Can You Sue If a Police Car or Ambulance Hits You in Michigan?

Short answer: Yes. In Michigan a city, county, township or state agency is liable for "bodily injury and property damage resulting from the negligent operation" of a motor vehicle it owns, under the motor-vehicle exception to governmental immunity in MCL 691.1405, and a private ambulance company answers for its driver like any other business. Responding to an emergency gives the driver limited privileges, not a pass: the Vehicle Code requires slowing as necessary for safe operation before going through a red light, and the speed exemption does not protect "a reckless disregard of the safety of others." Three things change the picture: a police chase in which the police car never touched the car that hit you (the agency is usually not liable), a claim against the officer personally (which takes gross negligence), and a crash while you were the patient inside the ambulance (where an emergency medical services immunity statute applies). Deadlines differ too, and the shortest, a six-month verified notice for claims against the state, ends cases that would otherwise be strong.

Can you sue the city or county when its police car causes a crash?

Public bodies are generally immune from tort claims while performing a governmental function (MCL 691.1407(1)). Driving is one of the exceptions the Legislature wrote into the statute. MCL 691.1405 reads, in full: "Governmental agencies shall be liable for bodily injury and property damage resulting from the negligent operation by any officer, agent, or employee of the governmental agency, of a motor vehicle of which the governmental agency is owner." A police cruiser, a fire truck, a city-owned ambulance, a DDOT bus and a county road commission truck are all motor vehicles the agency owns. The question in the case is the ordinary one: was the vehicle driven with reasonable care under the circumstances.

The damages are real damages. In Hannay v. Department of Transportation, 497 Mich 45 (2014), the Michigan Supreme Court held that a plaintiff who meets the no-fault threshold in MCL 500.3135 (section explorer) may recover both economic damages, such as work loss, and noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering, from a governmental entity under the motor-vehicle exception. Death, serious impairment of body function and permanent serious disfigurement meet that threshold.

Does responding to an emergency change the rules of the road?

Partly. The Vehicle Code applies to government drivers (MCL 257.603(1)), and subsection (2) gives the driver of an authorized emergency vehicle limited privileges "when responding to an emergency call." Under subsection (3) the driver may proceed past a red signal or stop sign "but only after slowing down as may be necessary for safe operation," and may exceed the prima facie speed limits "so long as he or she does not endanger life or property." Under subsection (4) those exemptions apply only when the driver sounds an audible signal as reasonably necessary and the vehicle shows a flashing, oscillating or rotating red or blue light visible from 500 feet; subsection (5) lets a police vehicle keep the exemptions without a siren on an emergency run in which silence is required. The speed provision, MCL 257.632, adds that the exemption does not protect the driver "from the consequences of a reckless disregard of the safety of others."

So the facts that decide these cases are specific: were the lights and siren on, how fast was the vehicle going, did the driver slow before entering the intersection, what could the other driver see and hear, and what did dispatch send the officer to. The Vehicle Code also requires other drivers to yield to an approaching emergency vehicle using its lights and siren, and the defense raises that duty in nearly every case, which is why the video matters more than anyone's memory.

What about a police chase?

A pursuit is the hard case, and Michigan's rule is settled. In Robinson v. City of Detroit, 462 Mich 439 (2000), fleeing cars crashed into innocent people during police pursuits. The Michigan Supreme Court held that the motor-vehicle exception is not met where the pursuing police vehicle "did not hit the fleeing car or otherwise physically force it off the road or into another vehicle or object," that "the decision to pursue" is not "operation" of the vehicle, and that the officers were not "the proximate cause" of the injuries, which was the reckless driving of the people fleeing. If the police car itself collides with you, that is operation of the government's own vehicle and the exception applies. If the car being chased hits you and the police car never made contact, the claim against the agency generally fails, and the claim is against the fleeing driver, whose insurance is often minimal or absent, which makes your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage the practical source of recovery.

Can the officer or the driver be sued personally?

Rarely. Under MCL 691.1407(2), a government employee acting within the scope of authority is immune unless the conduct "amount[s] to gross negligence that is the proximate cause of the injury or damage." Gross negligence means "conduct so reckless as to demonstrate a substantial lack of concern for whether an injury results" (MCL 691.1407(8)(a)). Robinson read "the proximate cause" to mean "the one most immediate, efficient, and direct cause preceding an injury," and Ray v. Swager, 501 Mich 52 (2017) explained how courts weigh everyone's conduct to decide which cause that is. The practical result: ordinary negligence by an officer supports a claim against the city under the motor-vehicle exception, not a claim against the officer. The agency claim and the officer claim can come out differently in the same case, as an unpublished 2026 Court of Appeals decision, Gamarra v. Oakland County, illustrates: a deputy who drove the wrong way on an emergency escort was held personally immune, while the ruling for the county under the motor-vehicle exception was reversed (opinion, not binding precedent).

Who is responsible when an ambulance crashes?

It depends on who owns the ambulance and where you were.

A private ambulance company, and you were in another car or on foot. The company is a business with a commercial auto policy, and it answers for its driver the way any employer does; MCL 600.2956 keeps employer vicarious liability intact. The emergency-vehicle privileges above apply to the driver, with the same conditions.

