Road Traffic Accident Claims in Cyprus

In short

Motor insurance is compulsory in Cyprus, so there is almost always someone to claim against, and where there was not, the Motor Insurers Fund stands behind the loss. Fault is rarely all on one side: it is apportioned. The evidence that decides both goes in the first days, with the repairs and the cleared road.

The overview and contents stay open. Choose the detailed topics you want to read.

The first days decide what evidence still exists

Road accidents produce more personal injury claims in Cyprus than any other cause, and the record of what happened is destroyed fastest in them. Vehicles are repaired. The road is swept. Footage held by a shop or a petrol station near the junction is overwritten by the system that holds it. Witnesses who stopped for ten minutes are gone.

The first hours

Photograph the road, not only the damage

Almost everyone photographs the dented panel. Far fewer photograph where the vehicles came to rest, which is what shows how the collision happened.

What to photograph, before anything is moved

If it is safe to stand there, take more photographs than feel necessary: they cost nothing, they cannot be taken later, and there is a reason to hurry.

Section 14B of the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Law 86/1972 requires the vehicles to be moved to the nearest point where they do not obstruct traffic, where a collision between motor vehicles on a road has caused no apparent bodily injury to anyone involved, the presence of the police is not required, the vehicles can be moved without towing and without further damage to them or to the road surface, and moving them is reasonable in the circumstances.

So in an ordinary damage-only collision the scene is meant to be cleared, and the photographs have to be taken before that.

The vehicles where they came to rest, from four sides and from a distance, wide enough to show the junction, the lane markings, the give way lines, the signs and the traffic lights
The same scene from the direction each driver was travelling, which is what shows what each of them could see
Skid marks, broken glass, debris and fluid on the carriageway, and where they lie in relation to the lane markings
The road surface itself where it is broken, flooded, unlit, under works or covered in gravel, together with any barrier, cone or sign at the works
The damage to every vehicle, including the vehicle you believe to be at fault, and its registration plate in the same frame as the damage
The weather, the light and the time, which your telephone records in the image, one reason to photograph rather than describe

What section 14B requires before the cars are moved, and the four things it protects

Under section 14B(2), before moving the vehicles the drivers must inform their insurers of the collision immediately; exchange full names, insurance certificate numbers, driving licence numbers, vehicle details and telephone numbers; photograph the scene as quickly as possible, showing the vehicles in their final position, their registration numbers, the damage and the surrounding area, observing the data minimisation principle in Article 5(1)(c) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679; and exchange the photographs and send them to the person their insurer or its representative indicates.

A driver who cannot take photographs may ask another person involved, someone they trust, or the insurer's representative to take them.

Four provisos are in the Law and not in anybody's practice. Moving a vehicle under section 14B does not amount to an admission of liability for the collision. It is not treated as leaving the scene.

Under section 14B(3) it cannot be treated as a breach of any term of an insurance policy in force at the time. And where a driver had no apparent bodily injury at the time, moving the vehicle does not take away the right to claim later from the party at fault for injuries that emerge afterwards.

Three limits go with it. The regime does not apply where the collision involves an uninsured or a government vehicle, or where any driver leaves the scene. Under section 14B(4) the details and photographs may be used only for the purposes of that section, and misuse can attract a fine or penalty under the Regulation and under the data protection Law.

Under section 14B(4A) a driver who contravenes subsection (1) or (2) commits an offence punishable by a fine of up to 1,000 euro, and section 14B(4B) imposes the same penalty on anyone who incites or coerces a driver, or attempts to, into contravening them.

Whether moving the vehicles is reasonable is not left at large. Section 14B(5) says that reasonable in the circumstances may be read having regard to, among other things, the traffic on the road at the time, the hour and the day, and, on motorways and expressways, the safety of those involved and of other road users.

How section 14B changed in 2025 and 2026

The section is recent and has been rewritten once. Section 3 of Law 146(I)/2025, Official Gazette No. 5050 of 25 July 2025, inserted it into Law 86/1972, and as first enacted it applied only where the drivers involved consented to the vehicles being moved.

Law 77(I)/2026, Official Gazette No. 5087 of 21 April 2026, deleted the consent requirement, extended subsections (1) and (2) to any one of the vehicles involved rather than to all of them together, and added subsections (4A) and (4B). A collision before 25 July 2025 was not governed by the section at all; one between those dates, by a version under which nothing had to be moved unless both drivers agreed. That matters when an insurer argues about what a driver should have done at the scene.

