Maryland Car Accident Laws: What Drivers Need to Know

Insurance Systems & Requirements

Maryland operates under an at-fault insurance system, meaning the driver responsible for a crash is financially liable for resulting damages. Injured parties pursue compensation from the at-fault driver's insurer, their own PIP or UM/UIM coverage, or a lawsuit against the at-fault driver. Though as discussed in the Fault section below, Maryland's contributory negligence rule makes car accident claims far less forgiving than in most states.

Minimum required coverages

All drivers operating a vehicle in Maryland must carry the following minimum liability insurance:

• Bodily Injury Liability: $30,000 per person / $60,000 per accident
• Property Damage Liability: $15,000 per accident
• Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist (UM/UIM): Must match your liability limits ($30,000/$60,000/$15,000). UM coverage specifically cannot be waived
• Personal Injury Protection (PIP): $2,500 minimum, covering medical expenses and lost wages regardless of fault. Can be waived in writing, but doing so also forfeits access to PIP benefits under other people's policies, including a driver you're a passenger for

At these levels, coverage can be exhausted quickly in a serious crash, and given how unforgiving Maryland's fault rule is for an injured party's own recovery, carrying more than the minimum is worth serious consideration.

Enhanced Underinsured Motorist coverage (EUIM)

Maryland offers a genuinely distinctive coverage option that most drivers have never heard of, let alone selected. It's covered in full in the dedicated section below.

Rideshare coverage requirements

For drivers working for Uber, Lyft, or similar platforms, Maryland's Transportation Network Company framework applies coverage in three phases tied to the driver's app status:

• App off (personal use): Standard personal auto policy applies, at Maryland's usual minimum of $30,000 per person / $60,000 per accident bodily injury, $15,000 property damage
• App on, waiting for a ride request: Primary liability coverage of $50,000 for injury to one person, $100,000 for injuries to two or more persons, and $25,000 for property damage, under Maryland Public Service Commission requirements implementing Public Utilities Article § 10-405
• Ride accepted or passenger onboard: Uber and Lyft provide $1,000,000 in liability coverage, along with comprehensive and collision coverage if the driver carries those personally

A standard personal auto policy typically excludes coverage the moment a driver accepts payment to transport someone, so a rideshare endorsement or commercial policy is necessary to avoid a coverage gap during the app-on phase.

Penalties for non-compliance

Maryland enforces insurance compliance through two separate tracks, and a driver can face both simultaneously.

• Administrative (MVA): A lapse in car insurance triggers a fine of $150 for the first 30 days, plus $7 for each additional day, capped at $2,500 per lapse. If registration is suspended, a separate $25 restoration fee applies to reinstate it
• Criminal: Under Maryland Transportation Article § 17-107, knowingly driving an uninsured vehicle, or as an owner knowingly permitting someone else to, is a misdemeanor separate from the administrative MVA penalty. A first offense carries up to 1 year in jail, a fine of up to $1,000, or both. A second or subsequent offense raises the jail exposure to up to 2 years, but the fine remains capped at $1,000. For Maryland-registered vehicles, the absence of a coverage record in MVA's official database is treated as prima facie evidence that the driver knew or had reason to know the vehicle was uninsured, though other evidence can still be introduced to rebut it

An uninsured driver who causes a crash may also be personally liable for the full cost of the damages, since no insurer will step in on their behalf.

Fault & Negligence Laws

Pure contributory negligence

Maryland follows pure contributory negligence, the harshest fault standard a state can apply, and one used in only three other states — Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia — plus the District of Columbia. Under this rule, an injured party who is found to bear any degree of fault at all, even 1 percent, is barred from recovering anything from the other driver. There is no proportional reduction and no threshold to cross. It's binary: 0 percent fault means full recovery; any fault at all means zero.

A concrete example: if you're found 5 percent at fault for a crash and the other driver is found 95 percent at fault, you recover nothing. This is true even where the other driver's conduct was far more serious than yours.

This makes Maryland meaningfully more punishing toward injured parties than the modified comparative fault systems used in most states covered in this series, where a plaintiff typically needs to cross a 50 or 51 percent threshold before losing their claim entirely. In Maryland, a single moment of shared carelessness, a slightly late reaction, an arguably-too-quick lane change, can end a claim regardless of how much more responsible the other driver was.

