What to Do After an Accident in a Rental Car in Hawaii

An accident in a rental car in Hawaii is really two separate problems that get settled by two different systems, and you need to act on both before you fly home. Your injuries are handled first, no matter whose fault the crash was, because Hawaii is a no-fault state and the rental car carries at least $10,000 of medical coverage that pays for you and your passengers. The damage to the cars is handled the opposite way, by fault, and here is the part that catches people out: if you turned down the counter damage waiver, the rental company can bill you for its car even when the crash was not your fault, then chase the other driver later. So get treated, do not admit fault at the scene, and read on before you agree to pay anyone anything.

Last updated 6 July 2026. This is general information about how Hawaii’s system works, current as of this date, not legal advice for your situation. Dollar thresholds and insurance minimums change, so confirm current figures and get advice on your specific facts before acting.

Key takeaways

Hawaii is no-fault for injuries. The rental car’s Personal Injury Protection pays your medical bills up to at least $10,000 regardless of who caused the crash.
Damage to the cars is fault-based. The at-fault driver pays for that, through insurance.
You can step outside no-fault and sue the at-fault driver only once your injury benefits reach $5,000, or if the injury is severe, under Hawaii Revised Statutes section 431:10C-306.
You must report the crash to police if anyone is hurt or the total damage looks like $3,000 or more, under section 291C-16.
The counter damage waiver is not insurance. If you declined it, you can be billed for the rental car’s damage even when you were not at fault.
You can fly home before any of this is settled. You generally have about two years to bring an injury claim.

In this guide

What to do at the scene right now
Who pays after a rental car accident in Hawaii
Hawaii pays your medical first, no matter whose fault it was
When you can sue the at-fault driver
If you declined the damage waiver
If the other driver is uninsured or drives off
Driving on a foreign or mainland license
Whether you can fly home before the claim is settled
Frequently asked questions

What to do at the scene right now

If you are reading this on the roadside, do these in order and leave the insurance sorting for tonight.

Check for injuries and call 911 if anyone is hurt. A sore neck counts. Whiplash often shows up the next day, so if anything hurts, treat it as an injury, say so, and get checked. Hawaii law requires you to report the crash to police immediately if there is any injury, a death, or total property damage that looks like $3,000 or more, which most two-car collisions reach.
Do not admit fault. Do not say you are sorry, that you did not see them, or that you were going too fast. Give the police the facts only and offer no opinion on who caused it. Hawaii reduces or cancels your compensation based on your share of blame, so a single roadside apology can cost you real money later.
Photograph everything before the cars move. Both vehicles and their damage, all license plates, the other driver’s license and insurance card, the road and where the cars ended up, and any skid marks or signs. Get names and phone numbers of any witnesses, because they disappear and you will fly home.
Exchange information with the other driver. Name, license, plate, and insurance details. You need these even if they claim to have no insurance.
Call the rental company from the number in the glovebox or on the key tag. Report the accident promptly, because waiting can jeopardize your coverage, and get a claim or incident number. Report the facts only. Do not accept a damage figure or sign anything admitting you owe for the car.

Get the police report number and the responding department before you leave the scene. How you obtain a copy of the report later differs by island. On Oahu, contact the Honolulu Police Department Records and Identification Division. On Maui, Hawaii Island, and Kauai, ask the responding department how to request your copy.

Who pays after a rental car accident in Hawaii

The thing to understand before the details is that your injuries and the car damage travel on completely separate tracks. Your medical bills get paid first, automatically, by no-fault coverage, without waiting for anyone to decide who was to blame. The car damage waits on fault. Four sources of coverage can come into play, and which one is yours depends on what you bought and what you carry at home.

Coverage	What it covers	The catch
Personal Injury Protection (PIP) on the rental	Your medical and rehab costs and your passengers’, up to at least $10,000, regardless of fault	It is injury only, not the car. You have to file the claim; it does not open itself.
The rental company’s damage waiver (CDW or LDW)	Damage to the rental car itself, if you bought it	Not insurance, and not liability to others. Void if you breach the agreement, for example a prohibited road or an unauthorized driver.
Your mainland auto policy	Often liability and, if you carry it at home, collision that can extend to the rental	If you own no car, carry liability only, or live outside the US, there may be nothing to extend. Confirm with your insurer.
Your credit card’s rental benefit	Damage to the rental car, and your collision deductible	Usually secondary, covers the car only, and requires you declined the counter waiver, are the named renter, and paid the whole rental on that card.
Uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage	Your injuries when the at-fault driver has no insurance	Optional, not part of Hawaii’s minimum, and not bundled in rental packages. You only have it if you carry it on your own policy.

