A hit-and-run turns a bad day into a worse one. The driver who caused the crash is gone, and you're left hurt, with a wrecked car and no plate number to hand the police. Mississippi law treats that flight as a serious crime, and it also gives you a way to get paid even when the driver is never identified. Both halves matter, and this page covers the Mississippi specifics: what the fleeing driver was legally required to do, the criminal penalties they face, the steps that protect your claim, and how you actually collect when the person who hit you can't be found.
This isn't a rare problem. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that in 2023, more than 900,000 police-reported crashes nationwide, about 15% of the total, involved a driver who left the scene, causing over 240,000 injuries and 2,872 deaths, the highest share of traffic deaths on record. Roughly one in four pedestrian and cyclist injuries and deaths that year happened in a hit-and-run.1
What the driver who hit you was required to do
Mississippi's duty-to-stop rules sit in the accidents article of the motor vehicle code. Under Miss. Code Ann. § 63-3-401, any driver in a crash that injures or kills someone must immediately stop at the scene, or as close to it as possible, and remain there until they meet the requirements of § 63-3-405.2 Leaving before that is the "run" in hit-and-run.
Section 63-3-405 defines what those requirements are. The driver has to give their name, address, and the vehicle's registration number to the person they hit or to the investigating officer, show their driver's license on request, and render reasonable assistance to anyone injured, including arranging transport to a doctor or hospital when treatment is clearly needed or the injured person asks for it.3
The duty still applies when no one is hurt. Under § 63-3-403, a driver who hits an occupied vehicle has to stop and hand over the same information, and failing to do so is a misdemeanor.4
There's also a reporting duty. Section 63-3-411 requires the driver of any vehicle in a crash involving injury, death, or apparent property damage of $500 or more to give notice immediately, by the quickest available means, to the local police if it happened inside a city, or to the nearest sheriff's office or Highway Patrol station if it happened outside one.5 That $500 threshold is low, so nearly every real collision triggers it.
The penalties for leaving the scene
Mississippi grades the crime by how badly someone was hurt.
If the crash caused injury and the driver willfully failed to stop or to do what § 63-3-405 requires, the punishment is 30 days to one year in jail, a fine of $100 to $5,000, or both.2
When the crash killed someone, or caused mutilation, disfigurement, permanent disability, or the destruction of a limb, eye, or other body part, leaving is a felony. The sentence runs from 5 to 20 years, with a fine of $1,000 to $10,000, or both.2 The statute also directs the Commissioner of Public Safety to revoke the driver's license of anyone convicted under it.2
Those penalties land on the driver who fled. They don't pay your bills. A criminal conviction can help your civil case, but the compensation comes through the insurance and injury claims below.
What to do in the first hours after a hit-and-run
Call the police right away, even if the other car is long gone. Mississippi's reporting law expects it for any crash with injury or real damage, and the official report becomes the backbone of both the criminal investigation and your insurance claim.5 You can request that crash report later through the Mississippi Department of Public Safety.6
Write down or photograph whatever you caught about the other vehicle: color and make, a partial plate, the direction it fled, and the exact time and location. Find witnesses and get their names and numbers. Section 63-3-411 even directs officers to collect witness phone numbers for the investigation, so point them to anyone who saw it.5 Mention any nearby business or doorbell camera to the responding officer while the footage still exists.
See a doctor even if you feel fine. Adrenaline hides injuries, and a documented medical visit ties your injuries to the crash for the insurance claim.
Then handle the property side. Photograph your car before any repairs and keep every estimate. A vehicle that's been in a documented wreck can be worth less afterward even once it's repaired, which is a separate diminished value claim.
