Anyone who has crawled along Route 22 at rush hour knows how fast a routine drive through Union Township can turn into a collision. Between Morris Avenue, Galloping Hill Road, and the Parkway, crashes here can lead to injuries, medical bills, and confusing insurance calls.
A car crash in Union Township sets several rules in motion at once, from the no-fault coverage that pays the first medical bills to the comparative-fault rule that can reduce or bar a recovery.
The Law Offices of Sander Budanitsky, L.L.C. represents injured drivers and passengers across Union Township and Union County. You can contact us at (908) 241-3445 or (908) 241-4595, and we’ll explain how those rules apply to your case. Your first consultation is free.
The minutes immediately after a crash can affect the outcome of the claim. If you can, call the police so an official report is created, get treatment even when an injury seems minor, and photograph the vehicles, the scene, and any visible injuries; all of these preserve proof that disappears quickly. Exchange insurance and contact information and collect the names of any witnesses to complete the record.
What a driver does next matters too. Reporting the crash to one's own insurer is required, but giving a recorded statement to the other driver's insurer before understanding the claim can give the other side material to use later.
Early medical care treats the injury and creates the record that ties it to the crash, which is why a delay in treatment is one of the most common reasons a claim is weakened.
New Jersey is a no-fault auto state, and that fact reshapes a car accident claim. After a crash, an injured driver's own Personal Injury Protection coverage pays medical bills and certain other losses regardless of who caused the collision, under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4.
On a Standard policy, PIP medical expense benefits are $250,000 per person per accident unless the insured selected a lower option in writing. The options are $150,000, $75,000, $50,000, or $15,000, and deductibles of $500 to $2,500 may apply.
Even where a lower limit was selected, benefits are paid up to $250,000 for permanent or significant brain injury, spinal cord injury, or disfigurement, or for treatment at a trauma center immediately following the accident. A Basic Policy, by contrast, carries only $15,000 in PIP with the same $250,000 exception.
No-fault is meant to get medical bills paid quickly without waiting to resolve who was at fault. It does not, however, end the matter, because the at-fault driver can still be held responsible for losses beyond what PIP covers, including pain and suffering where the threshold permits.
Yes. If another driver caused the crash, New Jersey law lets you recover medical costs and lost income through your own no-fault coverage, and pain and suffering as well if your injury meets the verbal threshold or you choose full tort. The details decide the claim.
When buying coverage, a New Jersey driver chooses between the Limitation on Lawsuit option, known as the verbal threshold, and the No Limitation option, often called full tort. The threshold choice carries a lower premium but restricts the right to recover noneconomic damages.
Under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-8, a driver bound by the threshold can recover for pain and suffering only if the injury falls into one of six categories. Those categories are death, dismemberment, significant disfigurement or scarring, a displaced fracture, loss of a fetus, or a permanent injury proven by objective medical evidence.
The New Jersey Supreme Court has held that these six categories are the entire test, with no additional requirement that the injury have a serious effect on the person's life. Whether an injury clears the threshold is therefore a medical and statutory question, and it is one of the most commonly litigated issues in New Jersey auto cases.
If the crash happened during a prearranged rideshare trip, the limitation on lawsuit option cannot be asserted by the transportation network company or its driver, and cannot be asserted against anyone in that action who is not receiving PIP benefits.
Coverage during a prearranged ride is at least $1.5 million in combined liability and $1.5 million in UM/UIM; while the driver is logged on but not on a ride, at least $50,000/$100,000 bodily injury and $25,000 property damage.
A claim against a public entity, including the New Jersey Turnpike Authority for the Garden State Parkway, NJDOT for Route 22 and Route 82, or the Township for a local road, carries its own limits. No pain and suffering damages are available against a public entity unless there is permanent loss of a bodily function, permanent disfigurement, or dismemberment, and medical treatment expenses exceed $3,600.
A plaintiff subject to the threshold must serve a physician's certification, based on objective clinical evidence, within 60 days following the date of the answer to the complaint. Missing that deadline can end the pain and suffering claim regardless of how serious the injury is.
