Is South Dakota an At-Fault or No-Fault State?
No — South Dakota is an at-fault (tort) state, not a no-fault state.
- Fault system
- At-fault (tort)
South Dakota never adopted a no-fault act and has no PIP layer. The driver at fault pays through liability insurance, and the mandatory uninsured and underinsured motorist coverages are written the same way, protecting people "legally entitled to recover damages" from the other motorist. There is no injury threshold to clear before filing suit.
- Comparative negligence rule
- Slight-versus-gross comparative — recovery only if your negligence was slight
South Dakota stands alone. Instead of a 50 or 51 percent bar, § 20-9-2 lets a plaintiff recover only when that plaintiff's contributory negligence "was slight in comparison with the negligence of the defendant" — and then cuts the damages in proportion to it. There is no fixed percentage anywhere in the statute, so whether a plaintiff clears the bar is a jury question decided case by case, and the 1998 amendment forbids asking the jury to state the plaintiff's percentage of fault by special interrogatory. Comparison tables that list South Dakota under "modified comparative, 50 percent" are approximating a rule that does not use a number. Read the tables that file South Dakota under "modified comparative, 50%" with care: the slight-versus-gross test is generally understood to cut off well below half, so a plaintiff who would recover at 49% elsewhere may recover nothing here.
How South Dakota compares with every other state
What the fault rule decides
In an at-fault state the driver who caused the crash — through their liability insurer — pays for the harm. That is the arrangement in 38 of the 51 jurisdictions on this site, so it is the one most US advice assumes. The practical consequence is that your recovery depends on two things you do not control: how much liability cover the other driver bought, and what share of the blame you are assigned.
South Dakota does not use one of the three common fault rules, which is reason enough to read the row above rather than assume. Of the 50 jurisdictions on this site, 2 share this arrangement, so advice written for the rest of the country can be wrong here in a way that only shows up after a crash.
Every statute cited for South 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 One Percentage Point That Decides Your ClaimAcross the states covered on this site there are four different rules for what your own share of the blame does to your claim — and in North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia, being 1% at fault ends it entirely.
- No-Fault Does Not Mean Nobody Is at FaultNo-fault restricts the right to sue rather than removing it. Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan and New York run it, New Jersey and Pennsylvania let you choose, and Michigan lets every driver pick one of six PIP ceilings — which changes who pays after a crash.
More on South 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.