What to write down and what to ask for

The other driver's name, identity or passport number, telephone number, driving licence, and the insurer and policy number shown on the insurance certificate
The registration number of every vehicle involved, including any that did not touch yours but caused the collision
The name and telephone number of every passenger in every vehicle
The name and telephone number of every witness, including anybody who stopped, helped and then left. This is the item most often regretted
Whether the police attended, which station, and the reference given at the scene. Where an accident involves injury or damage and the insurance certificate was not produced there, section 10(2) of Law 96(I)/2000 requires the driver to report the accident and produce the certificate at the nearest police station as soon as possible, and in any case within twenty four hours; failing to do so is an offence under section 10(3)
The name of any recovery company that took a vehicle away, and where it was taken: the vehicle is evidence until it is repaired or scrapped

Recorded footage, and why it goes first

A camera in your own vehicle records over itself. Copy the file off the device the same day. The same is true of a camera on a nearby shop, kiosk, petrol station, bank or block of flats, except that you do not control that one. Photograph those premises at the scene and ask in writing, quickly, that the recording covering the relevant period be preserved.

A written request does not by itself compel the holder to keep the recording, but it establishes what they knew, so a later deletion cannot be attributed to the ordinary recording cycle, and it gives a lawful basis for retention under Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation.

What binds the holder is an order of the court under Part 25 of the Civil Procedure Rules 2023, available once proceedings are in contemplation. A request made in the first days can be met; one made in the second month usually cannot.

Where you are the person shown in the footage, Article 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation, given effect in Cyprus by Law 125(I)/2018, gives you the right of access to the personal data concerning you, and a written request has to be answered within one month.

See a doctor when the symptoms appear

Neck and back symptoms frequently present the following day rather than at the scene. Attend and let the attendance be recorded. As the firm's guide, Personal Injury Claims in Cyprus, puts it, a gap between the accident and the first medical attendance is the point most often taken against a claimant, because it invites the argument that the injury arose from something else.

Fault

Fault is rarely all or nothing

Two drivers can both have fallen short, and Cyprus law has a mechanism for saying so.

Negligence is a civil wrong under the Civil Wrongs Law, Cap. 148, dealt with in section 51. The question in a road accident is not whether a collision occurred but whether a driver failed to use the care a reasonable driver would have used in those conditions, and whether that failure caused the injury rather than merely preceded it.

Driving standards and the Highway Code

Driving standards are regulated by the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Law of 1972, 86/1972 and the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Regulations made under it. The Law contains, among other things, the offence of reckless or dangerous driving in section 7 and the offence of careless driving in section 8.

Section 8(1) grades the latter by its consequence: driving without due care and attention, or without reasonable consideration for other road users, carries up to six months and a fine of up to 1,500 euro under paragraph (a); where it causes damage to property, up to one year and 3,000 euro under paragraph (b); and where it causes bodily injury, up to two years and 6,000 euro under paragraph (c).

The Republic also publishes a Highway Code, the Κώδικας Οδικής Κυκλοφορίας, through its road safety service. What weight a departure from it carries in a civil claim, and what use may be made of a traffic conviction or of a settled traffic charge from the same collision, are questions to put to us with the papers. Tell us if you have been charged, and before you deal with the charge.

Contributory negligence, and what it actually does

Section 57(1) of Cap. 148 provides that where a person suffers damage partly through their own fault and partly through the fault of another or others, the claim in respect of that damage is not defeated by their own fault, but the damages recoverable are reduced to the extent the Court thinks just, having regard to that person's share of the responsibility for the damage.

Two provisos qualify it: the subsection does not override a defence arising out of a contract, and where a contract or an enactment limits liability, the reduced award cannot exceed that limit.

The courts decide first whether negligence has been established against the defendant and, if it has, examine under section 57 of Cap. 148 whether the claimant was contributorily negligent. The result is a division of responsibility, not the end of the claim.

This is where people most often talk themselves out of a claim. Someone who was going a little too fast, or looking at the junction rather than at the car ahead, concludes the accident was their own doing and does nothing. Whether responsibility is divided at all, and in what proportions, is decided on evidence. Say what you think happened to us, in full, and to nobody else.