Why this makes evidence and early legal involvement especially important

Because even minor shared fault is fatal to a Maryland claim, insurance companies' adjusters actively look for any basis, however small, to allege comparative fault on the injured party's part. Police reports, witness statements, dashcam and surveillance footage, medical records, and careful handling of any statement given to an insurer all carry outsized weight here compared to a modified comparative fault state, where a small fault finding merely reduces a recovery rather than eliminating it.

Multi-vehicle collisions

When more than one driver contributed to a crash, an injured party's claim against any of them can still be barred entirely if that injured party bears any fault themselves, regardless of how the fault is distributed among the other drivers.

Passenger rights

Passengers injured in a Maryland crash may seek compensation from the negligent driver's insurer, or the insurer of the vehicle they were riding in, and can draw on their own PIP or UM/UIM coverage regardless of fault. A passenger's own conduct is rarely at issue, but if it did contribute to the crash itself (as opposed to merely the severity of their injuries, such as not wearing a seatbelt), the same 1 percent bar could apply to a claim against the driver responsible for that contribution.

For a broader explanation of how comparative and contributory negligence systems compare across states, see our article on comparative and contributory negligence.

Maryland's Enhanced Underinsured Motorist Coverage (EUIM)

Most Maryland drivers who carry UM/UIM coverage assume it works the way UM/UIM works in most states: if the at-fault driver's insurance isn't enough, your own coverage fills the gap up to your policy limit. In Maryland, that assumption is only half right.

How ordinary UIM works: an offset, not a top-up

Standard underinsured motorist coverage in Maryland works on a subtraction model. Your UIM pays only the difference between your own limit and the at-fault driver's liability limit, not your full limit on top of what they already paid. If the at-fault driver carries the state minimum of $30,000 and you carry $100,000 in UIM, you can recover at most $70,000 from your own policy. If you and the at-fault driver carry identical coverage, your UIM pays nothing at all.

What EUIM changes

Enhanced Underinsured Motorist coverage, under Md. Code Ann., Insurance § 19-509.1, lets your UIM coverage stack on top of what the at-fault driver's insurer pays instead of being reduced by it, by redefining "underinsured motor vehicle" to include a vehicle with liability coverage less than, equal to, or even greater than your own coverage. The at-fault driver's $100,000 policy plus your own $30,000 EUIM limit yields a total recovery of $130,000, not a $100,000 ceiling.

For any new private passenger auto policy issued on or after July 1, 2024, EUIM is automatically included unless the policyholder affirmatively waives it in writing, on a specific form the Insurance Commissioner requires, after the insurer discloses the coverage's nature, extent, benefit, and cost in 14-point boldface type. An insurer cannot refuse to write your policy because you decline to waive it. Once you waive it, or a renewal-era policyholder chooses not to elect it, that choice carries forward automatically to future renewals unless you change it in writing. Your EUIM limit, when you have it, automatically equals your liability coverage limit; it isn't a separately chosen amount.

A genuine, if narrower, form of stacking, and one thing Maryland doesn't allow

Maryland does not permit combining UM/UIM limits across multiple vehicles you own, a practice sometimes called multi-vehicle stacking; Maryland courts actively enforce anti-stacking language in standard policies. The stacking EUIM provides is a different, narrower concept: your coverage layering on top of the at-fault driver's policy, not on top of your own other vehicles' coverage.

One more consumer protection worth knowing

For any policy issued on or after July 1, 2018, an insurer cannot require binding arbitration for a dispute over EUIM or UIM benefits. That provision, if it appears in a policy, has no legal effect.

Why this matters in a contributory negligence state

As discussed in the Fault section above, Maryland's pure contributory negligence rule bars a claim against the other driver entirely if you bear any fault at all. UM/UIM and EUIM are claims against your own insurer, not the at-fault driver, which is part of why a solid first-party insurance program matters more in Maryland than in a state where partial fault merely reduces, rather than eliminates, a recovery against the other driver.

Statute of Limitations

Standard filing deadlines in Maryland

A personal injury lawsuit must generally be filed within 3 years:

• Personal injury: 3 years from the date of discovery, under Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-101. In most car accident cases, the date of discovery is simply the date of the crash, but where an injury isn't immediately apparent, the clock can start later
• Property damage: 3 years from the date of the accident, under the same § 5-101
• Wrongful death: 3 years from the date of death, under a separate statute, § 3-904(g)(1)

Why the wrongful death deadline runs independently of the underlying injury claim

This is worth understanding clearly. Maryland courts have held that § 3-904(g)(1)'s three-year, date-of-death deadline is the only timeliness rule that applies to a wrongful death claim; the general personal injury period under § 5-101, and the medical malpractice period under § 5-109, don't apply to it at all. In practice, this means that even if the deceased person's own injury claim would have already expired had they lived, survivors bringing a wrongful death claim still get a fresh three-year window running from the date of death, independent of the underlying claim's own timeline.

