Recovering After a Car Accident in New Brunswick: A Complete Guide
If you've been hurt in a car accident in New Brunswick, you're carrying two things at once: an injury that needs to heal, and a claims process no one warned you about. New Brunswick gives you real options after a crash. Options only help if you know you have them, and if you can back them up.
This guide walks you through the whole journey: the first hours, how coverage works here, your medical care, the deadlines that quietly decide a claim and how to keep it all organized, in plain language, at your own pace. It isn't legal or medical advice. It's the map we wish someone had handed us on day one.
One number decides a great deal in New Brunswick. If your injury meets the regulation's definition of a minor personal injury, damages for pain and suffering are capped. For accidents that happen in 2026 that cap is $9,926.59. The amount is fixed by the calendar year of your accident rather than the year your claim resolves, so an older accident carries an older and lower figure.
How does Section B work alongside the right to sue?
New Brunswick is a tort province, which means two things run in parallel. Section B accident benefits come from an auto policy regardless of who caused the crash. The right to pursue the at-fault driver covers losses beyond those benefits.
Section B is not something you shop for. Every New Brunswick policy carries the same standard wording, the form known as N.B.P.F. No. 1, which means you cannot forfeit it and you cannot buy more of it. It provides:
- Up to $50,000 per person for necessary medical, surgical, dental, chiropractic, ambulance, hospital and professional nursing care, limited to expenses in the four years following the accident
- Weekly income replacement of 80 per cent of your gross weekly income to a maximum of $250 a week, for up to 104 weeks, and beyond that if you remain unable to work at any job you are reasonably suited to by education, training or experience
- $100 a week for up to 52 weeks for an unpaid principal housekeeper, payable only where the injury leaves them completely unable to do any of their household duties
- Funeral expenses up to $2,500, and death benefits of $50,000 for a head of household, $25,000 for their spouse or common law partner and $5,000 for each dependant
To qualify for the weekly payment you must have been employed at the date of the accident, and the inability to perform the essential duties of your job has to begin within 30 days of the crash and last at least seven days.
If you were working when the crash happened, check this carefully. The policy excludes a person who is entitled to benefits under a workers compensation law or plan and who has not exercised their option to recover damages under that law. Find out which system covers you before you count on either one.
What to do after a workplace injury in Canada covers that side.
On the tort side, New Brunswick's cap reaches a closed list. A minor personal injury means a contusion, an abrasion, a laceration, a sprain, a strain or a whiplash associated disorder, including any clinically associated sequelae, where the injury does not result in serious impairment or permanent serious disfigurement.
That list is worth reading twice, because it is wider than Nova Scotia's, which reaches only sprains, strains and whiplash. In New Brunswick a bruise, a scrape or a cut can fall inside the cap. What sits outside it is anything not on the list at all, a fracture for example, along with any listed injury that does cause serious impairment or permanent serious disfigurement.
The definition of a whiplash associated disorder is narrow in your favour. It does not include a whiplash injury that shows objective, demonstrable, definable and clinically relevant neurological signs, and it does not include one involving a fracture in or dislocation of the spine.
An insurer describing your injury as minor is stating a position rather than announcing a finding. Whether the definition fits is settled on evidence about how the injury has actually affected you.
Sources: FCNB, 2026 minor personal injury amount · Injury Regulation, N.B. Reg. 2003-20 · FCNB, automobile insurance · New Brunswick MVA Companion Guide
What should you do in the first hours and days?
Adrenaline hides a lot right after a crash, so one of the most important things you can do is see a doctor even if you feel okay, since concussions and whiplash often don't show up for a day or two.
Early on:
- Give written notice of your claim within 30 days. The policy sets 30 days from the date of the accident, or as soon after that as is practicable.
- Furnish your proof of claim within 90 days. Same clock, and it runs from the accident rather than from the day you first felt worse.
- Work out whose policy you claim against. As a passenger it is the policy of the vehicle you were in. On foot or on a bike it is the policy of the vehicle that struck you.
- Tell your doctor the injury came from a collision and ask for the cause and nature to be recorded. Your insurer can require a physician's certificate on the cause, the nature and how long the disability lasted.
- Start writing things down while it's fresh: what happened, who you spoke to, how you're feeling.
- Keep everything: photos, names and every letter or form.
Hit and run? The first deadline is 24 hours. Where the owner or driver cannot be identified, the uninsured automobile coverage requires the accident to be reported within 24 hours, or as soon after that as is practicable, to a peace officer, a judicial officer or an administrator of motor vehicle laws. Written notice follows within 30 days and proof of claim within 90.
The First 72 Hours After a Car Accident · What to do in the first 72 hours · Why injuries appear days later
Your injuries and your medical care
Recovery is rarely a straight line, and the process asks you to remember it perfectly. You can't; no one can. See your doctor, go to your appointments and follow your treatment plan. Then, alongside the medical system, keep your own dated account: your symptoms day to day, your good days and hard days, your medications and how they affect you. Where a cap turns on whether an injury caused serious impairment, that dated account is the evidence.
