MVA settlement calculator.

What moves an MVA settlement number — at intake, before the retainer

Motor vehicle accident cases are the most predictable category in plaintiff personal injury. The severity gradient is well-defined, medical histories are well-documented, and jurisdiction-level verdict data is dense. That predictability is the reason the MVA fold of the Predict model holds 92% MdAPE accuracy against held-out cases — and the reason the confidence bands on MVA predictions run tight (±8–14% at the moderate severity tier).

Six inputs do most of the work at the intake call:

• Jurisdiction. The single largest factor. A clear-liability low-speed rear-end with moderate cervical strain and $24K in medical specials settles for a median of $485K in Texas · Harris County, $305K in California · Alameda, and $112K in Florida · Miami-Dade. Same fact pattern, different number — because no-fault economics and jury composition vary by an order of magnitude across states.
• Liability clarity. Rear-impact crashes with admitted fault represent the cleanest MVA category — clear liability multiplies predicted value against a 50/50 comparative case at the same severity. Probable liability lands in the middle. The model does not pretend a contested case is worth the same as an admitted one.
• Injury severity. Soft-tissue cases (no treatment past 4 weeks) settle at small multiples of medical specials. Moderate cervical or lumbar strain — the most common MVA injury — settles at 3–4× multiples in tort states. Severe injuries (fracture, surgery, ongoing therapy) move to 6–7× multiples. Catastrophic injuries are jurisdiction-dependent and often bracket-bound by policy limits.
• Medical specials. The anchor. The "multiple of meds" heuristic is a reasonable first approximation but the multiplier varies by 30–50% across jurisdictions at the same severity tier — which is why a static multiplier-based spreadsheet misses on real cases.
• Property damage. A weak signal on settlement value but a useful sanity check on severity claims. A $200 PD claim with $40K in chiropractic specials reads as low-credibility to a jury — the model down-weights cases where PD and meds diverge sharply.
• Plaintiff-counsel reputation. Not an intake-form field, but a real factor — known plaintiff verdicts move higher in dense markets. The full Predict model uses verdict history at the firm level once a case is loaded into the platform.

No-fault states change the math

Twelve states operate no-fault auto regimes: Florida, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (choice), Massachusetts, Kentucky (choice), North Dakota, Hawaii, Kansas, Minnesota, and Utah. In a no-fault state, the MVA plaintiff is restricted to medical and economic damages under PIP/no-fault thresholds unless the injury crosses a serious-injury threshold defined by state statute.

The consequence for MVA case valuation is dramatic. Soft-tissue and moderate cases in no-fault states settle for fractions of what the same case would return in a tort state. A $24K-specials moderate-severity rear-end settles for a median of $78K in New York · Bronx (no-fault) versus $485K in Texas · Harris (tort). The Predict model is jurisdiction-aware on the no-fault distinction — it does not produce a tort-state number for a no-fault-state case.

The full per-state breakdown — median MVA settlement, comparative-fault rule, no-fault status, comparable verdict density — lives on the state-by-state calculator hub.

Why the bands are tight on MVA

Confidence bands on MVA predictions run notably tighter than on premises liability or other case types. Three reasons:

• Verdict density. The training set contains 198,000 MVA outcomes — versus 72,000 for premises liability. More data, tighter folds, narrower bands.
• Standardized case anatomy. MVA cases share a common structural skeleton — liability, severity, medical specials, property damage, jurisdiction. The features are well-defined and well-populated. Premises cases vary more in the underlying fact pattern (slip-and-fall versus retail premises versus commercial property) and the model accordingly carries more uncertainty.
• Comparative-fault stability. MVA liability is binary more often than premises liability — clear or contested, but rarely the long-tail of comparative-fault exposure that drives the bands wide in PL.

The Accurately Predicting MVA Cases post documents the per-jurisdiction MdAPE calibration in detail — the methodology behind the held-out test results that produced the 92% accuracy figure.

What the calculator does not do

The free calculator on this page runs the demo model — the same architecture as the full Predict model, but with fewer secondary signals. It produces a real number on real inputs, which is the point. What it does not do:

• It does not cite the comparable-verdict cohort for your specific case. The full model surfaces 5–10 cited comps from the training set; the demo model returns the headline number with the density indicator only.
• It does not factor in plaintiff-counsel reputation, judge composition, or per-county settlement medians. Those signals require a case loaded into the platform.
• It does not produce a demand letter. The full Predict subscription generates a demand-letter-ready valuation block as a downstream artifact of the prediction.

Those features run inside the 14-day free trial. No credit card at signup.