Two gaps in that table cost visitors the most. The first is liability to other people. The rental car’s state-minimum liability protects the rental company, not you, so if you seriously injure someone the claim comes after you, and your protection is your own auto policy or the supplemental liability insurance (often sold as SLI or SLP, around a million dollars) that the counter offers as a separate product from the damage waiver. Declining that supplemental liability, not declining the damage waiver, is the real coverage gap for a well-off visitor. The second gap is your credit card: it covers the car, never your medical bills, never your liability to others, and never your stolen belongings.

Hawaii pays your medical first, no matter whose fault it was

Hawaii is a no-fault state for injuries. Every car registered in Hawaii, including the rental fleet, carries Personal Injury Protection, and as an occupant of the rental you and your passengers are covered by it. It pays your reasonable medical, hospital, rehabilitation, and related costs up to at least the $10,000 statutory minimum, and it pays regardless of who caused the crash. That is the reassuring core of the system: you do not have to prove anything, or win an argument about blame, to get your medical bills covered. Get treated, keep every bill and receipt, and file the PIP claim with the insurer promptly, because it is not automatic.

One point people misread. No-fault does not mean nobody was at fault, and it does not mean the damage to the cars is covered. It governs only who pays your first-dollar medical. The vehicles are a separate, fault-based question, settled through the damage waiver, your collision coverage, your card, and the at-fault driver’s liability insurance. Since 1 January 2026, Hawaii’s minimum liability limits rose to $40,000 for bodily injury per person, $80,000 per accident, and $20,000 for property damage, commonly written as 40/80/20, under Act 138. Those are minimums, and serious crashes exceed them, which is why the at-fault driver’s own policy limits and your uninsured-motorist coverage matter.

When you can sue the at-fault driver

Because injuries run through no-fault, you cannot simply sue the other driver for pain and suffering after any fender bender. Hawaii lets you step outside the no-fault system and bring a claim against the at-fault driver only when you cross a threshold. Under Hawaii Revised Statutes section 431:10C-306, you can sue if either your no-fault injury benefits, counting medical and related benefits incurred or accrued, reach $5,000, or the injury involves death, significant permanent loss of use of a body part or function, or permanent serious disfigurement. The $5,000 figure is the statutory threshold, and it is worth confirming the current amount before you rely on it.

Every personal-injury law firm on the internet tells visitors they can sue for “serious injuries” without ever naming this rule. Now you have it. Two things follow from it. First, most visitor crashes never reach it, and that is the system working as intended: your medical is paid by PIP, you are below the threshold, and there is no injury lawsuit to bring. Second, the threshold applies only to the injury claim. Property and vehicle damage were never folded into no-fault, so you can always pursue the at-fault driver for the damage to your rental and your losses regardless of the injury threshold.

If you do cross the threshold and someone else was at fault, Hawaii uses modified comparative negligence under section 663-31. You can still recover as long as your share of fault is not greater than the other party’s, which in practice means up to and including 50 percent, with your award reduced by your percentage of blame. You recover nothing only if you are found 51 percent or more at fault. Being partly at fault, in other words, shrinks what you can collect from the other side, but it never costs you your own PIP medical coverage, which pays regardless.

When is it worth calling a lawyer rather than handling it yourself? A minor injury treated for under a few thousand dollars, with the property side going through the insurers, usually needs no lawyer. Talk to one when the injury is serious or permanent, when the other driver disputes fault, when the at-fault driver is uninsured or fled, when a claim is denied or low-balled, or before you give a recorded statement to the other driver’s insurer or sign any release. The neutral place to find one is the Hawaii State Bar Association’s lawyer referral service, rather than the firms whose ads fill the search results.