Minors

Under § 5-201, a minor has until their 21st birthday, or 3 years from the date of injury, whichever is later, to file a personal injury claim. Since Maryland's age of majority is 18, these two measures often land close together, but the "whichever is later" framing matters in edge cases.

A minor's wrongful death claim is also tolled during minority, but this is a relatively recent and evolving area of Maryland law worth understanding precisely. Courts had historically treated the wrongful death filing deadline as a strict "condition precedent" rather than an ordinary statute of limitations, meaning it could not be tolled for a minor claimant at all, even a very young child who lost a parent. The Maryland General Assembly later amended § 5-201 to explicitly reference the wrongful death subtitle, and a 2022 Maryland Appellate Court decision confirmed this amendment means a minor's wrongful death claim is now genuinely tolled during their minority.

Other tolling and exceptions

• Mental incapacity: The limitations period is suspended for the duration of a qualifying mental disability, under § 5-201
• Fraudulent concealment: If a defendant actively conceals the basis for a claim, the clock doesn't start until the concealment is discovered or reasonably should have been discovered, under § 5-203
• Defendant's absence from Maryland: Time during which the defendant is absent from the state is generally excluded from the limitations calculation, under § 5-204
• Filing, not service, is what counts: Filing the complaint with the court, rather than serving the defendant, is the act that satisfies the statute of limitations

Claims against government entities

As discussed in the Insurance section above, a claim against a government or quasi-government entity, such as one involving a government-owned vehicle, follows a materially shorter and more procedurally demanding path than an ordinary claim. Written notice must generally be filed within 1 year of the injury. The underlying 3-year statute of limitations for the lawsuit itself still applies on top of that notice requirement. Damages are capped under the Maryland Tort Claims Act, discussed in the Compensation section below.

Given how much shorter this deadline is, understanding the legal process early matters. See our article on sovereign immunity and suing the government for the broader framework.

Uninsured and underinsured motorist claims

If you're pursuing your own UM, UIM, or EUIM coverage rather than suing the at-fault driver directly, you must send a separate written notice to your insurer within 6 months of the accident. Missing this notice deadline can jeopardize the claim even though the standard 3-year lawsuit deadline hasn't expired. Similarly, a Personal Injury Protection application must generally be submitted within 1 year of the accident.

MVA Procedures & Police Involvement

When to report an accident:

Unlike most states covered in this series, Maryland does not use a specific dollar threshold to determine when an accident must be reported. Instead, the law requires immediate notification to the nearest police agency whenever a crash involves any of the following:

• Bodily injury or death
• A hit-and-run, or a driver who refuses to cooperate or exchange information
• A driver who appears to be operating under the influence
• An unattended vehicle or piece of property where the owner can't be located
• A vehicle damaged severely enough that it can't be safely driven and needs to be towed

If a crash involves any level of physical injury or death, it must be reported immediately, and the involved drivers must also file a written report with the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) within 15 days.

Minor property damage

If the vehicles involved can be driven safely and nobody is hurt, Maryland’s ‘Move it’ law simply directs drivers to move their vehicles off the road and exchange driver, vehicle, and insurance information with the other party. Police don't need to be called, and there's no property damage dollar figure that triggers a mandatory reporting requirement, unlike the specific thresholds most other states use.

How to access your accident report

Maryland's system for obtaining a copy of your accident report is more decentralized than in many other states, and the correct process depends on which agency investigated your crash.

• Maryland State Police (most crashes on state and rural roads): A $4 non-refundable document search fee, payable by check or money order (no cash). Wait at least 10 days after the accident. Requests can be made in person at the Central Records Division (1711 Belmont Avenue, Baltimore), by mail, or by emailing a completed request form and mailing payment separately, or by visiting the specific MSP barrack that responded to the crash
• Maryland Transportation Authority Police (crashes on toll facilities, including the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Baltimore Harbor Tunnel): A separate process entirely. Wait at least 7 days, then mail a completed request form to the Central Records Unit, 4330 Broening Highway, Baltimore, MD 21222. Reports remain available for up to 12 months after the accident
• County and municipal police departments: Each jurisdiction runs its own system. Many, including Prince George's County, offer 24/7 access through BuyCrash.com or Crashdocs.org for a $10 fee, requiring the case number and the names of the parties involved. Montgomery County requires creating an online account and uploading photo ID. Baltimore City has its own separate request line and process

Across all of these, you'll generally need to show you were an involved party, and certain information may be redacted from the report before release under the Maryland Public Information Act. If you're not sure which agency handled your crash, the officer's name and badge number, or the case number given at the accident scene, will help you find the right office to contact.

