Car Accident Lawyers in Ann Arbor, MI

Ann Arbor is home to more than 123,000 residents and sits at the center of a daily traffic pattern unlike almost anywhere else in Michigan: the University of Michigan and its health system pull in tens of thousands of students, staff, and patients every weekday, and seven home football Saturdays a year add roughly 100,000 more visitors funneling through the same arterial grid. A car accident lawyer working this city sees how that volume concentrates at a handful of specific locations.

A Rebuilt Roundabout Still Tops the Crash List

The city converted State Road at West Ellsworth Road into a roundabout specifically to cut down on crashes, yet Michigan Auto Law’s review of State Police data put the intersection at roughly 85 crashes in 2024 and even higher in the following year’s count, enough to land it among the state’s top 20 most crash-prone intersections two years in a row. The injury total stayed comparatively low at around 5 — evidence that slower, angled roundabout impacts tend to be less severe even when the sheer volume of collisions stays high.

Huron Parkway and Washtenaw: Fewer Crashes, More Injuries

A different pattern shows up a few miles east, where Huron Parkway meets Washtenaw Avenue. That intersection recorded only about 35 crashes in the same 2024 dataset but 15 injuries — a far higher injury rate per collision than the Ellsworth roundabout. Signalized, higher-speed approaches like this one tend to produce angle and T-bone impacts rather than the low-speed sideswipes typical of a roundabout, and those impacts are more likely to cause the kind of serious injury that matters under Michigan’s auto tort threshold.

Campus Traffic and Game-Day Surges

Beyond those two intersections, Ann Arbor’s baseline traffic load is unusual for a city its size. Michigan Medicine alone employs tens of thousands across its hospital campuses, the university’s main and north campuses generate constant shuttle and pedestrian crossings, and State Street and Plymouth Road carry heavy stop-and-go volume for most of the academic year. On home football Saturdays, the roads around Michigan Stadium see crash patterns shift toward low-speed parking-lot and gridlock collisions, a different claims profile than the higher-speed crashes typical of a weekday commute.

No-Fault PIP Comes First, and It Runs on a Short Clock

Because Michigan is a no-fault insurance state, an Ann Arbor driver hurt in any of these crashes generally files first with their own insurer for Personal Injury Protection benefits, which cover medical bills and a share of lost wages regardless of fault. That claim runs on a separate and much shorter deadline than the lawsuit clock: generally one year from the date of the accident under MCL 500.3145, a detail that trips up injured drivers who assume they have the full three years to act.

A lawsuit against the at-fault driver for pain and suffering only becomes available once the injury clears Michigan’s “serious impairment of body function” threshold under MCL 500.3135 — the same standard that helps explain why the Huron Parkway and Washtenaw crashes, fewer in number but harsher in impact, tend to generate more of these claims than the Ellsworth roundabout does.

The 51% Rule and Where a Claim Gets Filed

• Negligence lawsuits must generally be filed within three years, under MCL 600.5805(2); the PIP benefits clock runs separately and much shorter, under MCL 500.3145.
• Michigan’s 51% rule under MCL 600.2959 bars recovery once a claimant is found half or more at fault — a frequent dispute in roundabout merge crashes and left-turn collisions near campus.
• Larger car accident lawsuits arising in Ann Arbor are generally filed in the 22nd Circuit Court, Washtenaw County, 101 E. Huron Street; smaller civil matters go through the 15th District Court at the Justice Center, 301 E. Huron Street, which covers the City of Ann Arbor specifically.
• Minimum auto liability coverage is $50,000 per person / $100,000 per accident, though most policies default to $250,000/$500,000.

Choosing an Ann Arbor Car Accident Lawyer

The Lawyer Atlas is a directory, not a law firm, and nothing on this page is legal advice for your specific situation. Given how differently the Ellsworth roundabout and the Huron Parkway corridor behave, ask any attorney you’re considering how they’ve handled serious-impairment disputes arising from signalized intersection crashes, not just the lower-injury roundabout collisions that dominate the raw crash counts. Free consultations and contingency fees are standard across the city, so an early opinion on your claim rarely costs anything.

See the Michigan overview above for the statewide no-fault and comparative fault rules that apply to every claim filed out of Ann Arbor, or check the Detroit and Lansing pages for how those same rules play out elsewhere in the state.