On May 27, 2026, Governor Kathy Hochul signed a package of auto insurance reforms into law as part of New York’s FY27 budget, enacting sweeping changes to two of the legal doctrines at the center of nearly every car accident case: the serious-injury threshold and the rules governing fault.

For anyone injured in a crash on Long Island or elsewhere in the state, the practical question is simple. Does this make it harder to recover? In several respects, yes.

What the Reform Changes

The auto insurance measures were folded into the roughly $268.5 billion enacted budget after months of negotiation. According to the Governor’s office, the core changes affecting injury claims include:

• A tighter statutory definition of “serious injury,” the threshold a crash victim must cross before suing for pain and suffering.
• A new bar on recovering pain-and-suffering damages when the injured person was more at fault than everyone they are suing, combined.
• A $100,000 cap on damages for drivers who were breaking the law at the time of the crash, including uninsured and intoxicated drivers.
• Expanded criminal exposure for anyone who organizes a staged accident, not just the driver involved.
• Consumer-side rules, detailed by the Department of Financial Services, that bar insurers from setting rates primarily on factors like ZIP code, occupation, homeownership, or education, along with new limits on rate increases and “excess” profits.

The provisions aimed at insurers are meant to lower premiums; the litigation provisions are meant to reduce payouts, a trade-off Spectrum News and other outlets covered when the bills were signed. For an injured driver or passenger, the litigation changes matter most, so that is where this post focuses.

The Serious-Injury Threshold Just Got Harder to Clear

New York runs a no-fault system. After a crash, your own insurer pays your basic economic losses, such as medical bills and lost wages, up to the no-fault coverage on your policy (a $50,000 minimum in New York). To step outside no-fault and sue the at-fault driver for non-economic damages like pain and suffering, your injury has to qualify as a “serious injury” under Insurance Law § 5102(d).

That statute lists several categories, including death, dismemberment, significant disfigurement, a bone fracture, and the permanent loss of use of a body part. The reform narrows how the definition is applied. Reporting by Business Insurance indicates the new standard removes the long-litigated “90/180 rule,” the category that let a victim qualify by showing a non-permanent injury that kept them from substantially all of their usual daily activities for at least 90 of the 180 days after the crash.

That category did real work. It was one of the most frequently litigated routes to the threshold, and it was often the only path for injuries that are genuine but slow to surface, such as concussions and soft-tissue damage. Removing it raises the bar for the very victims whose injuries are hardest to document in the first days after a crash. Early summaries also indicate the law will require juries to determine fault before reaching the serious-injury question, though the procedural details are still being clarified.

A New Limit on Pain and Suffering When You Are “Mostly” at Fault

New York has long followed pure comparative negligence. Under CPLR § 1411, an injured person can recover even if they were partly, or mostly, responsible for the crash; their damages are simply reduced by their share of fault. A driver found seventy percent at fault could still recover thirty percent of their damages.

The reform carves out an exception for car accident cases. As Insurance Journal reported, a claimant who is found more at fault than the defendant or defendants combined can no longer recover non-economic damages such as pain and suffering, although no-fault benefits remain available. This does not erase pure comparative negligence across New York law. It targets pain-and-suffering recovery in motor-vehicle cases where the claimant is the majority-at-fault party, a change the Governor’s office describes as bringing New York in line with most other states.

One proposed change did not pass. The Governor had sought to alter New York’s joint-and-several-liability rules, which affect how much a paying defendant owes when other defendants cannot pay; lawmakers left that framework in place.

Caps and the Staged-Accident Crackdown

Two provisions target conduct the state views as abusive. First, damages are capped at $100,000 for drivers who were engaged in criminal conduct at the time of the crash, a group the law defines to include uninsured motorists, drunk drivers, and people committing a felony. Second, the budget expands fraud liability to reach anyone who hires, requests, or orchestrates a staged accident, not only the person behind the wheel, and lets prosecutors pursue them.

Neither provision should affect a lawfully driving claimant with a legitimate injury. They are useful mainly for understanding the law’s intent, which is to steer compensation away from bad actors and the people who profit from staged crashes.

What This Means If You Are Injured in a New York Crash

The common thread in these reforms is that documentation now carries more weight than ever. A tighter threshold and a new fault-based bar give insurers more room to contest claims, especially in the weeks right after a crash. Steps that help protect a claim include:

• Get medical care immediately, even if you only feel sore. A gap between the crash and your first treatment is one of the first things a defense will use against you.
• Follow through on treatment and therapy. Missed appointments are routinely cited to argue an injury was minor or had already healed.
• Document how the injury limits your daily life, in detail and over time, not only at the emergency room.
• Preserve everything: the police report, photographs, witness names, and any dashcam or surveillance footage before it is overwritten.
• Be cautious about giving recorded statements to any insurer before you understand how the new fault rules may apply to your situation.

What Is Still Unsettled

Several pieces of this remain in motion. As of late May 2026, implementing legislation was still moving through Albany, and the effective dates of individual provisions, along with whether they reach crashes that already happened or only future ones, were not yet clear. Anyone with a pending or recent claim should confirm the current status of these provisions before relying on any single one described here.

The promised savings are also contested. The nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission projected the package could lower a typical New York premium by roughly ten percent, a figure the administration and insurers have echoed. The New York State Trial Lawyers Association argues the opposite, contending that capping damages and limiting liability will reduce compensation for injured people without reliably lowering rates. Whether premiums actually fall is a question the data will answer over the next few years.

Speak With a New York Car Accident Lawyer

If you were injured in a car accident in New York, these reforms make it more important, not less, to have your claim evaluated carefully and early. The attorneys at the Law Offices of Rudolph F.X. Migliore, P.C. can evaluate your potential claim at no cost and help you understand how the new serious-injury and fault rules may apply to your situation and what records will be needed to move forward.

Call our Commack office at 631-543-3663 for a free, confidential case evaluation, or use our online contact form. There is no fee unless we recover compensation for you.

This article is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice, and it reflects information available as of its publication date; laws, regulations, and case developments change over time. Each case depends on its specific facts, and any filing deadline that may apply should be determined by an attorney. No outcome can be guaranteed in any litigation.