If a crash on a Queens road put you in the hospital, a Queens car accident lawyer from Silver Law Group can come to your bedside or your kitchen table this week. Your first consultation is free, and you pay no fee unless we recover money for you.
We represent injured drivers and their families in Astoria, Flushing, Bayside, Howard Beach, and the Rockaways. We do the traveling so you can stay put while you heal. The other driver’s insurer has probably called you already, and anything you say on that call can be used to cut your claim. Before you answer its questions or sign anything it mails you, call 212-470-4544, day or night, in English, Spanish, or Russian.
Where Car Accidents Happen Across Queens
NYC DOT counted 74 traffic deaths in Queens in 2024 and 57 in 2025. The number dropped, but the borough still lost more than one person a week to traffic.
Most serious car crashes in Queens happen on a handful of wide, fast roads:
- Queens Boulevard, long called the “Boulevard of Death.” The city finished its redesign in 2024, but drivers still cross many lanes and service-road merges through Elmhurst, Rego Park, and Forest Hills.
- Northern Boulevard, a commercial corridor from Long Island City through Jackson Heights and Flushing out to Bayside, with constant left turns into side streets and parking lots
- Woodhaven Boulevard, the north-south route feeding traffic toward Howard Beach and the Rockaways
- The Van Wyck Expressway, carrying JFK traffic through Jamaica and South Ozone Park
- The Long Island Expressway, which crosses the whole borough to the Nassau line
- The Grand Central Parkway, running past LaGuardia Airport
- The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway along its western Queens stretch near Woodside and Astoria
The road matters to your case. It tells us which NYPD precinct wrote the report and which traffic cameras or storefronts may have footage before it gets recorded over. It also tells us whether a city vehicle or a city-maintained roadway is involved, which adds a defendant with its own deadlines.
Head-On, Intersection, and Rear-End Car Crashes
Each crash pattern leaves different evidence, and that evidence decides who pays.
- Head-on collisions, usually caused by a driver crossing the center line on a two-way avenue or entering a ramp the wrong way. A head-on car crash lawyer starts with the crush damage, the vehicles’ event data recorders, and the lane markings at the scene.
- Left-turn T-bones at intersections like those along Northern Boulevard, where the turning driver generally has to yield to oncoming traffic
- Rear-end chain collisions on the Van Wyck approach to JFK and the Grand Central approach to LaGuardia. Stop-and-go airport traffic leaves little room to brake, and the damage pattern on each car shows who hit whom first.
- Sideswipes at merges on the Cross Island Parkway and the Belt Parkway, most often from a lane change into an occupied lane
This page covers crashes between passenger cars. Silver Law Group has separate pages for truck crashes, motorcycle crashes, drunk-driving crashes, and hit-and-run claims, since each one runs on different insurance rules and evidence.
When You Can Sue Beyond No-Fault Insurance
New York’s no-fault system pays your first medical bills and part of your lost wages no matter who caused the crash. Under Insurance Law 5102(a), personal injury protection (PIP) covers up to $50,000 per person. You do not have to prove the other driver was careless to collect it.
The catch is paperwork. Your NF-2, the written no-fault application, is due within 30 days of the crash. A late form gives the carrier grounds to deny benefits you would otherwise have received.
No-fault pays nothing for pain and suffering. To sue the at-fault driver for it, your injury has to meet the serious injury definition in Insurance Law 5102(d). Separately, if your medical bills and lost income run past the $50,000 PIP limit, you can sue for that excess economic loss.
Most car accident lawsuits in Queens are won or lost on the serious injury threshold. In May 2026, that threshold changed.
What the May 2026 Law Change Means for Your Claim
Laws of 2026, Chapter 58, Part EE rewrote parts of New York’s auto injury rules. Two of the changes affect almost every car crash case filed in Queens from now on.
The first change removes the 90/180-day category for any lawsuit filed on or after May 26, 2026. That category let you qualify if your injury kept you from substantially all of your usual daily activities for at least 90 of the first 180 days after the crash. For years, many soft-tissue cases reached court through that route alone.
The filing date controls, not the crash date. If you were hurt early in 2026 and your suit was filed after May 26, the old category is no longer available to you.
The second change is about order. Under Insurance Law 5104(a), the jury decides fault before it decides whether your injury is serious. That puts your liability proof first in line:
- the NYPD report and the names of witnesses
- photos of both vehicles and the scene
- camera footage, pulled before it is erased
- anything the other driver admitted at the scene
Your medical proof still has to clear the threshold. Now it has to fit one of the eight categories that remain.
Car Crash Injuries That Still Meet the Threshold
Insurance Law 5102(d) still lists eight categories of serious injury, and yours needs to fit at least one:
- Death
- Dismemberment
- Significant disfigurement, such as facial scarring from broken glass
- A fracture, including a cracked rib or a wrist broken bracing against the wheel
- 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
- Significant limitation of use of a body function or system
Whiplash and herniated discs are where insurers push back hardest. They fit only the last three categories, and those depend entirely on medical proof. Telling the jury your neck hurts will not carry the claim.
