North Dakota Crash Reporting Requirements
In North Dakota, the crash reporting threshold is $4,000 in damage. Deadline to file: Immediately. Submit to: Local police, the county sheriff, or the Highway Patrol.
- Damage threshold
- $4,000
Notice is owed when the crash injures or kills someone, or does apparent property damage of at least $4,000. The figure was $1,000 until HB 1065 raised it effective August 1, 2019, so guides still quoting $1,000 are seven years out of date. One exception: if you hit an undomesticated animal and only your own vehicle is damaged, no notice is required no matter the amount.
- Deadline to file
- Immediately
Immediately — there is no filing window, because North Dakota has no driver's written report. You notify police at the scene and the investigating officer sends the report to NDDOT electronically. Failing to give notice draws a $50 fine, and the director may suspend the license until the duty is met and for up to 30 days beyond that. A separate five-day clock applies only to insurance details: if you could not give the officer the carrier and policy number, you have five days to supply it to the Driver License Division.
- Submit to
- Local police, the county sheriff, or the Highway Patrol
Notify the local police department if the crash happened inside a municipality; otherwise the county sheriff's office or the state Highway Patrol. The officer who investigates then transmits the crash report to NDDOT in the format and software the director prescribes.
North Dakota sets $4,000 — the highest of the 44 jurisdictions on this site. The range runs from $250 to $4,000.
How North Dakota compares with every other state
What this means after a crash
$4,000 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. It is the highest of the 44 that set a dollar figure at all. 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. North Dakota 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 North Dakota the report goes to Local police, the county sheriff, or the Highway Patrol. 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 North Dakota
What changed
August 1, 2019
The crash reporting threshold quadrupled — $1,000 became $4,000
House Bill 1065 of the 66th Legislative Assembly amended subsection 1 of N.D.C.C. § 39-08-09, striking "one thousand dollars" and inserting "four thousand dollars" as the apparent property damage that obliges a driver to give immediate notice of a crash. The bill passed 89-0 in the House and 46-0 in the Senate and was filed with the Secretary of State on March 27, 2019; carrying no emergency clause and no appropriation, it took effect on the following August 1 under the general rule in Article IV, section 13 of the North Dakota Constitution and N.D.C.C. § 1-02-42. Guides that still tell North Dakota drivers to call police once damage reaches $1,000 are quoting a figure the legislature replaced. Nothing else about the duty changed: notice is still immediate, still given to local police inside a municipality and otherwise to the county sheriff or the Highway Patrol, and the $50 fine for failing to give it is unchanged.
Enrolled House Bill No. 1065, 66th Legislative Assembly of North Dakota
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 North Dakota
Checked against the primary sources above on September 30, 2026. If a figure here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it — what we have corrected so far is public.