The tort option a driver selected at the time of the crash controls what can be recovered, and it cannot be changed after the fact. A driver who chose full tort kept the unrestricted right to sue for pain and suffering, with no threshold to clear. A driver who chose the verbal threshold accepted a lower premium in exchange for the six-category limit on noneconomic damages.
Whether the threshold applies turns on the injured person's own insurance, not on the vehicle they were in. A pedestrian, cyclist, or motorcyclist who owns a New Jersey-registered automobile with the limitation on lawsuit option, or who is a resident relative on such a policy, is bound by the threshold even though no PIP is payable to them. Someone with no automobile policy and no household policy is not subject to it.
A driver bound by the limitation on lawsuit option stays bound even when the at-fault driver was drunk. New Jersey's appellate courts have held that an intoxicated defendant may still assert the verbal threshold because N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4.5(b) restricts what an intoxicated plaintiff can recover and says nothing about a defendant's threshold defense.
The threshold does not, however, apply to a prearranged rideshare trip or to cases where the defendant carried no PIP-bearing New Jersey policy.
Route 22 through Union Township is unlike an ordinary highway: a wide commercial arterial whose median is a series of U-turn ramps and jughandles rather than a simple divider, lined with big-box stores, restaurants, and drive-thrus that send drivers turning, slowing, and merging across multiple lanes.
The corridor is widely known as one of the busiest and most crash-prone in the county, and its constant turning movements create conflict points along its entire length.
Picture a driver struck while completing a jughandle turn, or rear-ended while slowing to enter a retail lot. The at-fault driver's insurer may suggest the injured driver turned carelessly or stopped short, an attempt to assign comparative fault and reduce the recovery. Answering that requires the physical evidence, any video from the businesses lining the corridor, the vehicle damage patterns, and witness accounts.
A seriously injured driver can be treated at the Overlook Medical Center Union Campus emergency department on Galloping Hill Road, with severe trauma taken to University Hospital in Newark. This evidence is location-specific and perishable, which is why a prompt local investigation, before the busy corridor erases the proof, matters so much in a Route 22 crash.
New Jersey divides fault under a modified comparative negligence rule, the 51 percent bar codified at N.J.S.A. 2A:15-5.1. An injured driver recovers as long as their share of fault is not greater than the other parties' combined fault, meaning fifty percent or less, and the recovery is reduced by that share. At fifty-one percent, recovery is barred entirely.
This rule is why fault allocation is so often the real battleground in a car accident case. A driver found twenty percent at fault on a claim worth eighty thousand dollars still recovers sixty-four thousand.
The defense has a clear incentive to push the injured driver's share of fault toward and past the fifty percent line, and the physical evidence, the damage patterns, and the accounts of independent witnesses are what hold that effort in check.
The dollars available after a crash depend on the policies involved. As of January 1, 2026, New Jersey raised the standard minimum to $35,000 per person and $70,000 per accident for bodily injury, with $25,000 in property-damage coverage. Even so, many drivers carry only the minimum, which can be far less than the costs of a serious injury.
This is where uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage becomes critical. Underinsured motorist coverage applies only when the at-fault driver's liability limits are lower than your own UIM limits, not simply lower than your damages.
Because UM/UIM cannot exceed your own liability limits, a driver carrying the 2026 minimum of $35,000/$70,000 has no UIM claim against an at-fault driver who also carries $35,000/$70,000. Before accepting the at-fault driver's policy limits, you must give your UIM carrier written notice and the chance to protect its subrogation rights, or the UIM claim can be lost.
In a serious Union Township crash, this coverage can mean the difference between a full and a partial recovery, which is why every applicable policy, the at-fault driver's and the injured person's own, should be identified early in the claim.
Most Union Township crashes fall into a handful of recurring patterns shaped by the township's road network. On Route 22, the jughandle and U-turn design concentrates left-turn-equivalent and merging conflicts, since drivers must cross lanes to reverse direction or enter a business, and rear-end crashes are common as traffic slows for the retail entrances.