If you declined the damage waiver

Many visitors decline the counter damage waiver because their credit card covers rentals. That can be the right call, but understand what happens after a crash. The damage waiver is not insurance. It is the rental company agreeing not to bill you for damage to its car. Without it, you are financially responsible for the rental vehicle’s damage, and here is the trap: the rental company will bill you, the renter, even when the other driver caused the crash, then pursue the at-fault driver’s insurer itself. You front the exposure and wait to be reimbursed, often after you have flown home.

Your credit card’s benefit is usually secondary, covers the car only, and pays out only if you declined the counter waiver, were the named renter, and paid the entire rental on that card, so confirm your specific card’s current benefits guide. If the rental company later adds a charge for loss of use, the days its car sits in the shop, that has its own rules and is worth disputing rather than paying on demand, especially in Hawaii where repair parts ship from the mainland and cars sit out of service for weeks. Our guide to disputing a rental car damage claim in Hawaii covers the loss-of-use fight and the inflated-invoice tactics in detail. Note too that driving where the rental agreement prohibits, such as certain unpaved roads, voids the waiver entirely and leaves you liable even for a crash that was not your fault.

If the other driver is uninsured or drives off

Roughly one in nine Hawaii drivers carries no insurance, so being hit by an uninsured local, or by someone who drives away, is a real scenario rather than a rare one. Your position is better than it feels in the moment. Your medical is still covered, because PIP pays your injuries regardless of who was at fault and regardless of whether the other driver can be found. The rental car’s damage is covered by the waiver if you bought it, or by your collision coverage, though you may owe a deductible of a thousand dollars or more if you are relying on the rental’s own protection rather than a zero-deductible waiver.

What is missing in this scenario is compensation for your injuries beyond PIP, and that is what uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage exists for. It is not part of Hawaii’s minimum and it is not included in a standard rental package, so you have it only if you carry it on your own auto policy back home. If you do, it is your fallback here. Report a hit-and-run to police promptly, because a police report is usually required to make an uninsured-motorist claim work.

Driving on a foreign or mainland license

A valid mainland license is fine in Hawaii, and a foreign license is generally valid for up to a year after you enter the United States, with an International Driving Permit or a certified English translation needed if your license is not in the Roman alphabet. Your license status does not change how Hawaii’s no-fault system treats your injuries, but it does shape your coverage. A visitor from outside the United States almost certainly has no US auto policy to fall back on, which means the counter waiver, the supplemental liability insurance, and any coverage from a travel policy are the only protection, and declining them leaves a real gap. If that is you, buying the counter coverage is usually the safer choice, and our guide to travel insurance for a Hawaii trip explains where a travel policy fits.

Whether you can fly home before the claim is settled

Yes. Nothing in Hawaii law requires you to stay in the state while a claim is resolved, and you generally have about two years to bring an injury claim, so your flight home is not your deadline. Your PIP coverage travels with you: you can continue treatment on the mainland and submit the bills to the Hawaii insurer, and you should keep treating consistently, because gaps in care weaken a claim. On the property side, Hawaii law provides that a rental company cannot require you to pay for damage until the cost and your liability are agreed between you or determined by law, so a repair invoice that lands weeks after you get home is a bill to dispute through the process, not one you must pay on demand to close things out before you leave.

Before you fly, lock down what you will need: the police report number, the rental company’s incident or claim number, your photos, the other driver’s and witnesses’ details, and an open PIP claim. One honest caveat: the company can still send invoices and route an unpaid balance to collections while the matter is disputed, so dispute in writing and do not simply ignore it. If any of your belongings were stolen in a break-in rather than a crash, that is a separate claim with its own rules.

Frequently asked questions

Who pays for a rental car accident in Hawaii?

It splits in two. Your medical bills are paid first by the rental car’s no-fault Personal Injury Protection, up to at least $10,000, no matter who caused the crash. The damage to the cars is paid based on fault, through the rental damage waiver, your own collision coverage or credit card for the rental car, and the at-fault driver’s liability insurance for the other car and any injuries beyond PIP.

Is Hawaii a no-fault state for a rental car accident?

