Flushing Personal Injury Lawyer

If you were hurt in Flushing — on Main Street, at a Kissena Boulevard crossing, on the Whitestone or the Van Wyck, or inside a building somebody failed to maintain — you can call us today and it costs nothing to ask.

We are a Queens personal injury firm. Our office is on Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill, twenty minutes down Main Street, and we take cases from 11354, 11355 and 11358 every week. We work on contingency, which means you pay nothing unless we win.

Call 718-659-5333. Open 7am to 9pm, Monday to Friday and Sunday. If your injuries make travel difficult, we will come to you.

Where Flushing accidents happen

The city keeps a list of the streets where the most people are killed or seriously hurt, and it calls them Vision Zero priority corridors. In Flushing that list is long: Main Street, Northern Boulevard, Kissena Boulevard, Parsons Boulevard, Union Street, Sanford Avenue, Bowne Street, 162nd Street and 46th Avenue are all on it.

The city also names individual junctions. The priority intersections here include Main Street at Kissena Boulevard, Main Street at Northern Boulevard, Union Street at Northern Boulevard, Parsons Boulevard at Northern Boulevard and again at Sanford Avenue, College Point Boulevard at Maple Avenue, 162nd Street at Sanford Avenue, and the Whitestone Expressway at Linden Place.

Across the three Flushing ZIP codes in 2025 there were 1,487 reported crashes, in which 824 people were injured and two were killed. Of those injured, 244 were on foot and 87 were on a bicycle. Borough-wide the direction of travel is good news — Queens recorded 57 traffic deaths in 2025, down from 74 the year before — but the density of downtown Flushing has not changed.

Then there are the highways. The Van Wyck becomes the Whitestone Expressway at the Flushing River interchange, and the merges either side of that change produce a steady run of rear-end and sideswipe collisions. The Long Island Expressway and the Grand Central Parkway run along the southern edge and carry the same pattern.

Main Street is not an ordinary street

This is the part people from outside Queens do not understand about Flushing, and it explains most of what we see.

New York City’s own transportation department measured pedestrian volumes across the whole city and found that Main Street at Roosevelt Avenue had the third highest pedestrian volume recorded anywhere in New York. On that stretch of Main Street, 21 separate bus routes from three counties operate. More than 35,000 people a day transfer from 19 bus routes onto the 7 train there — the largest volume of bus-to-subway transfers at any station in the city. In the eight-to-nine morning peak alone, roughly 250 buses pass through Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue.

Flushing—Main Street was the ninth busiest subway station in the entire system in 2025, with 14.8 million rides. It is the busiest station anywhere outside Manhattan.

Put a bus every fifteen seconds through the busiest pedestrian crossing in the outer boroughs and the result is not a mystery. It is a place where being knocked down is a normal Tuesday, and where the vehicle involved is very often a bus, a delivery van or a truck rather than a private car — which changes who you are claiming against, and sometimes changes your deadline to 90 days.

What the city found on Kissena Boulevard

Kissena Boulevard deserves its own paragraph because the city studied it recently and published what it found.

Between 2021 and 2025 there were 167 crash victims along Kissena Boulevard. Ten of them were killed or severely injured — enough to put the corridor in the worst ten per cent in Queens. Three were pedestrians, three were on motorised two-wheelers, two were cyclists and two were in vehicles.

One finding from that study is worth holding onto if you were hurt there. More than 60 per cent of the pedestrian injuries happened to people crossing with the signal. They had the walk. If an insurer suggests you must have stepped out, that figure is the answer — on this road, most of the people who were hit were doing exactly what they were told to do.

The claims we handle in Flushing

Most of what comes to us from this neighbourhood falls into a handful of categories.

Car accidents on Northern Boulevard, Main Street, Kissena and Parsons, and on the Whitestone and Van Wyck approaches.

Pedestrian knockdowns in the downtown core, where the crossings are wide, the turning traffic is constant and the sight lines are blocked by buses.

Bus and commercial vehicle collisions. Where an MTA bus or a city vehicle is involved, a notice of claim has to be filed within 90 days rather than three years, and that catches people out constantly.

Slip and fall and premises claims in the shops, malls, restaurants and apartment buildings along Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue — including the multi-level retail buildings downtown, where stairs, escalators and wet tiled floors produce a particular kind of injury.

Construction accidents. Downtown Flushing and Willets Point are being rebuilt — 880 affordable homes are under construction at Willets Point alone — and New York gives construction workers protections most of them do not know they have, including protections that apply regardless of immigration status or whether you were paid off the books.

E-bike, e-scooter and delivery-rider collisions, which have risen everywhere in the city and are concentrated wherever restaurant delivery is dense.

Hit and run cases, where the driver leaves and you are told nothing can be done. Usually something can: your own policy may cover it, and there is a state fund for crashes where the driver is never identified.