Crash reports are primary reference documents for insurers handling insurance claims. If your report contains errors, addressing them promptly matters. See our article on what to do if your car accident police report is inaccurate for the steps involved.

Compensation: Types & Limits

Economic damages

Maryland places no cap on economic damages, so accident victims can recover the full extent of measurable financial losses, including medical expenses, lost wages, reduced earning capacity, and property damage, regardless of severity.

Non-economic damages: capped, and the jury never knows it

Maryland code caps non-economic damages in most personal injury cases, including those for pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, disfigurement, and loss of consortium, under § 11-108. The cap rises by $15,000 every October 1. As of October 1, 2026, it stands at $980,000. Which figure applies depends on the date the injury occurred, not when the lawsuit is filed or resolved.

The jury is never told the cap exists. It reaches its own verdict on pain and suffering, and only afterward does the court reduce that award down to the statutory ceiling if it exceeds it, sometimes cutting multimillion-dollar verdicts down substantially.

Maryland's highest court has upheld the cap against a state constitutional challenge (DRD Pool Service, Inc. v. Freed, Md. Ct. App. 2010), calling it "a rational measure" addressing insurance-premium uncertainty, a notably different outcome than Kansas reached on a similar question elsewhere in this series. A spouse's loss of consortium claim falls within, not on top of, this same cap. Medical malpractice claims follow a separate cap schedule, not covered here.

Punitive damages

Punitive damages are explicitly excluded from the definition of "noneconomic damages" under § 11-108(a)(2)(ii), meaning Maryland's non-economic cap does not limit punitive damages at all. They remain available, without a statutory ceiling, in cases involving actual malice, conduct that is intentional, wanton, or recklessly indifferent to the rights of others, though as the current page notes, they're awarded sparingly.

Wrongful death and survival action damages

A wrongful death claim uses the same base cap for a single beneficiary. With two or more beneficiaries, the cap rises to 150 percent, reaching $1,470,000 as of October 1, 2026.

A separate survival action, brought by the estate for the decedent's own pre-death pain and suffering, carries its own independent cap at the base figure. Because both claims can proceed together, the combined non-economic recovery in a multi-beneficiary fatal crash can meaningfully exceed the single-claimant figure.

Claims against government entities

A crash involving a government vehicle or employee falls under one of two separate statutes depending on which level of government is responsible, and both require the same 1-year notice deadline, though the details diverge from there.

State claims, under the Maryland Tort Claims Act, are capped at $400,000 per claimant, rising to $890,000 in the narrower case of intentional acts or a constitutional violation by a law enforcement officer. Notice goes to the State Treasurer's Office, discussed in the Local Resources section below.

Local claims, against a county, municipality, or Baltimore City, fall under the separate Local Government Tort Claims Act (Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. §§ 5-301–5-304), a single unified framework despite governing many different kinds of local entities, including counties, municipalities, and agencies like community colleges and library boards. The cap here is $400,000 per claimant, $800,000 total per incident. Unlike the state process, where notice always goes to one office, the correct recipient for a local claim varies by entity: the corporate authorities of a municipality, the City Solicitor for Baltimore City, the County Executive for Montgomery and Howard counties, the County Solicitor or Attorney for charter counties like Prince George's, Baltimore, and Anne Arundel, or the County Commissioners directly for commissioner counties.

One protection specific to local claims: a local government must defend its employees and pay resulting judgments, but that indemnification doesn't extend to an employee who acted with malice or gross negligence, exposing that individual to personal liability in those narrower cases.

Punitive damages are not available against either a state or local government entity under any circumstances.

Medical Coverage Considerations

Personal Injury Protection (PIP)

PIP coverage, detailed in the Insurance section above, is the first source of medical bill coverage after a Maryland crash, paying regardless of fault at a $2,500 minimum. Given Maryland's pure contributory negligence rule discussed in the Fault section, PIP can end up being the only dollar an injured driver ever sees if they're found even slightly at fault and therefore barred from recovering anything from the other driver.