Yes, for injuries. Hawaii’s no-fault system means your own medical costs are paid by Personal Injury Protection regardless of fault. It is not no-fault for vehicle or property damage, which stays fault-based, and it does not stop you suing the at-fault driver once your injuries cross the legal threshold.

Which insurance pays first for my injuries after a rental car crash in Hawaii?

The Personal Injury Protection on the rental car pays first, regardless of fault, up to at least the $10,000 statutory minimum, covering you and your passengers as occupants. After that is exhausted, or once you cross the tort threshold, the at-fault driver’s bodily-injury liability coverage or your own uninsured-motorist coverage comes into play. File the PIP claim promptly, because it does not open automatically.

Can I sue the at-fault driver after a rental car accident in Hawaii?

Only once you cross Hawaii’s threshold. Under section 431:10C-306, you can step outside no-fault and sue if your injury benefits incurred or accrued reach $5,000, or the injury involves death, significant permanent loss of use of a body part or function, or permanent serious disfigurement. Below that threshold there is no injury lawsuit to bring, though you can always pursue the at-fault driver for vehicle and property damage.

Does my mainland auto insurance cover me in a Hawaii rental car?

Often, but do not assume it. A mainland policy is usually primary for liability and, if you carry collision at home, that collision often extends to the rental. If you own no car, carry liability only, or live outside the US, there may be nothing to extend, and how your policy coordinates with Hawaii’s no-fault PIP varies by insurer. Confirm the specifics with your own insurer before you travel.

Does my credit card cover a rental car accident in Hawaii?

A card’s rental benefit is usually secondary and covers damage to the rental car only, not your medical bills, your liability to others, or your belongings. It pays out only if you declined the counter waiver, were the named renter, and paid the whole rental on that card. Some premium cards offer primary coverage. Check your specific card’s benefits guide, and know the claim has a tight filing deadline.

What happens if I declined the CDW and crashed the rental car?

You are financially responsible for the rental car’s damage, and the company will bill you even if the other driver caused the crash, then pursue that driver’s insurer itself. Your credit card is your backstop for the car if you met its conditions, and your own collision coverage may apply subject to a deductible. Get the itemized repair estimate in writing and do not accept a lump-sum damage fee.

What if the other driver is uninsured or it was a hit-and-run?

Your medical is still covered by PIP regardless of fault, and the rental car’s damage is covered by the waiver or your collision, though possibly with a deductible. For your injuries beyond PIP, you rely on your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage, which is optional and not included in a rental package, so you have it only if you carry it at home. Report a hit-and-run to police promptly, since that report is usually needed for the claim.

Do I need to file a police report after a rental car accident in Hawaii?

You must report the crash to police immediately if there is any injury, a death, or total property damage that looks like $3,000 or more, under section 291C-16. Most two-car collisions meet that damage threshold. Get the report number and the responding department at the scene, because how you obtain a copy later differs by island.

Can I fly home before the rental car claim is resolved?

Yes. No law requires you to stay, and you generally have about two years to bring an injury claim. Your PIP coverage pays for treatment you continue on the mainland, and Hawaii law bars the rental company from forcing you to pay for damage until the cost and your liability are agreed or determined by law. Lock down the police report, the rental claim number, your photos, and an open PIP claim before you leave, and dispute any later invoice in writing.

What if I was partly at fault for the accident?

Hawaii uses modified comparative negligence. You can still recover from the other driver as long as your share of fault is not greater than theirs, meaning up to and including 50 percent, with your award reduced by your percentage. You recover nothing only if you are 51 percent or more at fault. Being partly at fault never affects your own PIP medical coverage, which pays regardless of blame.

How long do I have to file a claim after a car accident in Hawaii?

Generally about two years for a personal-injury claim, which is why flying home does not forfeit your rights. Property-damage claims and no-fault benefit claims run on their own timelines, so do not treat two years as a universal deadline, and confirm the limits that apply to your situation with a Hawaii attorney if the stakes are significant.

Related rental car guides in Hawaii

A crash on vacation feels like it ends the trip, but in Hawaii your medical care is covered from the first dollar and the paperwork can follow you home. Handle the scene calmly, keep everything in writing, and get back to the beach. Our island guides cover getting around each island, including the roads where a little extra caution pays off.