How courts have apportioned fault

The reported pedestrian cases show how wide the range runs under the same section. In Nicolaou v. Louka (1985) 1 CLR 91 the Supreme Court set aside an apportionment of two thirds against the driver as clearly erroneous and substituted 30 per cent against the driver and 70 per cent against the pedestrian, who had started to cross without looking round.

In Γιαννάκου ν. Ευριπίδου, Civil Appeal 464/2019, decided on 16 July 2025, the Court of Appeal upheld the opposite division, 70 per cent against the driver and 30 per cent against a pedestrian who crossed a busy four lane road from in front of a parked vehicle, rejecting the driver's argument that she had dashed out, and reduced general damages of €60,000 to €42,000 by her share. What moved the split from one end to the other was the evidence of who could see whom, and when.

A prosecution arising out of the same collision is decided separately. A conviction for a traffic offence, or a fixed penalty paid without any admission, does not decide who compensates whom: the civil court decides that on the evidence before it. What is said and formally admitted in the criminal case can matter in the civil one.

A failure to wear a seat belt or a helmet can itself amount to contributory negligence under section 57 of Cap. 148, where not wearing it contributed to the injury. Any reduction depends on what difference the belt or helmet would have made in the particular collision, which is a question of evidence: there is no fixed percentage in the Law, and the figures used in the English cases are treated in Cyprus as guidance rather than as rules.

Who is answerable

Who may be answerable besides the other driver

The driver is the obvious answer and often not the only one. The full list decides who the claim is brought against and which insurer is on the other side of it.

The insurer, and compulsory motor insurance

Motor insurance is compulsory in Cyprus. The Motor Vehicles (Third Party Insurance) Law of 2000, 96(I)/2000, requires by section 3 that a person using a motor vehicle on a road has in force insurance against liability to third parties, and using a vehicle without a third party insurance certificate is prosecuted under that section.

This is why the party corresponding with you is usually an insurance company rather than the driver. Establishing which insurer covers which vehicle is one of the first steps, and the certificate details you took at the scene make it quick.

The owner or keeper, and an employer

The registered owner or keeper is not always the person driving, and the vehicle may have been driven by an employee in the course of their work, which is worth raising whenever a van, a lorry, a taxi, a bus or a liveried vehicle is involved.

On what basis a company is answerable for the driving of a person it employs, and an owner for the driving of a person permitted to use the vehicle, are matters we take on the facts. Give us the registration number and what was written on the side of the vehicle.

The statutory basis for the employer's answerability is section 13 of the Civil Wrongs Law, Cap. 148, and its edge is the phrase in the course of the employment.

In Stylianou v. Petrou (1984) 1 CLR 362 a taxi driver was allowed to take the employer's car home at closing time and return with it in the morning; the collision happened at 2.30 in the morning, after he had reached his house, and the Supreme Court held the employer not answerable, because a journey of his own during the night was not a journey in the course of his employment.

Where the wheel was being turned for the employer at the moment of the collision, the employer answers; where it was not, the claim stays against the driver.

The road itself

Where the state of the carriageway, the absence of lighting, a defective sign, a missing barrier or the arrangement of road works is said to have contributed, the first question is factual: which authority or contractor was responsible for that stretch on that date, and under what arrangement. Whether such a body is answerable to an injured road user, and whether any notice requirement or different period applies, is not asserted here.

Photograph the defect and the works, note the date, and raise it with us before the road is resurfaced.

If a road accident is why you are reading this, send us the date and the police report number at office@kleanthousplatis.com, or the enquiry form. We reply within one business day.

When the driver was uninsured, or was never found

This is the question almost every injured person asks first, and it has an answer in Cyprus.

Cyprus has a Motor Insurers Fund, the Ταμείο Ασφαλιστών Μηχανοκινήτων Οχημάτων, which exists under the Motor Vehicles (Third Party Insurance) Law of 2000, 96(I)/2000. Section 29 lists the claims the Fund's obligation to pay compensation covers, which include liability arising from:

persons who do not have the insurance cover required by that Law
drivers of vehicles whose particulars are unknown
persons using a motor vehicle whose insurer has been placed in liquidation

A collision with an uninsured vehicle, or with one that did not stop and was never identified, is not automatically the end of the matter. This is a distinct route with its own requirements, and not one to begin without advice.

Under section 28(1) the Fund is bound, as against the Minister, by an agreement called the Βασική Συμφωνία, the Basic Agreement, signed between the Fund and the Minister from time to time and published by notification in the Official Gazette. So what a claimant must do, and by when, is checked against the agreement in force for the case.