The court looks for objective findings. That means an MRI showing the herniation, range-of-motion loss measured in degrees against normal values, and a treating doctor who ties the limitation to the crash. Gaps in treatment do real damage here. If you stop physical therapy for months, the defense will argue the injury healed or came from something else.
What Your Queens Car Accident Case Is Worth
No honest car accident attorney can put a number on your case at the first meeting. Value depends on which threshold category your injury meets, how your recovery goes, and how much insurance the at-fault driver carries.
A Queens car crash claim can include:
- Economic loss beyond PIP, meaning medical bills, lost wages, and other costs above the $50,000 no-fault limit
- Pain and suffering, past and future, once you clear the serious injury threshold
- Lost earning capacity, if the injury limits the work you can do for the rest of your career
- Loss of consortium, a separate claim your spouse brings for the loss of your companionship and help at home
Two rules can shrink or end your recovery. Under CPLR 1411(b), you recover nothing if your share of fault is greater than the fault of the drivers you are suing. New York used to let a partly at-fault driver keep a reduced share of damages at almost any percentage. Now the fault split the jury assigns can decide whether you collect at all.
Insurance Law 5104(d) caps your pain-and-suffering recovery at $100,000 if you were convicted of driving uninsured or impaired at the time of the crash. The cap applies to non-economic damages, so your bills and lost earnings are not limited by it.
We build the value of your claim from your bills, pay records, and treating doctors’ notes. Then we test that number against the at-fault driver’s policy limits before any offer is discussed.
What to Do After a Car Accident in Queens
Most of the evidence your claim will rely on gets created in the first ten days after the crash. Take these steps in order:
- Get medical care the same day. Queens has three Level I trauma centers: Elmhurst Hospital, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, and NewYork-Presbyterian Queens in Flushing. Tell the emergency doctor about every spot that hurts, because the intake record is your first medical proof.
- Call 911 and get the NYPD report number, along with the precinct handling it.
- Photograph both cars, the plates, the traffic signals, and your visible injuries. Get phone numbers from anyone who saw the crash.
- File your NF-2 no-fault application within 30 days.
- File DMV form MV-104 within 10 days if anyone was injured or property damage exceeded $1,000. This is your own report to the DMV, separate from the police report.
- Give no recorded statement to any insurance company, including the other driver’s.
Adjusters use recorded statements to argue that you caused the crash or that you were not badly hurt. Car wreck attorneys see the same pattern again and again: a driver still on pain medication agrees to “just a few questions” and later hears those answers read back at a deposition. Send every insurer call to your lawyer. If you are stuck in a hospital bed, a family member can call us and we will help with the forms.
What Hiring a Car Accident Lawyer Costs
You pay nothing up front to hire Silver Law Group. We work on a contingency fee, which means we are paid a percentage of what we recover for you. If there is no recovery, you owe no fee.
The standard percentage is one-third, the figure treated as standard under the Appellate Division rules that govern personal injury fees in New York. That fee is figured on the net recovery, so case expenses are subtracted first. Those expenses are the costs of building the case, such as court filing fees, medical record charges, and expert reports.
There is no hourly bill. You are not charged for phone calls, hospital visits, or the first consultation. You will see the fee and expense terms in writing before you sign anything, and because our fee depends on what you receive, we only get paid more when your recovery is larger.
Deadlines to File a Queens Car Accident Claim
The deadline depends on who hit you:
- A private driver: CPLR 214 gives you three years from the crash to file your car accident lawsuit.
- An NYPD vehicle or a Sanitation truck: GML 50-e requires a Notice of Claim within 90 days, and GML 50-i requires the lawsuit within one year and 90 days.
- An MTA bus: the same 90-day Notice of Claim and one-year-90-day lawsuit deadline apply.
- Your own no-fault carrier: the NF-2 is due within 30 days.
The 90-day notice is the one people miss. It must describe when, where, and how the claim arose, and it has to reach the agency before a lawsuit can start. Filing late means asking a judge for permission, and permission is not guaranteed.
Fatal Car Accidents and Wrongful Death Claims in Queens
Under EPTL 5-4.1, a wrongful death claim must be filed within two years of the death. Only the personal representative of the estate can file it. If your family member lived in Queens and left no will, a relative petitions Queens County Surrogate’s Court to be appointed administrator. If there is a will, the named executor goes to the same court.
That appointment takes time, so the two-year clock should shape your planning from the first weeks. When families hire fatal accident lawyers, we coordinate the Surrogate’s Court step with the wrongful death case so neither one holds up the other.
The claim can include:
- funeral and burial costs
- the financial support the person would have provided to a spouse, children, or other dependents
- the decedent’s conscious pain and suffering between the crash and death, which the estate claims alongside the wrongful death action
Why Queens Drivers Choose Silver Law Group
Every consultation is free, and you can have it in your own language.
- Spanish-language consultations for families in Corona and Jackson Heights
- Russian-language consultations for clients in Rego Park and Forest Hills
- Phones answered 24/7, including the night of the crash
- Trial-ready preparation on every car crash case, from the first photo request to the jury charge
- An attorney who comes to your home or hospital room anywhere in Queens
Our office is at 49 West 37th Street, 7th Floor, in Midtown Manhattan, but you do not have to travel there to hire us. Call 212-470-4544 to talk with a car accident lawyer today.