The at-fault driver's liability insurance

Once fault is established, and assuming the injured party isn't barred by their own contributory fault, the at-fault driver's insurance coverage becomes the relevant source of recovery. At Maryland's minimum of $30,000 per person, that coverage can be exhausted quickly in a serious car crash.

UM/UIM and EUIM

As discussed in the Insurance section and the dedicated EUIM section above, your own UM/UIM coverage, and EUIM specifically if you have it, can be the more reliable path to compensation in a contributory negligence state, since these are first-party claims against your own insurer rather than a claim against the other driver that a small shared-fault finding could eliminate entirely. Our article on what to do if you're in an accident with an uninsured driver covers how these claims work in practice.

Health insurance

Once PIP is exhausted, health insurance typically covers ongoing treatment. Most insurers will assert a subrogation lien on any settlement or judgment you later receive, requiring reimbursement from your recovery.

Government assistance programs

Medicaid and Medicare can provide financial support for eligible individuals' accident-related medical care. These programs generally require timely reporting of the claim and may seek reimbursement from any settlement.

Unique Local Considerations

Urban congestion

The Baltimore and Washington, D.C. metropolitan corridors carry some of the densest traffic in the country, with I-95, the Capital Beltway (I-495), and I-695 seeing heavy commercial traffic, including truck accidents on I-95's dense freight corridor, which elevates the risk of rear-end collisions and multi-vehicle pileups. Under Maryland's contributory negligence rule discussed in the Fault section above, stop-and-go congestion raises the stakes of even a momentary lapse: a driver who follows slightly too closely and contributes even minimally to a rear-end chain-reaction crash could be barred from recovering anything, regardless of how much more responsible the lead driver in the chain actually was.

Weather conditions

Maryland's climate brings snowy winters, rain-heavy springs, and foggy mornings, all of which create hazardous driving conditions. Black ice and reduced visibility during inclement weather are common contributors to crashes, and the same contributory negligence risk applies here as in heavy traffic.

Rural roads and wildlife

Narrow, winding roads with limited lighting are common in Maryland's less populated regions, particularly at night. Deer collisions are a genuine and fairly common risk on Maryland's rural roads; State Farm's most recent annual data ranks Maryland 24th nationally for the odds of a driver hitting a deer or other animal, at roughly 1 in 115. A wildlife collision is generally treated as a single-vehicle incident for insurance purposes, making comprehensive coverage the relevant policy for vehicle repairs rather than liability coverage.

Bridge and tunnel traffic

Maryland's major crossings, including the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and the Baltimore Harbor and Fort McHenry Tunnels, become accident hotspots due to high traffic volume, sudden slowdowns, and exposure to wind and weather that don't affect drivers on ordinary surface roads. As discussed in the MVA Procedures section above, a crash on a Maryland Transportation Authority facility like these is investigated by the Maryland Transportation Authority Police specifically, a separate agency from the state or local police who handle most other Maryland crashes, which affects how you'd request a copy of the report.

Local Resources & Contacts

Maryland State Police
Handles crash investigations, traffic enforcement, and crash report requests for most crashes outside Baltimore City and off MDTA-controlled facilities.

• Website: mdsp.maryland.gov
• Phone:
  • (410) 281-2700 (Central Records Division)
  • (410) 768-7388 (Automotive Safety Enforcement Division)

Maryland Transportation Authority Police
Handles crashes on Maryland's toll facilities, including the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and the Baltimore Harbor and Fort McHenry Tunnels, discussed in the Unique Local Considerations section above.

• Website: mdta.maryland.gov/Police/Police_Main.html
• Central Records Unit: (410) 537-7710

Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA)
For the required 15-day written auto accident report, vehicle registration, and general insurance compliance questions.

• Website: mva.maryland.gov

Maryland Insurance Administration
For insurance complaints, coverage disputes, and questions about PIP, UM/UIM, and EUIM, discussed in the dedicated section above.

• Website: insurance.maryland.gov

Maryland State Treasurer's Office, Insurance Division
Where a written notice of claim against the State of Maryland under the Maryland Tort Claims Act, discussed in the Statute of Limitations and Compensation sections above, must be filed within one year of the incident.

• Website: treasurer.state.md.us/insurance
• Address: Louis L. Goldstein Treasury Building, 80 Calvert Street, Annapolis, MD 21401
• Phone: (410) 260-7684

If your claim is denied, or if six months pass after filing with no response, you may pursue the matter in court rather than continuing to wait on the administrative process.

For accident laws in other states, visit our state-specific legal information page.