Part Three of the Law is headed Motor Insurers Fund and runs from section 27, which governs its membership, to section 35A. Section 30 provides that where the Fund pays it is subrogated to the rights of the person it paid, and section 32Α gives it a right to recover compensation it has paid out.

Section 28(3) provides that the Basic Agreement is not to be construed as creating, in favour of a claimant, a right of action against the Fund, though the Fund may apply to be joined as a co-defendant where it considers its interests may be affected. The route is real, and it is not exercised by suing the Fund as one would sue a driver. Section 35A gives a person with a claim against the Fund access to material information about the possible ways the claim may be satisfied.

Two provisions of section 32 tilt the mechanics towards the injured person. Under section 32(3), a claim may be put to the Fund directly, the Fund must give a reasoned answer on it, and the Fund may not require the claimant to prove that the person responsible cannot or will not pay: chasing the uninsured driver first is not a precondition.

Under section 32(2), where the Fund and an insurer dispute which of them should compensate, they must in the first instance each pay half to the injured person without delay and settle the allocation between themselves afterwards.

For drivers whose particulars are unknown, section 34 speaks of claims for bodily injury or death. Whether anything is payable for damage to the vehicle itself where the driver was never identified is governed by the agreement rather than the section, and is not to be assumed.

Report it. Keep the police reference. Photograph the vehicle and the plate if there is any chance of it: a partial plate is not nothing. Then tell us at once, because the untraced and uninsured route has its own requirements.

Passengers, including a passenger in the car at fault

A passenger is rarely blamed for the collision. The claim may lie against the driver of the vehicle you were in, the driver of the other vehicle, or both, and which of them was at fault is not a question you have to answer before asking for advice.

It is the passenger in the vehicle that caused the accident who most often does nothing, because the driver is a husband, a sister, a colleague or a friend. The compulsory insurance required by section 3 of Law 96(I)/2000 is insurance against liability to third parties, and an injured passenger is not disqualified by knowing the driver. What the policy covers, and any limitation on it, is something we would read before advising.

Children carried as passengers, and passengers who were working at the time, raise further questions better put with the facts in front of us.

What a claim covers

Categories, not figures

No responsible estimate of value can be given from the type of accident. What can be given is the list of things that are looked at.

A claim is directed at the injury and at its documented consequences. The heads of loss usually examined are set out in the firm's guide, Personal Injury Claims in Cyprus: Liability, Evidence and Damages:

Pain, suffering and loss of amenity, meaning the effect on your life rather than on your bank account
Past loss of earnings, evidenced by payslips, accounts or tax returns
Future loss of earnings or of earning capacity, where the injury affects the work you can do
Medical and rehabilitation expenses, past and future
Care and assistance, including help given unpaid by family
Travel and other out of pocket expenses

Keep receipts, appointment letters, and a plain dated note of what you could not do in the weeks after the accident. The categories proved on documents do not depend on anybody's memory a year later.

Damage to the vehicle is a claim for damage to property rather than for bodily injury, and the rules for computing it differ. The Civil Procedure Rules 2023 separate them in Form A of the letter of claim, which divides material damage from other special damages and from general damages. Section 16Β of Law 96(I)/2000 likewise treats death or bodily injury and damage to property as distinct categories for the insurer's reasoned offer.

Nothing prevents the two being joined in one action, but in practice they are frequently handled separately, particularly where the owner of the vehicle is not the injured person. Settling the vehicle side does not by itself settle the injury side.

Three years, and why the third year is already too late

A claim for damages for personal injury must generally be brought within three years under section 6(2) of the Limitation of Actions Law 66(I)/2012, and time runs from the day the cause of action was complete. Ordinary contract claims have six years under section 7(1), so this is half the period most people have in mind.

Where the injured person came to know of the injury later, section 6(2) runs the three years from the day of that knowledge instead, which matters for an injury that declared itself weeks after the collision. 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.

A case still technically in time in its thirty fifth month is often already lost as a matter of evidence. The limitation period tells you when the door closes. It says nothing about when the evidence goes, and the evidence goes first.

The Law does not provide a pause for negotiation: correspondence that merely discusses the claim leaves the three years running. What stops the clock is set out in section 17, and one of its five events operates on correspondence rather than on proceedings: where the person liable acknowledges the right of action in writing, the period is interrupted and starts again from zero.

