If you were the passenger, you can open a claim of your own. It is a separate file in your name with its own number, and it is the one your treatment gets paid out of. It does not depend on who was at fault, and the driver does not manage it for you.
Here is how that works, and what to do in the first week.
Can a passenger make their own claim?
Yes. Every province and territory in Canada requires auto insurance to include a set of benefits for people hurt in a collision, and being a passenger does not put you outside that. The benefits go by different names depending on where you live. Accident benefits in some provinces, Section B in others, Part 7 in British Columbia. What they do is the same in each case, which is to pay for treatment and to replace some of the income you lose while you are unable to work.
The file that gets opened belongs to you. It carries your name and its own claim number, and it exists whether or not the driver ever mentions you to their insurer.
Whose insurance does a passenger claim through?
This is the part that changes depending on where you live, and it is worth getting right rather than guessing at.
In some provinces you claim through your own auto policy first, even though you were not driving and it was not your car. In others you claim through the policy on the vehicle you were riding in. Quebec runs its injury benefits through a public plan and British Columbia runs its through a public insurer, so the route in those two provinces looks different again. If you do not hold a policy of your own, there is usually a path through a household member's policy or through a fund that exists for exactly that situation.
You do not have to work this out alone. The Companion Guide for your province sets out who to contact where you live, along with the forms and the deadlines that apply there.
Does it matter who caused the collision?
For the benefits that pay for your treatment, no. Those are available regardless of fault, and that is the reason they exist. Somebody has to be able to get to a physiotherapist while the question of blame is still being worked through, and that question can take a very long time to settle.
Fault does matter for a different kind of claim, one for losses that go beyond what the benefits cover. That runs on its own rules in every province and some places limit it sharply. It is a conversation to have with a lawyer rather than something to settle from an article.
What if the driver was a friend or a family member?
This stops more passengers than anything technical does.
You were in someone's car. They feel terrible about what happened, or you feel awkward bringing it up, or both at once. So the claim never gets opened, and the treatment either comes out of your own pocket or does not happen at all.
What is worth knowing is that your treatment is paid from an insurance policy, and covering an injured occupant is precisely what that policy is there for. It is not money out of your friend's pocket.
If you are worried about what a claim means for them, ask that question directly, either of them or of the insurer. Answering it by not claiming leaves you paying for treatment you are entitled to have covered, and that cost lands on you alone.
What should I do in the first week?
Three things, in this order.
Get assessed, even if you feel alright. Symptoms after a collision often arrive a day or two later rather than at the roadside, and a first appointment creates the starting point everything else is measured from. If your scan comes back clear and you are still sore, that is common with soft tissue injuries. Our piece on proving a soft tissue injury without a scan explains why.
Report the collision. Reporting deadlines are set separately by each province and territory and some of them are short. Your provincial page has the one that applies to you.
Start writing things down. This is the part nobody hands you, and it is the part that fills in the days when nobody else is recording anything.
| What to record | Why it helps |
|---|---|
| Where you were sitting in the vehicle | It changes the mechanism of injury and belongs in the first note |
| The date and time of the collision | Anchors every symptom that follows to a starting point |
| What hurts and how much, on the pain scale of one to ten | Gives your clinician something they can track from week to week |
| Every appointment you go to and the ones you have to cancel | Shows treatment running continuously rather than in pieces |
| Days of work or study you miss | Turns the injury into something another person can measure |
What if the accident was a while ago?
Start today.
Every province and territory sets time limits on reporting a collision and on applying for benefits, and those limits are different everywhere. Some are measured in days rather than months. If time has already passed, that is a reason to check the limit where you live now rather than a reason to leave it. Our page on the first 72 hours sets out what needs to happen early on, and it is worth reading even if you are past that window.
Whatever you can remember today is worth getting onto paper, because it will be clearer tonight than it will be next month. A record that begins today is still a dated record.
What your care team does with it
Your medical team will ask you about all of this. When the pain began, which side it was on, how many days of work you have missed. Those are hard questions to answer well from memory, particularly once a few weeks have gone by.
Having the answers written down means your physiotherapist or your doctor is working from what actually happened rather than a best guess on the day, and the treatment you get is better for it. Those same notes are the ones your claim is built from later.
Hurt Square publishes recovery guides for you to document your injury and recovery. The National MVA Recovery Guide works anywhere in Canada, and the Companion Guide for your province adds the deadlines, forms and contacts that apply where you live. The two are built to be used together.
Last verified: August 2026
