Utah Car Accident Claim Guide

Personal injury protection, usually written as PIP, is required on Utah auto policies. Section 31A-22-307 sets the minimums. Medical benefits start at $3,000. Lost income runs to $250 per week or 85% of gross earnings, whichever is less, for up to 52 weeks. Household services reach $20 per day for up to 365 days. A funeral benefit of $1,500 and a death benefit of $3,000 sit alongside them.

Those are floors, not ceilings, and drivers can buy more. The medical figure is the one that surprises people. An ambulance ride, an emergency room visit, and one set of imaging can spend $3,000 before anyone has diagnosed anything. Our article on whether you use your own insurance first after a Salt Lake City crash goes through how those benefits get billed in practice.

The Three Day Rule That Delays Lost Income Benefits

Lost income benefits do not begin on the day of the crash. Utah builds in a short waiting period before wage replacement starts, which means the first days out of work are usually yours to absorb.

People who work hourly feel this immediately. Someone who misses a week and expects PIP to cover all of it gets a check for less than they counted on, and the gap is written into the statute rather than invented by the adjuster.

Section 31A-22-309 lists them. Death. Dismemberment. Permanent disability or permanent impairment based on objective findings. Permanent disfigurement. A bone fracture. Or medical expenses in excess of $3,000.

Only one has to apply. They are alternatives, not a checklist, and the last one is the only one tied to money at all. That distinction is worth understanding because adjusters tend to talk about the dollar figure as though it were the whole test.

Why a Bone Fracture Counts Regardless of the Bill

A fracture clears the threshold on its own. The statute attaches no dollar amount to it and no severity requirement. A hairline fracture in a wrist that gets splinted and sent home qualifies exactly the same as a fracture that needs surgery.

This is one of the most useful rules in Utah injury law and one of the least known. Someone whose total bills come to $1,800 but who fractured a rib in the collision has a claim for general damages that an adjuster may have told them they did not have.

What Permanent Impairment Based on Objective Findings Means in Practice

Objective findings are things a clinician can observe or measure rather than things a patient reports. Imaging that shows a herniation. Measured loss of range of motion. Documented nerve conduction abnormalities. Pain alone, however real, is subjective and does not satisfy this route on its own.

The practical consequence is that this path depends entirely on what gets written into the medical record. A physician who documents a specific measured deficit creates the evidence. A physician who writes that the patient reports ongoing discomfort does not.

Section 31A-22-309(1)(b) removes the threshold from uninsured motorist claims. If you are pursuing your own uninsured motorist coverage because the at fault driver had none, the injury test does not stand between you and general damages.

That exemption changes the strategy on smaller cases. A claim with $2,000 in bills and no fracture is blocked against an insured driver and open against an uninsured one. Same injury, same crash, different rule, purely because of who did the hitting.

A gap in treatment is the single most effective defense argument in soft tissue cases. Someone hurts, goes to the emergency room, feels somewhat better, waits three weeks to see a doctor, then gets worse. That three week silence becomes the story the insurer tells.

The argument writes itself. If the injury were real, the reasoning goes, the person would have sought care. Real life supplies plenty of other explanations, including work schedules, childcare, deductibles, and simply hoping it would resolve. None of those explanations appear in the chart unless someone puts them there.

Emergency room records are thin by design. They rule out what is dangerous and discharge what is not. A note reading neck pain, no acute findings, discharged is a complete emergency record and a nearly useless causation document.

What establishes causation is the sequence that follows. A primary care visit that ties symptoms to the collision date. Imaging ordered because symptoms persisted. A physical therapy evaluation with measured deficits. Each one connects the injury to the crash a little more firmly.

What a Treating Physician Can Say That an Independent Examiner Cannot

A treating physician has watched the patient over time. That gives their opinion on causation a foundation a single examination cannot match, and it is why insurers put so much weight on independent medical examinations that last twenty minutes.

An examiner hired by the insurer sees the patient once, usually months after the crash, and reviews a records file someone else assembled. Their opinion is admissible and it carries weight, but it is built on a fraction of the information the treating physician has.