Issuing proceedings interrupts it too, as does commencing arbitration. The question to ask of a file of insurer letters is not whether it feels constructive but whether anything in it amounts to a written acknowledgement.

A claim brought late is not always over. Under section 6(3), in a claim for bodily injury or death the court has a discretion to disapply the limitation provisions, weighing the reasons for the delay, how long the injured person was unable to deal with the case, what they did to obtain the material they needed, how the defendant responded, and what the delay has done to the evidence.

It is bounded: it cannot be exercised more than two years after the period expired. A person in their fourth year has something to ask a court for. A person in their sixth does not.

Different rules again apply where the injured person was a child at the time. Where someone has died, the claim is a different one with its own period: see below.

Where someone has died

A death is a different claim, brought by the dependants

Set out here because the period runs from the death, and families are often told otherwise.

Where a person is killed by a civil wrong that would have entitled them to sue had they lived, section 58 of the Civil Wrongs Law, Cap. 148 makes the person who would have been liable liable notwithstanding the death.

The action is brought for the benefit of the dependants, and the section defines them expressly: a spouse, any parent or other ascendant, a person the deceased treated as a parent, any child or other descendant, a child of the family, and a brother, sister, uncle or aunt or their children.

Two provisions are worth stating plainly. Section 58(20) requires the action to be brought within three years of the death, not of the accident, and where a person dies of their injuries some months after the collision that distinction can decide the case. Section 24(b) of Law 66(I)/2012 leaves this period outside the general limitation scheme, so it stands on its own.

Under section 58(19) what the dependants receive from the estate, or otherwise as a result of the death, is not set off against the damages. Under section 58A the court awards interest on damages for bodily injury or death unless satisfied there is reason not to.

The evidence in a fatal case disappears on the same timetable, when a family has least appetite for it. The practical steps on this page still apply, and the one thing worth doing early is preserving the material rather than deciding anything.

The insurer

What to be careful about when the insurer writes

Because motor insurance is compulsory under section 3 of Law 96(I)/2000, the correspondence about a road accident is usually conducted by insurers. That is the ordinary machinery of the system, and a reason to be clear about four things.

Two notices carry short deadlines

The injured person has a direct claim against the insurer under section 16Α of Law 96(I)/2000, without first suing the driver. The conditions are in section 15(1). Under paragraph (a) no sum is payable by an insurer in respect of a judgment unless, before or within fourteen days of the commencement of the proceedings in which it was given, the insurer was notified in writing that they had been brought.

Under paragraph (b), where the judgment relates to damage to property, the person in whose favour it was given must, within six months of the day the cause of action arose, have notified the insurer in writing of the intention to claim and have given the insurer a reasonable opportunity to inspect the damage before it is repaired or damaged parts are replaced. The second forbids exactly what most people do first, which is repair the car.

The six months does not start to run while the claimant was unable to give that notice because of bodily, mental or psychological injury caused by the same event, or for another reasonable cause.

An offer is a position, not a valuation

A figure put forward before the medical position is understood is put forward on incomplete information. A claim cannot sensibly be valued until it is clear whether the injury is resolving or permanent. The first question about an amount proposed to you is not whether it is a lot of money but whether anybody yet knows what the injury is.

Read what you are being asked to sign, and send it to us first

A document that records a settlement, however it is titled, is an agreement, governed by the Contract Law, Cap. 149. What it brings to an end depends on the words used in it, and the words are frequently wider than the sum being discussed. Send it to us before you sign it. A receipt, a discharge, a settlement form and a form authorising the release of your medical records are four different things.

The medical report is the document the claim is built on

Medical evidence does two separate jobs, and confusing them weakens claims. It links the injury to the accident, and it establishes the nature, severity and likely duration of the consequences. That is why the first attendance matters, and why we ask for the complete records rather than a summary letter.

Nothing on this page describes how any insurer conducts its business. It describes what a claimant should be careful about, which is a different thing.

What to send us

How to start a first enquiry

The date, the time and the place of the collision, and three or four sentences on how it happened. The registration numbers of the vehicles, the other driver's details and the name of the insurer if you have them, and the name of any insurer that has already written to you. Whether the police attended and any reference you were given. Please do not send photographs, medical records or anything you have been asked to sign until we confirm we can act.

If you have none of that, write anyway and say so. Tell us the date first, because it decides how much time there is. Where the other vehicle was uninsured or was never traced, say that in the first line.

