New York Hit And Run Lawyer

The Motor Vehicle Accident Indemnification Corporation (MVAIC) exists to compensate New Yorkers injured by unidentified or uninsured drivers who have no other coverage available. It pays both no-fault benefits and, for qualifying victims, bodily-injury damages. The requirements are strict:

• Report the crash to police within 24 hours — this is the requirement that quietly kills the most hit-and-run claims. If injuries made a same-day report impossible, report as soon as reasonably practicable and document why.
• File a Notice of Intention to Make Claim with MVAIC promptly — for hit-and-run victims the window is measured in days and weeks, not years.
• You must be a "qualified person" — generally a New York resident without their own applicable coverage.

Before MVAIC, we exhaust better options: if you own a car, or live with a relative who does, that policy's uninsured-motorist coverage likely applies to you even as a pedestrian — and it usually pays more smoothly than MVAIC.

"Unidentified" is often temporary. New York is dense with cameras — intersection cameras, building security, doorbells, bus and rideshare dashcams — but most footage is overwritten within days. Paint transfer on your vehicle or clothing, debris left at the scene, and canvassing for witnesses can identify a vehicle when police, handling dozens of open cases, cannot prioritize yours. Every identified driver converts a capped MVAIC claim into a full liability claim against a real policy — which is why we investigate first and treat MVAIC as the fallback.