Everyone knows the rough idea: if you were partly to blame for a crash, you get less. What almost nobody knows is that “how much less” is decided by a rule that changes at the state line, and that in some states the answer is “all of it.”
Here is what the ten states we currently cover actually do.
Four rules, not one
| Rule | What happens | States |
|---|---|---|
| Pure contributory | Any fault at all, even 1%, bars recovery entirely | North Carolina |
| 50% bar | You recover nothing at 50% or more | Georgia |
| 51% bar | You recover nothing above 50% | Texas, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New York (car crashes) |
| Pure comparative | You always recover, reduced by your share | California |
Read the first two rows again, because the difference between them is a single percentage point and it is worth the entire claim.
Exactly 50% is the fault line
Imagine the same crash, same facts, and a jury that splits the blame down the middle: you 50%, the other driver 50%.
- In Texas, a claimant is barred only if their share is greater than 50%. At exactly 50% you still recover — half your damages.
- In Georgia, a plaintiff recovers nothing if they are 50 percent or more responsible. At exactly 50% you get nothing.
Same crash. Same jury finding. In one state you collect, in the other you go home with nothing. This is not a technicality that lawyers argue over at the margins — juries land on an even split more often than you would expect, precisely because it feels fair.
North Carolina is in a category of its own
North Carolina keeps pure contributory negligence. If you bear any share of the blame at all — one percent — your claim is over. Not reduced. Over.
A driver who was speeding slightly while someone ran a red light into them can lose entirely. Only a handful of states still work this way, and North Carolina is the largest of them.
If you drive in North Carolina, this single rule matters more than any coverage limit on your policy, because it decides whether the other driver’s insurance pays you anything at all.
New York changed four months ago
New York was a pure comparative state — you recovered no matter how much of the blame you carried, just reduced by your share. For car crashes, that is no longer true.
A revision effective in late May 2026 added subsection (b) to CPLR 1411: in a personal injury action subject to Insurance Law article 51 — which is to say, most car crash claims — a claimant whose share of the blame is greater than the defendant’s is barred entirely.
So New York now runs two rules at once. Car crash claims get the 51% bar. Everything else keeps pure comparative. The prior revision of that section was from 2014, so most of what is written about New York comparative negligence online describes the law as it stood before this spring.
No-fault does not mean this stops mattering
Three of the ten states here are no-fault states — Florida, New York and Michigan — and it is easy to assume comparative negligence is irrelevant when your own insurer pays your medical bills regardless of blame.
It is not. No-fault governs your own benefits. The moment your injuries clear the threshold that lets you step outside the no-fault system and sue the other driver, you are in tort, and the comparative rule applies to everything you are claiming from them. Michigan makes this especially visible: its 51% bar is written specifically against noneconomic damages — the pain and suffering piece that no-fault benefits never covered in the first place.
Pennsylvania: a deliberate blank
You will notice Pennsylvania is missing from the table. That is not an oversight.
Pennsylvania’s comparative negligence rule lives in its consolidated statutes, and every official Pennsylvania host for that text was unreachable when we checked. We do not publish figures we have not read at their source, so the field is empty on the Pennsylvania fault page rather than filled with a number copied from a secondary site.
Pennsylvania has its own wrinkle regardless: it is a choice state, where the policyholder elects full tort or limited tort when they buy the policy. That election — not the comparative rule — is usually the thing that decides whether a Pennsylvania driver can claim for pain and suffering at all.
What this means in practice
- Your state’s rule is not your neighbour state’s rule. A crash three miles across a border can be governed by a completely different regime.
- “Partly at fault” is not a settled quantity. It is argued, and in a 50% bar or contributory state the argument is about whether you get everything or nothing, not about a percentage.
- Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage matters more in strict states. If the rule can zero out your claim against the other driver, the coverage you bought yourself is what is left.
Every state page on this site carries the rule for that state with the statute it comes from, and the date we last checked it. Start with your own: all states.