A private ambulance company, and you were the patient inside. Michigan's emergency medical services act carries its own immunity. MCL 333.20965(1) provides that unless an act or omission is the result of "gross negligence or willful misconduct," the acts or omissions of emergency medical technicians and the life support agency that employs them "do not impose liability in the treatment of a patient." Whether driving the patient to the hospital is "treatment" is unsettled. In Griffin v. Swartz Ambulance Service, a patient was hurt when the ambulance carrying him collided with another vehicle; the trial court and a divided, unpublished Court of Appeals panel applied the immunity, and in September 2020 the Michigan Supreme Court declined to take the question, with three justices writing or joining statements that they would have heard it (order). A patient hurt in an ambulance crash should expect the company to argue that the gross-negligence standard applies, and should expect that argument to be contested.

A government-run ambulance, fire department rig or rescue vehicle. The motor-vehicle exception in MCL 691.1405 governs the claim against the city or county, and the individual crew member is immune short of gross negligence under MCL 691.1407(2).

Who pays the medical bills in the meantime?

Michigan is a no-fault state, so the medical bills, wage loss and replacement services come from personal protection insurance (PIP) under your own household policy first, whoever caused the crash (MCL 500.3114(1); explorer). Government ownership of the other vehicle does not change that. Written notice of the PIP claim is due within one year under MCL 500.3145. The claim against the agency or the company is for pain and suffering and for losses above the PIP limits, and it only opens when the injury meets the MCL 500.3135 threshold.

Fault is compared. Under MCL 500.3135(2)(b) a person more than 50 percent at fault recovers no pain-and-suffering damages, and below that line damages are reduced by the person's share. A traffic citation issued to anyone is not evidence in the civil case: MCL 257.731 keeps Vehicle Code convictions and civil infraction determinations out of a civil trial.

Evidence that decides these cases, and how fast it goes

• In-car and body-worn camera video, and the vehicle's location and speed data, kept under agency records schedules rather than one statewide rule. A written preservation request in the first days matters.
• Dispatch records and radio audio, which show what the unit was sent to and whether it was an emergency run.
• The agency's pursuit policy and any after-action review, for a chase.
• Traffic signal timing, nearby business cameras and intersection cameras, which may be overwritten within days or weeks.
• The crash reconstruction and the event data recorders in the vehicles, which can be lost when a vehicle is repaired or scrapped.
• For an ambulance, the run report, the crew's licensure and the company's dispatch and maintenance records. Michigan courts may sanction a party that failed to preserve evidence before suit, and a jury may infer that missing evidence was unfavorable (Brenner v. Kolk, 226 Mich App 149 (1997)), but an inference does not replace the video.

Michigan deadlines that apply

The six-month notice is the trap. The Michigan Supreme Court held in Christie v. Wayne State University (May 2, 2023) that any claim against the state must comply with the Court of Claims notice statute wherever it is filed, and the statute requires a signature and verification before an officer authorized to administer oaths. A crash with a state trooper's vehicle is a claim against the state. Our Michigan injury deadline calculator runs these dates.

What to do in the first week

1. Get the police report number and the name of the agency or ambulance company, and note whether lights and siren were on when you first noticed the vehicle.
2. Send written preservation demands to the agency and any company involved, naming video, location data, dispatch audio and the run or incident report.
3. Report the crash to your own auto insurer and start the PIP claim; that clock runs against you regardless of fault.
4. Write down the names of witnesses and the businesses at the intersection with cameras.
5. Give no recorded statement to the agency's risk manager or the company's adjuster.
6. If the other vehicle belonged to the state, calendar the six-month verified notice now.

Common questions

A police car ran a red light with no siren and hit me. Can I sue the city? Yes. The motor-vehicle exception covers negligent operation of the city's own vehicle, and the emergency privileges under MCL 257.603 depend on the signal and the light, and on slowing as necessary before entering the intersection.

The car the police were chasing hit me. Who pays? Under Robinson the city is generally not liable when its vehicle never touched the car that hit you. The fleeing driver and that driver's insurer are the liability claim, and your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage is often the real source of recovery.

I was the patient in an ambulance that crashed. Is the company immune? It will say so, under MCL 333.20965(1), and the question of whether driving is treatment is unresolved after Griffin. The standard the company will argue for is gross negligence or willful misconduct. The facts of the driving decide whether that standard is met, and the argument that ordinary negligence applies remains open.

Can I get pain and suffering from the government? Yes, if the injury meets the no-fault threshold. Hannay confirmed that both economic and noneconomic damages are recoverable from a governmental entity under the motor-vehicle exception.

Does a police officer's traffic ticket, or the absence of one, matter? Not in court. MCL 257.731 keeps traffic convictions and infractions out of the civil case either way. The video, the data and the reconstruction are the case.

Talk to a Michigan government vehicle accident lawyer

A free consultation can tell you whether the vehicle was state, county, city or private, which notice deadline applies, whether the facts support a claim against the agency or only the driver, and what evidence must be preserved this week. Those answers come first in every one of these cases.

Call (313) 800-0000 or request a free consultation. There is no fee unless we win. Koussan Law handles Michigan government vehicle, auto accident and catastrophic injury cases from offices in Detroit, Dearborn Heights and Marquette, in English, Spanish and Arabic. Our overview of who pays after a catastrophic commercial vehicle crash in Michigan covers trucks, delivery vans, rideshare and buses.