Louisiana Crash Reporting Requirements
In Louisiana, the crash reporting threshold is $500 in damage. Deadline to file: Immediately. Submit to: Local police, sheriff, or State Police.
- Damage threshold
- $500
A crash must be reported if anyone is injured or killed, or if apparent property damage exceeds $500.
- Deadline to file
- Immediately
Notice goes to the local police inside a city or town, otherwise to the nearest sheriff's office or State Police station, and it must be given immediately. Where the crash happens in an area under an evacuation order or a declared state of emergency the driver has 72 hours (R.S. 32:398(A)).
- Submit to
- Local police, sheriff, or State Police
Louisiana has no driver's written report to a state agency. The investigating agency writes the crash report and forwards it to the Department of Transportation and Development within 48 hours of finishing the investigation. A copy costs up to $5 for a report of two pages or less and up to $20 for a longer one.
Louisiana sets $500 — higher than 2 of the 44 jurisdictions on this site. The range runs from $250 to $4,000.
How Louisiana compares with every other state
What this means after a crash
$500 is the number to keep in mind, and it is a damage figure rather than an injury one: a crash with no one hurt still has to be reported once the damage reaches it. Only 2 of the 44 that set a dollar figure start lower. Note what the threshold is measured against — apparent damage at the scene, not the final repair invoice — so the call has to be made before anyone has priced anything.
The deadline is not a number of days. Louisiana wants the report immediately, which in practice means from the scene or as soon as you are able. A clock that starts and ends the same day leaves no room to "get to it later", and that is the most common way an ordinary crash turns into a charge of its own.
Who receives it matters as much as when. In Louisiana the report goes to Local police, sheriff, or State Police. An officer writing a report at the scene is not automatically the report the state is waiting for — where the two are separate, the table above says who receives yours.
Every statute cited for Louisiana
Why the rule looks like this
- What Changed in 2026Liability minimums doubled in Hawaii, two states dropped pure comparative fault, New Hampshire stopped inspecting cars, and three crash reporting thresholds moved — a dated account of the 2026 changes, and the ones already signed for 2027 and beyond.
- The Crash You Are Required to Report Is Smaller Than You ThinkCrash-report triggers start at $500 in Georgia and New Jersey and reach $3,000 for a Virginia police report; Florida's is $500 before 1 October 2026 and $2,000 from that date, and Pennsylvania and Maryland use no dollar figure at all.
More on Louisiana
Checked against the primary sources above on September 27, 2026. If a figure here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it — what we have corrected so far is public.