Pain and Symptom Tracker · free starter edition · How to document your injuries · New Brunswick MVA Companion Guide
The deadlines that decide your claim
New Brunswick runs on more than one clock. Section B has its own early deadlines, written notice within 30 days and proof of claim within 90 days, both counted from the date of the accident rather than from the day your symptoms got your attention. A hit and run adds a 24 hour reporting step ahead of both. Separate limitation windows apply to legal action, and those are the ones people most often discover too late. We keep the full, current list in plain language on a page of its own, worth reading early.
What is an Independent Medical Examination?
At some point you may be asked to attend an assessment by a doctor you've never met, sometimes hours from home. It's easy to feel unheard in a short appointment. You can prepare, and walking in with your own dated record of how you've actually been doing helps you speak to your recovery clearly.
In New Brunswick the policy gives your insurer the right to have you examined as often as it reasonably requires while your claim is open. There is no exemption for a set treatment path of the kind Nova Scotia has, so preparing well matters here.
What happens at an Independent Medical Examination · What to bring to a medical appointment
What if your benefits are denied or disputed?
Disagreements happen, and a decision you don't agree with isn't the end of the road. A Section B dispute is a disagreement with your own insurer rather than with a public body, so New Brunswick has no injury appeal tribunal of the kind found in the public-insurer provinces. That makes two things matter more here: acting inside the time limits, and having a record that speaks for itself. This is also a point where many people speak with a personal injury lawyer. Hurt Square isn't a substitute for legal advice, and a good lawyer works better with an organized client.
Injury claim denied in Canada, what to do next · New Brunswick Section B Claim Deadlines
Returning to work
Going back to work after an injury is rarely all-or-nothing. Many people return gradually, with restrictions, and some lose income along the way. Tracking your return, including your hours, limitations and lost earnings, protects both your recovery and your claim, because the weekly benefit turns on a substantial inability to perform the essential duties of your own job, and at the 104 week mark the test changes to whether you can do any job you are reasonably suited to.
Hurt as a passenger, pedestrian or cyclist?
You do not have to have been behind the wheel to be hurt by a vehicle, and you do not need a policy of your own to claim Section B benefits. Someone riding in an insured vehicle claims under that vehicle's policy. A person struck in Canada by an insured vehicle can claim under the policy of the vehicle that struck them, whether they were walking, cycling or standing at the roadside.
Passengers, pedestrians and cyclists injured in a New Brunswick crash have rights too, and your recovery deserves the same care and documentation as anyone else's.
How to keep all of this in one place
Everything above runs on records, and in New Brunswick a great deal rests on two words. Whether your injury caused serious impairment decides whether your pain and suffering is capped at $9,926.59 or not capped at all, and that is settled on evidence of how your life has actually changed.
That's what Hurt Square is built for, and the two guides do different jobs. The National MVA Recovery Guide holds the daily record: your symptoms, your appointments, your calls and your costs, the things no one can reconstruct from memory a year later. The New Brunswick MVA Companion Guide holds the province's system: your Section B benefits, the minor injury rule, your forms, your deadlines and your rights, in plain language. With only the record you have no map. With only the map you have nothing to put on it. Together they're the complete New Brunswick system for $49, an instant download you can start filling in today.
Get the complete New Brunswick system for $49 →En français : le Guide d'accompagnement au rétablissement, édition du Nouveau-Brunswick couvre le chapitre B, le plafond des blessures mineures et les échéances, en français. Le site et la caisse passent en français.
Hurt at work rather than on the road? The New Brunswick Workplace Injury Companion Guide covers the WorkSafeNB route instead.
What else is worth reading?
These go deeper on the parts of recovery people ask about most.
- What to do after a car accident in Canada
- The first 72 hours after a car accident
- Why car accident injuries sometimes appear days later
- How to document injuries after a car accident
- How long does recovery after a car accident take
- Emotional recovery after an injury
More in Car Accident Recovery
You don't have to carry this alone
Being hurt is hard enough without a claims process on top of it. Take it one appointment, one form, one day at a time, and keep your own record as you go, so that when it matters most, your voice is the one that's clear.
Last verified July 2026 against the New Brunswick Financial and Consumer Services Commission and the Injury Regulation under the Insurance Act. If you find something here that is out of date or wrong, write to Recovery@hurtsquare.ca and we will correct it and say what changed.
Hurt Square is a documentation companion, not legal, medical or insurance advice. For decisions about your treatment or your claim, speak with your doctor or a lawyer. The details in this guide are general, and current information can change. Always confirm your coverage, deadlines and benefits with your insurer or the appropriate official body.