Kleanthous & Platis LLC acts for injured people and also acts for insurers. We do not act on both sides of the same claim, and a conflict check is run before anything else happens. Nothing you send before we confirm that we can act should be confidential.

Questions we are asked

What should I do immediately after a car accident in Cyprus?

Get to safety, get medical attention, and record the scene before the vehicles are moved: wide photographs of the road and the positions of the vehicles, the registration numbers, the other driver's details and the insurance certificate, and the names and telephone numbers of witnesses. Note whether the police attended and keep any reference you are given. Copy any recording from a camera in your vehicle off the device the same day.

The other driver had no insurance. Can I still claim?

Cyprus has a Motor Insurers Fund under the Motor Vehicles (Third Party Insurance) Law of 2000, 96(I)/2000, and section 29 lists the claims its compensation obligation covers, beginning with liability arising from persons who do not have the insurance cover the Law requires. The same section also reaches the case where the insurer has gone into liquidation.

Under section 28(1) the conditions on which it pays are contained in the Basic Agreement with the Minister, published in the Official Gazette, so what must be done and by when has to be checked in the individual case. Tell us at once.

The car that hit me drove off and was never found. Is there anything I can do?

Section 29 of Law 96(I)/2000 includes among the claims the Motor Insurers Fund's compensation obligation covers those arising from drivers of vehicles whose particulars are unknown. The conditions are set by the Basic Agreement referred to in section 28(1), published in the Official Gazette, and section 34 provides that the procedure for these claims forms a separate part of that agreement.

Section 28(3) means this is not exercised by suing the Fund as one would sue a driver. Report the accident, keep the reference, and record anything you noticed about the vehicle, including a partial registration.

I was a passenger in the car that caused the accident. Can I claim?

The insurance required by section 3 of Law 96(I)/2000 is insurance against liability to third parties, and being injured while carried by a driver you know does not by itself put you outside a claim. What the policy covers is something we would read before advising. That the driver is a relative, a partner or a friend is the reason people do not ask, and is not by itself the answer.

I think the accident was partly my fault. Does that end my claim?

Cyprus law apportions responsibility rather than refusing a claim outright. The courts decide first whether negligence is established against the defendant and, if it is, examine under section 57 of the Civil Wrongs Law, Cap. 148, whether the claimant was contributorily negligent. How responsibility is divided is decided on evidence, and is frequently different from what the person involved assumes.

I was not wearing a seat belt. Does that ruin my claim?

Not by itself. A failure to wear a seat belt or a helmet can amount to contributory negligence under section 57 of the Civil Wrongs Law, Cap. 148, where it contributed to the injury, and the result is a reduction decided on the evidence, not the loss of the claim. What difference the belt would have made in the particular collision is a question to put to us rather than to answer against yourself.

How long do I have to bring a claim after a road accident in Cyprus?

A claim for damages for personal injury must generally be brought within three years under section 6(2) of the Limitation of Actions Law 66(I)/2012, running from the day the cause of action was complete, or from the day the injured person came to know of the injury where that was later. Section 27Α of Law 66(I)/2012 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.

Negotiating with an insurer does not stop the clock, but under section 17 a written acknowledgement of the right of action by the person liable interrupts the period and starts it again from zero.

Where the three years have passed, section 6(3) gives the court a discretion to disapply the limitation provisions in an injury or death claim, and that discretion cannot be exercised more than two years after the period expired. Where a person has died, section 58(20) of the Civil Wrongs Law, Cap. 148, requires the action within three years of the death.

The insurer has offered me a figure and wants an answer this week. Should I sign?

An amount proposed before the medical position is settled is proposed on incomplete information, and a claim cannot sensibly be valued until it is known whether the injury is resolving or permanent. A document recording a settlement is an agreement, governed by the Contract Law, Cap. 149, and what it brings to an end depends on its wording rather than the sum. Tell us before you sign anything.

How do I get a copy of the police report of the accident?

The Republic publishes a service for requesting the issue of a traffic police report, and the request is made to the Police. Who may apply, what the report contains and what use may be made of it in a civil claim are matters to check in the individual case. Keep whatever reference you were given at the scene: it is what makes the request straightforward.

Written on this subject

A Road Accident Claim in Cyprus, Step by Step

Personal injury

Personal Injury Claims in Cyprus: Liability, Evidence and Damages