The Garden State Parkway interchanges and the Interstate 78 merges, where large trucks travel, add high-speed merging and lane-change collisions.
Each pattern carries its own evidence signature. A rear-end collision usually places responsibility on the following driver, who is expected to leave room to stop, while a jughandle or merge crash turns on which driver had the right of way.
Side-impact crashes at the local intersections along Morris Avenue and Stuyvesant Avenue in Union Center, and sideswipes during lane changes on the arterials, each leave characteristic marks. Reading that evidence signature is part of establishing how a particular Union Township crash happened and which driver was responsible.
In 2026, Union Township recorded 8 traffic deaths. Countywide, Union County had 29 fatal crashes, according to the preliminary data compiled by the New Jersey State Police. These figures highlight the very real danger people face on roads every day.
Because fault allocation often decides the value of a car accident case, it helps to see how the 51 percent bar works on real numbers. Suppose a driver is injured in a jughandle collision on Route 22 and the case is worth one hundred thousand dollars in total damages.
If a jury assigns the other driver seventy percent of the fault and the injured driver thirty percent, the injured driver recovers seventy thousand dollars, the full value reduced by their own share.
Now shift the allocation. If the injured driver were found fifty-one percent at fault, the recovery would drop to nothing, because New Jersey bars recovery once a plaintiff's share exceeds fifty percent.
That cliff is why the defense fights so hard to raise the injured driver's percentage, and why a few points of fault can be worth tens of thousands of dollars. The objective evidence, the damage patterns, and independent witnesses are what hold the allocation where the facts put it rather than where the insurer would prefer.
The injuries in a car crash follow from the forces involved. Whiplash and other soft-tissue injuries are common even in the lower-speed impacts typical of stop-and-go retail traffic, while higher-speed crashes on the Parkway and Interstate 78 produce fractures, head and spinal injuries, and internal harm.
Some injuries that clear the verbal threshold, such as a displaced fracture or a permanent injury, are exactly the ones that change a person's life and work. This matters to the claim because the medical picture drives both the right to recover noneconomic damages and the case's value.
A consistent, well-documented course of treatment ties the injury to the crash and establishes its severity, whereas a gap in treatment gives the insurer grounds to argue that the harm was minor or unrelated. An accurate and complete medical record is central to valuing a car accident claim and to meeting the verbal threshold where it applies.
Beyond the injury claim, a crash usually leaves a vehicle damaged, and New Jersey law addresses that loss separately. The at-fault driver's property-damage liability coverage, with a minimum of $25,000 on a standard policy, pays to repair or replace the vehicle. When the cost to repair exceeds the vehicle's value, the insurer treats it as a total loss and pays the actual cash value instead.
Those minimums apply to a Standard policy. A driver who bought a Basic Policy carries only $5,000 in property damage liability and may carry no bodily injury liability at all, since the $10,000 bodily injury coverage on a Basic Policy is optional. Identifying which policy type the at-fault driver held is an early step.
Even a well-repaired vehicle can be worth less afterward simply because it has an accident history, a loss sometimes pursued as a diminished-value claim. Rental costs while a vehicle is being repaired, and the value of damaged personal property in the car, can also be part of the property side of a claim.
Keeping the property-damage claim distinct from the injury claim and documenting both thoroughly helps ensure that neither is overlooked in the resolution.
A New Jersey car accident claim must be filed within two years of the crash under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2, and a court will normally dismiss a claim filed late. The two-year period is firm in most ordinary crashes, and waiting until it approaches only makes the perishable evidence along a corridor like Route 22 harder to gather.
Certain situations change the timing.
If the at-fault vehicle was public, such as an NJ Transit bus, a municipal vehicle, or a New Jersey Turnpike Authority vehicle on the Garden State Parkway, a written notice of claim must be presented within 90 days of accrual under N.J.S.A. 59:8-8. If that date is missed, N.J.S.A. 59:8-9 lets a Superior Court judge permit late notice within one year of accrual on a showing of extraordinary circumstances and no substantial prejudice to the public entity.
