New Hampshire Car Accident Settlement Calculator

New Hampshire's 51% bar for comparative fault means you can still recover in a car accident case as long as you are not more than 50% at fault. In a two-car collision where fault is split 50/50, you can still recover 50% of your damages. This is slightly more favorable than 50% bar states, where equal fault eliminates recovery entirely.

New Hampshire gives you 3 years from the date of the incident to file a lawsuit, which is in line with the national average of 2.7 years. This is a standard timeframe, but acting sooner preserves evidence and strengthens your position. New Hampshire applies a discovery rule, meaning the clock may start when you discover (or should have discovered) the injury rather than when the incident occurred.

New Hampshire is not a compulsory insurance state. Its financial responsibility law (RSA chapter 264) requires proof of financial responsibility after certain motor vehicle convictions or after a reported accident, and a driver who cannot give it can lose their license and registration. A liability policy sold in New Hampshire must carry at least 25/50/25 (bodily injury per person / per accident / property damage, in thousands), and those are also the amounts of proof the law requires. A policy must also include uninsured motorist coverage at least equal to its bodily injury limits and, on a private passenger car, at least $1,000 of medical payments coverage. Because the driver who hit you may have no insurance at all, the uninsured motorist coverage on your own policy can be the main source of payment.

If your car accident involved a government vehicle or occurred due to a government-maintained road defect in New Hampshire, you face a significantly shorter deadline. New Hampshire requires you to file a notice of claim within 180 days of the incident — far shorter than the standard statute of limitations. Missing this notice deadline can permanently bar your claim against the government entity, even if the regular filing deadline has not yet passed.

New Hampshire lets a vehicle owner recover diminished value, the resale value a properly repaired car loses because of its accident history, from the at-fault driver on top of the cost of repairs. Whether your own collision coverage owes it has no clear New Hampshire rule. New Hampshire's Supreme Court adopted the Restatement measure of damages for harm to personal property in Copadis v. Haymond (1946), which allows the reasonable cost of repair with an allowance for any difference between the original value and the value after repairs. The diminished value guide in the related reading below carries the rule for every state and how to document the loss.