What has to happen, and by when, from the moment of the collision to the filing of the claim. The deadlines are short at the start and unforgiving at the end.
The First 24 Hours
Where an accident involves injury or damage to property, the driver must produce the certificate of insurance to a police constable, or to a person who has reasonable cause to ask for it. Failing that, the accident must be reported at the nearest police station as soon as possible, and in any case within 24 hours. Failure to do so is an offence. The owner, separately, is obliged to identify the driver if the police demand it. Those duties are section 10(2) of the Motor Vehicles (Third Party Insurance) Law, Law 96(I)/2000, and the twenty-four hours are conditional on the first limb: the trip to the police station is what the Law requires where the certificate is not produced at the scene. Section 10(3) makes a contravention an offence, and section 11(1) puts the duty to answer the police on the owner personally, whether or not he was driving. Section 10(4) adds that none of this displaces the reporting duties in the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic legislation, which run alongside it.
The report matters for more than compliance. The police file becomes the earliest independent record of the scene, and much of what follows is built on it.
The Evidence to Preserve
Photographs of the vehicles before repair, the positions on the road, the names of witnesses, and the medical record from the first examination onwards. Two points are worth knowing early.
First, if the claim includes damage to the vehicle, the insurer of the other side is entitled to an opportunity to inspect the vehicle before it is repaired. Repairing first and notifying afterwards can damage the claim itself.
Second, a police officer's evidence of what was found at the scene is fully admissible in the civil action as ordinary witness evidence, and the police report can be obtained through the routes the procedure provides. What the criminal case decides, however, is a different matter, dealt with below.
The Notices to the Insurer
The claim in a Cyprus road accident case is in practice conducted against an insurer, and the statute gives the victim a direct action against the insurer of the driver at fault, without suing the insured personally. That is section 16A(1), and it operates notwithstanding the Contract Law and the Civil Wrongs Law. But section 16A(5) is the hinge and it is the part that is missed: sections 14, 15 and 16 apply to the direct action mutatis mutandis. Suing the insurer directly does not escape the notice conditions; it inherits them.
The two notice periods run from different events and catch different claims, and missing either one hands the insurer an argument it did not have to earn.
Two notices do the work. Section 15(1)(b) deals with property. Within six months of the date the cause of action arose, the person claiming must have given the insurer written notice of intention to claim, and must give the opportunity to inspect the vehicle before it is repaired. For bodily injury there is no six-month pre-action notice. Section 15(1)(a) deals with the proceedings themselves, and it is the one that decides cases. No sum is paid by an insurer in respect of a judgment unless, before or within fourteen days of the commencement of the proceedings in which the judgment was given, the insurer was given written notice of them. Miss the fourteen days and the judgment stands but cannot be enforced against the insurer, which is usually the only party with the money.
The Insurer's Three Months
Section 16B(1) gives the insurer three months from the date the injured party notified the claim, whether directly to the insurer, to the claims settlement representative or to the Motor Insurers' Fund, to make a reasoned offer of compensation where liability is not disputed, or a reasoned reply where it is. The clock runs from the claimant's own notification, so the claimant decides when it starts. The deadline has teeth. Under section 16B(2) the Superintendent of Insurance may impose an administrative fine of up to €3,500 for a contravention, whatever criminal sanctions the Law otherwise provides. Under section 16B(3), where the offer is not made within the three months, interest at the statutory rate is payable to the injured party on the compensation the insurer eventually offers or the court awards. A claim presented properly and in writing therefore starts a clock the claimant can hold the insurer to, and delay costs the insurer money rather than only time.
