yet.

The other driver's insurance company may call you within hours. The adjuster is going to call from a number you don't recognize and ask if you're okay. Don't answer that question. "I'm still being evaluated" is a complete sentence. Do not give a recorded statement to the at-fault driver's insurer without talking to an attorney first. This is not paranoia. Recorded statements taken within 24 hours of an accident are used routinely to minimize claims. The adjuster is trained for this. You're not.

Write down everything you remember about the accident while it's fresh. What you were doing before the crash. How fast you were going. What the other driver did. What the road and weather conditions were. What you said and what they said. Keep this document somewhere safe.

This Week: Days 2 Through 7

Follow up on your medical care. If your doctor refers you to a specialist or recommends imaging, get it done. Gaps in treatment are one of the first things an insurance adjuster will point to when they're trying to reduce your settlement. Every time you skip a recommended appointment, it becomes a data point against you.

Arizona has Personal Injury Protection? No. Arizona does not require PIP coverage. This surprises people who've lived in other states. Arizona is an at-fault state with no mandatory PIP, which means there's no automatic medical payment coverage that kicks in regardless of fault. If you have MedPay on your policy (it's optional here), use it. If you don't, your health insurance is your first line of coverage for medical bills while the liability claim gets sorted out.

Preserve everything. Don't repair your car yet if you can avoid it. Keep all medical bills, prescription receipts, and any documentation of missed work. If your injuries affect your daily life, start a simple journal: what hurts, what you couldn't do, how you slept. This sounds tedious. It matters enormously if your case ever goes to negotiation or trial.

If the accident involved a commercial truck, a rideshare vehicle, a government-owned car, or a driver who was working at the time, talk to an attorney before you do anything else. These cases have different rules, shorter notice deadlines, and more parties involved. A standard 2-year timeline doesn't protect you if you miss a 180-day notice requirement for a claim against a municipality.

Arizona's Rules You Actually Need to Know

The statute of limitations for personal injury claims in Arizona is two years from the date of the accident, under A.R.S. § 12-542. Miss that deadline and your claim is gone, no exceptions for not knowing about it. Two years sounds like a long time until you're dealing with ongoing treatment and suddenly it's month 20.

Arizona follows a pure comparative fault system. This means if you're found 30% at fault for the accident, your damages are reduced by 30%. You can still recover even if you were mostly at fault. But the other driver's insurance company knows this too, and they're going to look for ways to assign fault to you. Every statement you make, every photo that exists, every witness account feeds into that calculation.

Arizona requires drivers to carry minimum liability coverage of $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident for bodily injury, plus $15,000 for property damage. A lot of drivers carry only the minimum. If your injuries are serious, the at-fault driver may not have enough coverage to fully compensate you. This is where your own uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage (UM/UIM) becomes critical. Check your policy now to see if you have it.

Property damage claims operate on a separate track from injury claims. You can settle your property damage claim quickly without affecting your injury claim, and sometimes it makes sense to do so. But get the injury claim evaluated first before you sign anything that releases all claims against the other driver. A blanket release is a blanket release.

On Hiring a Lawyer

You don't need an attorney for a minor fender-bender with no injuries and a cooperative insurance company. You probably do need one if you were seriously hurt, if liability is disputed, if there are multiple vehicles involved, if the other driver was uninsured, or if you're getting pressure from an adjuster to settle fast.

Most personal injury attorneys in Arizona work on contingency, meaning they don't get paid unless you do. A typical fee is 33% of the settlement if it resolves before a lawsuit is filed, higher if it goes to litigation. That's the standard. Don't let the percentage scare you away from getting a consultation. Most offer free initial consultations and won't take a case they don't think they can win.

One thing that genuinely matters when choosing a firm: ask how many cases the attorney personally handles versus how many get handed to a paralegal or junior associate. In high-volume PI firms, it's common for your case to be managed almost entirely by non-attorneys. Not necessarily bad. But you should know.

The Thing Most People Get Wrong

They settle too fast. The adjuster calls within a week, offers a number that sounds reasonable given the damage, and the injured person takes it because they're stressed and the bills are piling up. Then three months later the back pain hasn't resolved, the MRI shows a herniated disc, and the release they signed is ironclad.

Don't settle your injury claim until you know the full extent of your injuries. In Arizona, once you sign a release, that's it. There's no coming back. If your doctor hasn't told you whether your condition is permanent or what future treatment might cost, you don't have enough information to settle yet. Full stop.