Hit-and-Run Laws & What to Do in Connecticut

Getting hit by a driver who speeds off leaves you with two problems at once: the injury or damage in front of you, and a person you can't identify to hold responsible. Connecticut sees plenty of crashes to begin with. The most recent full year on record, 2025, logged 103,489 reported crashes statewide, and March 2026 alone added 1,737.¹² A share of those involve a driver who left the scene, and the state treats leaving as a serious offense on its own.

Here's how Connecticut's rules actually work, and the steps that protect your claim if you're the one left behind.

What the law calls a hit-and-run

Connecticut statutes don't use the phrase "hit-and-run." The offense is "evasion of responsibility in the operation of motor vehicles," under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 14-224.³ Any driver "knowingly involved in an accident" owes the same duties: stop at once, render whatever assistance is needed, and give their name, address, operator's license number, and registration number to the injured person, the owner of damaged property, or any officer or witness on scene. If no one is there to take that information, the driver has to report the crash immediately to a police officer, constable, state police officer, or motor vehicle inspector, or at the nearest station, and state the location, the circumstances, and their identifying details.³

Two things trip people up. The duty attaches to any accident, down to a dented parked car, and Connecticut courts have applied it on private property and in parking lots, not only public roads.³ And you can't escape it by saying you didn't realize damage was done. Connecticut courts have held the state only needs to prove you were knowingly involved in the accident, not that you knew it caused injury or damage.³

The penalties

Connecticut rewrote these penalties in 2023, so older summaries that list flat dollar fines are out of date. Public Act 23-203 converted the punishments into felony and misdemeanor classes.³ What you face depends on what the crash did.

A crash that caused death or serious physical injury makes evasion a class B felony.³ That means one to twenty years in prison and a fine of up to $15,000.⁴⁵ If the accident caused physical injury that wasn't "serious," it's a class D felony, punishable by up to five years and a fine of up to $5,000.⁴⁵ When only property was damaged, a first offense is a class A misdemeanor, up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $2,000, and any later offense becomes a class D felony.³⁶⁷

The hit to your license is separate. Section 14-224 points to Conn. Gen. Stat. § 14-111, under which the DMV can suspend or revoke the license of a driver convicted of evading responsibility.³⁸

If a driver hits you and leaves

Call the police from the scene if you safely can. A police report is the backbone of both the criminal case and your own insurance claim, and Connecticut's official crash records come out of that investigation. You can request the report afterward; the Connecticut crash report page explains how.

Write down anything you caught about the car: a full or partial plate, the make, model, color, and the direction it fled. A partial plate helps more than you'd expect. Under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 14-107, the fact that a vehicle is registered to a particular person is prima facie evidence that the owner was driving it, which gives police and your insurer a place to start.⁹

If anyone was hurt, get medical care and keep every record. Even with no one to sue yet, your recovery depends on the paper trail you build now.

How you actually get paid

Here's the part that catches people off guard. When the driver is never found, you don't collect from their insurer, because there isn't a known one. You collect from your own uninsured motorist (UM) coverage. Connecticut treats an unidentified hit-and-run driver as uninsured for exactly this reason. In Streitweiser v. Middlesex Mutual Assurance Co., the Connecticut Supreme Court held that UM coverage reaches unidentified motorists and that an insurer can't require physical contact, so a driver who ran you off the road without touching your car can still trigger it.¹⁰

That coverage is there because the state requires it. Every auto policy has to carry UM/UIM coverage equal to your own bodily injury liability limits, with a floor of $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident, unless you signed a written form choosing less.¹¹ Carry the state minimum liability limits of 25/50/25 and you have at least that much protection against a hit-and-run.¹²

You also have time. No insurer in Connecticut may cut off your right to sue or demand arbitration on a UM claim in under three years from the date of the accident.¹¹ Report the crash to your own insurer promptly anyway, since delay just gives them a reason to push back.

Connecticut runs a pure at-fault system. It repealed no-fault insurance effective January 1, 1994, so there's no mandatory personal injury protection to lean on.¹³ Medical payments coverage is an optional add-on that some drivers carry for early bills. If your car lost resale value even after a clean repair, that's a separate claim, and the Connecticut diminished value page covers it.

Deadlines and when extra damages apply

If the driver is later identified, you can sue them directly, and the window is short. Connecticut gives you two years from the date the injury was sustained or reasonably should have been discovered, with a hard outer limit of three years from the crash itself.¹⁴ The same statute covers both bodily injury and property damage.¹⁴ A driver who surfaces two and a half years later still leaves you inside a tight deadline, so don't sit on it.

Connecticut also lets a jury award double or treble damages in some crashes, though not for the flight itself. Under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 14-295, that enhancement applies when a driver deliberately or recklessly broke certain laws, including drunk driving, reckless driving, speeding, and texting, and the violation was a substantial factor in the harm.¹⁵ Section 14-224 isn't on that list. So a hit-and-run driver who was also drunk or driving recklessly can face enhanced damages for that conduct once they're found, even though fleeing alone doesn't qualify.¹⁵

If you're deciding whether to bring a claim, a lawyer who handles Connecticut crashes can read your policy and the police file and tell you what your UM coverage is really worth. The legal directory is a place to start.

This article is general information about Connecticut law, not legal advice for your situation.

Sources

1. thatcarhitme.com, Connecticut (Statewide) Crash Report, 2025. https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/connecticut/statewide/2025-annual-report

2. thatcarhitme.com, Connecticut (Statewide) Crash Report, March 2026. https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/connecticut/statewide/march-2026-report

3. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 14-224, Evasion of responsibility in operation of motor vehicles. https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_248.htm#sec_14-224

4. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53a-35a, Imprisonment for felony. Authorized terms. https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_952.htm#sec_53a-35a

5. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53a-41, Fines for felonies. https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_952.htm#sec_53a-41

6. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53a-36, Imprisonment for misdemeanor. Authorized terms. https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_952.htm#sec_53a-36

7. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53a-42, Fines for misdemeanors. https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_952.htm#sec_53a-42

8. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 14-111 (suspension or revocation of operator's license), cross-referenced by § 14-224. https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_246.htm#sec_14-111

9. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 14-107 (liability of owner or operator; registration as prima facie evidence of operation). https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_246.htm#sec_14-107

10. Streitweiser v. Middlesex Mutual Assurance Co., 219 Conn. 371 (1991). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/7894512/streitweiser-v-middlesex-mutual-assurance-co/

11. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 38a-336, Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_700.htm#sec_38a-336

12. Connecticut Insurance Department, Auto Insurance (minimum limits, citing Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 14-112(a), 38a-371). https://portal.ct.gov/cid/consumer-information-center/auto-insurance

13. Public Act 93-297 (1993), repealing Connecticut's no-fault law effective January 1, 1994. https://www.cga.ct.gov/ps93/Act/pa/1993PA-00297-R00HB-05176-PA.htm

14. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-584, Limitation of action for injury to person or property caused by negligence. https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_926.htm#sec_52-584

15. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 14-295, Double or treble damages for personal injury or property damage resulting from certain traffic violations. https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_248.htm#sec_14-295