What the three months do not do is extend anything else. An insurer that negotiates for two and a half years has cost the claimant nothing except time, but an insurer that negotiates past the third anniversary of the accident has cost the claimant the claim. The limitation period for negligence is three years under section 6(2) of the Limitation of Actionable Rights Law, Law 66(I)/2012, running from the day the cause of action was completed unless the injured person acquired knowledge of the injury later. Negotiation does not suspend it: apart from section 27Α, section 13 is a closed list of what does, and correspondence with an insurer is not on it. Only the events in section 17 restart the clock, and they are a written acknowledgement of the right of action, a part payment over half, the issue of proceedings or the commencement of arbitration. The safe rule is to file within three years whatever stage the discussions have reached. Section 27Α of the same Law suspends the limitation period for negligence and breach of statutory duty for thirty nine months from the day the 2021 amending law came into force, so the three years is not by itself the answer to whether a claim is in time.
If the Driver Was Uninsured or Untraced
A fund exists for exactly this case, established under the Motor Vehicles (Third Party Insurance) Law, Law 96(I)/2000. Section 29 names the two cases the client actually asks about: liability arising from persons who are not insured, and liability where the driver is untraced. Three further provisions shape those claims. Section 32(3)(b) forbids the Fund from requiring the injured party to prove in any manner that the person at fault is unable or refuses to pay, which disposes of the argument that an uninsured driver must be chased to exhaustion first. Section 32(4) limits the untraced case: where the Fund has paid for significant bodily injury to an injured party of the same accident, material damage is recoverable, and otherwise it is not, so a hit and run that damaged only the vehicle is outside the scheme. And section 34 frames the untraced scheme around bodily injury and death. The conditions sit in the Fund's published agreement rather than in the statute itself, and section 28(3) explains why that matters: the Basic Agreement is not to be construed as creating an actionable right in the claimant's favour against the Fund. Section 33 then sends any dispute about the interpretation or application of that Agreement to the Minister, whose decision is final, rather than to the ordinary courts. That is one of the reasons early advice matters more in these claims, not less.
If you were in a collision and are working out where you stand, tell us the date it happened and whether written notice has reached the insurer, at office@kleanthousplatis.com, or the enquiry form. We reply within one business day.
One Claim for Everything
Injury and damage to the vehicle from the same collision belong in the same action. Splitting them between two proceedings invites the argument that the second claim is barred by the first, and there is no advantage that justifies the risk. The argument has a provision behind it: section 61(1) of the Civil Wrongs Law, Cap. 148, provides that no person who has obtained damages or other remedy for a civil wrong, nor anyone claiming through him, shall obtain further damages for that civil wrong. Settling the vehicle damage first can therefore extinguish the right to come back for the injury arising from the same collision. And section 67 disposes of the other half of the question: it is no bar to an action for a civil wrong that the facts also constitute a criminal offence, so the prosecution neither blocks the claim nor decides it. The practical rule is one action, all heads of damage, filed in time.
For what those heads of damage can include, and how compensation is assessed, see our road traffic accident claims page.
Frequently Asked Questions
The other driver was convicted for the accident. Does that decide my claim?
No. The conviction does not prove the civil case, which is decided on its own evidence. Admissions of fact made in the criminal case can, however, bind the person who made them.
I paid a fixed penalty without admitting anything. Have I admitted liability?
An out-of-court fixed penalty paid without admission is not an admission of negligence.
I was not wearing a seat belt. Do I lose the claim?
Not wearing a seat belt or helmet can reduce compensation as contributory negligence where it contributed to the injury. It does not defeat the claim by itself.
The accident was caused by the state of the road, not a driver. What then?
Claims against a road authority follow different routes, and one deadline is far shorter than the rest: damage from the exercise of public-road powers requires a written claim to the District Officer within two months. If the road itself is the cause, advice should be taken immediately.
Related Reading
By Klitos Platis, Advocate. Klitos advises on litigation, corporate and commercial law, real estate, construction and energy at Kleanthous & Platis LLC in Nicosia.
This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Laws and their application can change, and individual circumstances differ. For advice on your own matter, contact Klitos Platis at klitos@kleanthousplatis.com or telephone +357 22 680 330.
Klitos Platis
Advocate, Partner
Kleanthous & Platis LLC, Nicosia · Published 30 July 2026
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