Getting paid when the driver is never found
This is where Mississippi's rules matter most. You can't collect from a driver nobody can identify, so the money usually comes from your own uninsured motorist (UM) coverage. Mississippi treats a hit-and-run vehicle with an unknown driver as an "uninsured motor vehicle" under Miss. Code Ann. § 83-11-103, so your UM coverage can step in as if the phantom driver carried no insurance.7
There's a catch that's specific to Mississippi. For an unknown driver, § 83-11-103 requires that actual physical contact have occurred between the unknown vehicle and you or your vehicle.7 If a car forced you off the road and sped off without ever touching you, that physical-contact requirement can defeat a UM claim against the phantom driver. It's one more reason to document contact and damage at the scene while you can.
Whether you have UM coverage at all depends on your policy. Mississippi doesn't require drivers to buy it, but insurers must offer it with every auto liability policy, and you can only go without it by rejecting it in writing.8 For policies issued after July 1, 2024, your UM bodily-injury limit defaults to match your liability bodily-injury limit unless you signed for a lower amount.8 A lot of hit-and-run victims carry more UM protection than they think.
For scale, Mississippi's minimum liability limits are 25/50/25: $25,000 per person and $50,000 per crash for bodily injury, plus $25,000 for property damage.9 UM limits often track those figures. Medical payments (MedPay) coverage, which pays medical bills regardless of fault, is optional here and only helps if you bought it. Mississippi runs on fault-based liability insurance, with no no-fault PIP system and no PIP filing deadline.9
Deadlines and Mississippi's fault rule
You have three years from the date of the crash to sue for your injuries, and the same three years for damage to your vehicle, both under the general limitations statute, Miss. Code Ann. § 15-1-49.10 A UM claim is filed against your own insurer, but the underlying injury still drives the case, so opening it early protects you.
If the driver is later caught, Mississippi's pure comparative negligence rule decides how fault is divided. Under Miss. Code Ann. § 11-7-15, you can recover even if you were partly to blame; your damages are reduced by your share of the fault.11 Fleeing the scene tends to weigh against the driver who ran.
The practical priorities are simple: get medical care, file the police report, and open a UM claim with your own insurer before the physical-contact and three-year deadlines become a problem. A Mississippi attorney can find coverage you didn't know you had and deal with the insurer for you, and you can start with the legal directory.
This article is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
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AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, Understanding the Increase in Fatal Hit-and-Run Crashes: Prevalences of Crashes, Injuries, and Deaths in the United States, 2017-2023 (March 2026). https://newsroom.aaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/NO-STATE-DATA-202603-AAAFTS-Hit-and-Run-Crashes.pdf
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Miss. Code Ann. § 63-3-401 (duties of a driver in an accident resulting in injury or death; penalties). https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-63/chapter-3/article-9/section-63-3-401/
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Miss. Code Ann. § 63-3-405 (duty to give information and render aid). https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-63/chapter-3/article-9/section-63-3-405/
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Miss. Code Ann. § 63-3-403 (accident resulting in damage to an attended vehicle). https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-63/chapter-3/article-9/section-63-3-403/
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Miss. Code Ann. § 63-3-411 (duty to report accidents involving injury, death, or $500 or more in property damage). https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-63/chapter-3/article-9/section-63-3-411/
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Mississippi Department of Public Safety, Crash Reports. https://www.dps.ms.gov/crash-reports
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Miss. Code Ann. § 83-11-103 (uninsured motorist definitions; physical-contact requirement for an unknown vehicle). https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-83/chapter-11/article-3/section-83-11-103/
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Miss. Code Ann. § 83-11-101 (uninsured motorist coverage; written rejection; default limits for policies issued after July 1, 2024). https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-83/chapter-11/article-3/section-83-11-101/
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Mississippi Insurance Department, Auto Insurance consumer guide (minimum liability limits; optional MedPay). https://www.mid.ms.gov/mississippi-insurance-department/consumers/auto-insurance/
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Miss. Code Ann. § 15-1-49 (three-year statute of limitations). https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-15/chapter-1/section-15-1-49/
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Miss. Code Ann. § 11-7-15 (pure comparative negligence). https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-11/chapter-7/in-general/section-11-7-15/