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If the driver who hit you had no insurance, your medical bills are still covered. Who pays depends on whether you have a policy, and the clock is one year.
Most people go through this once, without a map. The numbers below are the official count, not our estimate. The rest of this guide is the map.
Source: Michigan no-fault act, MCL 500.3114, 500.3172, 500.3174, and 500.3135.
Each phase protects the one after it. Get medical care fast, open the claim on time, build the record, then settle from strength.
Call 911. Tell the officer the other driver has no insurance card, or left. Get the plate, the driver's name, and the report number. The report is what the Assigned Claims Plan and your UM coverage will ask for first.
Your own auto policy, then any policy belonging to a spouse or relative you live with. Open the no-fault claim with the first one that exists. Write down the claim number and the adjuster's name.
The application goes to the Michigan Automobile Insurance Placement Facility, not an insurer. File it with the police report and your medical records. It has to be in within one year of the crash, and the sooner it goes in, the sooner a carrier is assigned to pay.
Find the declarations page. If it lists uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage, read the conditions. Notice periods and suit deadlines in that section are contract terms and can be shorter than the law's. Put your insurer on written notice of a UM claim now.
Treat, keep every appointment, and keep the records. The injury claim, against the driver or your UM coverage, needs a threshold injury and a medical record that shows it. The three-year clock for suing the driver runs from the crash.
Every injury claim in Michigan runs on clocks that start the day you are hurt. The forms are simple and the deadlines are unforgiving.
Time from the crash to each cutoff. Every case has facts that can shift these, which is exactly what a free first look confirms.
No formula survives contact with a real case, but the drivers are knowable. Economic damages are receipts and math. Pain and suffering is argued, not calculated, and multiplier rules of thumb are internet folklore.
Reported contributing factors, statewide. The other driver's behavior is often the heart of the fault argument.
Source: Michigan State Police 2024 year-end crash data.
Your own no-fault insurer pays your medical bills and lost wages, the same as if the other driver had insurance. If nobody in your household has a policy, the Michigan Assigned Claims Plan pays. Pain and suffering comes from the driver personally or from your own uninsured motorist coverage.
A state program under MCL 500.3171 to 500.3175 that assigns a no-fault claim to an insurer when no policy applies. It covers pedestrians, cyclists, passengers, and hit and run victims with no auto policy in the household. Medical benefits are capped at $250,000.
One year from the crash. MCL 500.3174. The application goes to the Michigan Automobile Insurance Placement Facility.
No. The owner of an uninsured vehicle who is injured while driving it gets no no-fault benefits from anyone, and cannot sue the other driver for pain and suffering. MCL 500.3113 and 500.3135(2)(c).
Yes, for pain and suffering if your injury meets the threshold. Collecting is the problem. Michigan suspends the license of a driver who does not pay a crash judgment, MCL 257.512, but there is no insurer to write the check.
Optional coverage on your own policy that pays the pain and suffering an uninsured driver would have owed, up to the limit you bought. It is not required in Michigan. Check the declarations page for UM or UIM.
Yes, and it is set by the policy, not the law. Notice periods and the time to file suit are written into the UM section and can be shorter than three years. Read it the week of the crash.
Your own collision coverage, minus the deductible. The deductible, up to $3,000, is a mini tort claim against the driver personally, filed in small claims if they do not pay.
Report it to police the same day. Your medical benefits come from your own policy or the Assigned Claims Plan. Your UM coverage, if you have it, covers the pain and suffering claim, and most policies require a prompt police report.
A motorcyclist was run off the road by a truck that never touched him. The crash report had the truck driver's name but not the plate, owner, or insurer. He claimed from his own insurer, which neither paid nor denied for a year. The Michigan Supreme Court held he had done his due diligence and his insurer could be held liable, even though the truck's insurer turned up later. The lesson is to claim from every insurer you can identify, in writing, inside the year.
The first job is finding every policy that applies, and that is where cases with an uninsured driver are won or lost. If you have a threshold injury and there is coverage somewhere, UM, a household policy, or the plan, a lawyer changes the outcome. If there is none, we say so and tell you what to do instead.
Two decisions set the clock: what counts as claiming benefits inside the year, and what counts as notice. Newest first. We update this section if a new ruling changes it.
November 10, 2026
Michigan Supreme Court, decided July 15, 2022, Docket No. 162419
In May 2016, a truck merged into Willie Griffin's lane. He swerved, his motorcycle went down, and he was badly hurt. The truck never touched him. The police report had the truck driver's name, phone, and address, but no plate, no owner, and no insurer. Griffin's lawyer wrote to the driver five days later and got no answer. Griffin filed a no-fault claim with his own insurer, Trumbull, which spent six months trying to reach the truck driver, then closed its file without paying or denying. He applied to the Assigned Claims Plan, which asked for more information. He sued eleven months after the crash. In discovery, the truck turned out to belong to a paving company insured by Harleysville.
Trumbull argued Harleysville was the higher-priority insurer, so Trumbull owed nothing. The Supreme Court disagreed. A claimant has to be diligent in claiming benefits from every insurer that can be identified, and Griffin was: he hired a lawyer, investigated, and claimed from the only insurer anyone could find. An insurer that is sure it does not owe benefits should deny promptly so the claimant can go to the plan. Trumbull did neither, and could be held liable.
Claim from every insurer you can identify, in writing, inside the year. An insurer that sits on the claim does not get to point at one nobody could find.
Michigan Supreme Court, decided April 14, 2017, Docket No. 152484
A semitruck driver was hurt in a February 2009 crash and treated at a hospital in Nebraska. Two months later the hospital sent his records and bills to Zurich, his employer's insurer. Zurich said it had no injury report and denied the bills. He sued his own insurers, and did not add Zurich until thirteen months after the crash. Zurich argued the one-year notice period had run.
The Supreme Court held the hospital's records and bills were notice. The statute requires written notice of the injury with the name and address of the claimant and the time, place, and nature of the injury. The hospital's paperwork had all of it, and nothing in the statute says the claimant has to be the one who sends it.
A provider's bill with your name, the date, and the injury on it can be the notice that saves the claim.
These decisions describe how courts read the statute in the cases in front of them. They do not tell you how your own claim will come out, because your facts control that. If the driver who hit you had no insurance and you are not sure who pays, call Azzo Law at 844-ASK-AZZO (844-275-2996).
Lauren Sitto Azzo, lead attorney at Azzo Law, PLLC, is responsible for the content of this page. This section is general information about Michigan court decisions and not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
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