The suit itself must still be filed within two years. A child's minority does not extend the 90-day notice period; a parent or guardian must present it or move for leave to file late. Minority does toll the two-year period for ordinary claims against private defendants under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-21.
A passenger injured in a crash is rarely at fault, which removes the comparative-fault argument that complicates a driver's claim, and a passenger may have claims against more than one driver, including the driver of the car they were riding in.
Which policy pays a passenger's initial medical benefits depends on the no-fault priority rules, making it important to identify all responsible parties and sources of coverage early in the claim.
Multiple-vehicle and chain-reaction crashes, common in the congested approaches to the Route 22 interchanges and on Interstate 78, raise the added question of how fault is divided among several drivers.
New Jersey's allocation rule lets an injured person recover the full award from any defendant found sixty percent or more at fault, while a defendant below that threshold pays only its share. Sorting out the sequence of impacts and the resulting allocation, from the physical evidence and the accounts of those involved, is what makes such a multiple-vehicle claim payable.
The strength of a Route 22 car accident claim is built in the days immediately after the crash, when the evidence is still intact. The corridor's heavy traffic clears a scene quickly, the vehicles are repaired or scrapped within weeks, and the surveillance footage from the many businesses lining the road is typically overwritten within days. Each of these can be decisive in a crash where the other driver disputes fault.
Prompt medical care matters just as much for recovery and because a documented, consistent course of treatment ties the injury to the crash and counters the insurer's eventual argument that the harm was minor or unrelated. Acting early preserves the foundation that lets a claim be valued and resolved on its real merits.
Because so much of the proof along a busy commercial corridor is perishable, the difference between a claim that can be firmly established and one that becomes a contest of conflicting stories can come down to how quickly the evidence was secured.
Yes, because under New Jersey no-fault, your own PIP coverage pays the initial medical bills regardless of fault. The at-fault driver can still be pursued for losses beyond what PIP covers.
It depends on your tort option and your injury. A driver bound by the verbal threshold can recover for pain and suffering only if the injury fits one of six statutory categories.
Generally two years from the date of the crash under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2. A claim involving a public vehicle requires written notice within ninety days.
Your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage can respond when the at-fault driver has no insurance or too little. Reviewing every available policy is an important early step.
Not before the full extent of your injury is known. An early offer often undervalues a claim, and accepting it can bar recovery for harm that appears later.
Our firm handles car accident claims by first reviewing how the crash happened and how your injuries and insurance coverage fit within New Jersey's no-fault system. Then, we work to secure the compensation you are entitled to, whether through the insurance company or, when necessary, in court.
We can help file a Union Township car accident lawsuit in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Union County, at the Union County Courthouse, 2 Broad Street, Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Reviewing your options early costs nothing, and because the two-year deadline is already running, there is little reason to wait to learn where you stand. You can contact our firm to talk through the crash and how New Jersey's no-fault rules apply to your situation.
The Law Offices of Sander Budanitsky, L.L.C. represents injured drivers and passengers throughout Union Township and Union County, with staff who speak Spanish, Russian, and other languages spoken across the community. Attorney Sander Budanitsky has represented injured New Jersey clients since 1996 and is admitted in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Last reviewed: September 2026. This page was reviewed by Sander Budanitsky, licensed in New Jersey since 1996. It is provided for general information and is not legal advice. Consult a licensed New Jersey attorney for guidance specific to your situation.
The Law Offices of Sander Budanitsky, L.L.C. welcomes calls from potential clients and from attorneys looking to refer or co-counsel a matter. Whether it is an injury claim, a civil dispute, a criminal charge, or an immigration question, the first conversation is free and there is no obligation to hire the firm afterward.
Call the Roselle, New Jersey office at (908) 241-3445 or the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania office at (215) 545-2300. You can also send the details through the contact form and someone from the office will get back to you. Calls are answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
