Vermont Crash Reporting Requirements
In Vermont, the crash reporting threshold is $3,000 in damage. Deadline to file: 3 days. Submit to: Vermont DMV — Driver Control.
- Damage threshold
- $3,000
A report is due if anyone was injured or killed, or if total property damage reaches $3,000. The form counts every vehicle involved plus any physical property, not just your own car, so the threshold is reached faster than drivers expect. The same $3,000 figure decides whether an uninsured driver in the crash will be ordered to file proof of financial responsibility.
- Deadline to file
- 3 days
72 hours from the crash. Vermont gives no exception for a crash that police investigated: 23 V.S.A. § 1129(a) puts the duty on the operator, and the form says you must report even if the vehicle was parked. Separately, within five days the owner and operator of an insured vehicle must give anyone they injured, and the owner of any property they damaged, the name and address of every liability insurer that may cover it and the policy numbers.
- Submit to
- Vermont DMV — Driver Control
File the Crash Report, Motor Vehicle (form VC-004) (form VC-004) with Driver Control, Vermont DMV, 120 State Street, Montpelier, VT 05603, or email it to DMV.DriverControl@Vermont.gov. A crash involving more than two vehicles takes as many copies of the form as it needs to list them all, and insurance information is required on the form. Failing or refusing to report is punishable by a civil penalty.
Vermont sets $3,000 — higher than 40 of the 44 jurisdictions on this site. The range runs from $250 to $4,000.
How Vermont compares with every other state
What this means after a crash
$3,000 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. Only 1 of the 44 that set a dollar figure start higher. 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.
You have 3 days. 14 of the 43 with a day count give you less time, 26 give you more. The clock runs from the crash, not from the insurance claim or the repair estimate, and it keeps running while you wait to hear whether the police filed a report of their own.
Who receives it matters as much as when. In Vermont the report goes to Vermont DMV — Driver Control. 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 Vermont
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 Vermont
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.