If you are not sure which of these describes your situation, that is normal. It is usually the first thing we work out on the call.

Sidewalk falls in Flushing are a special case

Since 2003, New York City has put responsibility for most sidewalks on the owner of the building beside them. There is one exception, and in Flushing it matters: owner-occupied one-, two- and three-family homes used exclusively as residences. For those, the City remains responsible — and a claim against the City has to start with a notice of claim within 90 days, not three years.

Flushing contains both kinds of property within a few blocks of each other. Fall outside a shop on Main Street and the owner is answerable and you have the full three years. Fall outside a two-family house in Auburndale or Broadway-Flushing and you may be facing the City on a 90-day clock instead.

Two questions decide it: whether an owner actually lives in the building, and whether any part of it is commercial. A two-family house with a shop on the ground floor is not exempt, because the law requires the property be used purely as a residence. This is why a sidewalk fall is worth a phone call in the first week rather than the first year.

Where you were treated matters

There is no New York City Health + Hospitals facility in Flushing, and that is good news for anyone hurt here.

NewYork-Presbyterian Queens, at 56-45 Main Street, is a private not-for-profit and a New York State–designated Level I adult trauma centre. Flushing Hospital Medical Center, at 4500 Parsons Boulevard, is also private and not-for-profit, part of the MediSys network. A claim arising from care at either of them follows the ordinary rules and the ordinary timescale.

The nearest public hospitals are NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens on 164th Street in Jamaica and NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst on Broadway. Those are city facilities, and a claim arising from treatment there carries the 90-day notice requirement. So the question is not just what happened to you — it is which ambulance took you where.

Whichever hospital it was, bring the paperwork to your first appointment. Those records usually decide what a claim is worth.

Where your Flushing case will be heard

Most Queens personal injury cases are filed in the Supreme Court, Queens County, Civil Term, at 88-11 Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica. Some civil matters are heard at the court’s Long Island City building at 25-10 Court Square.

Note that 88-11 Sutphin Boulevard is the civil courthouse. The building on Queens Boulevard in Kew Gardens that people usually picture is the criminal court, and your injury case will not be there.

Depositions, motion appearances and compliance conferences all happen locally, which is one of the practical arguments for using a Queens firm rather than one that will be travelling in from Manhattan for every date on the calendar.

What to do after an accident in Flushing

Get medical attention the same day, even if you feel fine. Insurers treat a gap between the accident and the first treatment as evidence that you were not really hurt, and adrenaline hides a great deal.

Call 911 and get a police report. Flushing is covered by the 109th Precinct at 37-05 Union Street. If the police do not attend, file a report yourself.

Photograph everything before anything is moved or cleaned up — the vehicles, the road, the hazard, your injuries, the light, the weather. Put something in the frame for scale.

Take names and numbers from witnesses. On a street as busy as Main Street there will be many, and every one of them will be gone in five minutes.

If a bus was involved, note the route and the bus number. If it was a commercial vehicle, photograph the lettering and the plate.

Do not give a recorded statement to the other driver’s insurer. You are not obliged to, and it is rarely used to help you.

Watch the deadlines. Three years is the general rule for a personal injury claim in New York. Ninety days is the rule where the City, the MTA or a public hospital is involved — and in a neighbourhood with 21 bus routes running down its main street, that is not a rare situation.

You do not need to be a citizen, and you do not need perfect English

Roughly two thirds of the people living in Flushing and Murray Hill were born outside the United States — about 95,700 residents, the largest immigrant community in the city. Some 55,900 came from China and about 9,900 from Korea.

Two things follow that are worth stating plainly, because a lot of people in this neighbourhood do not know them.

New York does not require you to be a citizen or a lawful permanent resident to bring a personal injury claim. Your immigration status is not the other side’s business and it does not decide whether you were owed a duty of care.

And you do not have to conduct your case in English. If you would rather speak Mandarin, Cantonese or Korean, say so on the first call and we will arrange it.

Flushing injury claims — common questions

What does it cost to start?

Nothing. We work on contingency, so we take a percentage only if we recover money for you. If we recover nothing, you owe us nothing.

How long do I have to bring a claim?

Generally three years from the date of the accident in New York, and two and a half years for medical malpractice. But if a city agency, the MTA or a public hospital is involved, a notice of claim has to be filed within 90 days. Call early rather than waiting to see how you heal.

I was hit by an MTA bus on Main Street. Is that different?

Yes, and the difference is the clock. A claim against New York City Transit needs a notice of claim within 90 days and the lawsuit itself within one year and 90 days, which is far shorter than the ordinary three years. Get the route and the bus number if you can, and call quickly.

I had the walk signal and the insurer still says it was my fault.

That is a common tactic and, on these roads, a weak one. The city’s own study of Kissena Boulevard found that more than 60 per cent of pedestrians injured there were crossing with the signal. Camera footage from shops and buses often settles it outright.

I was partly at fault. Is it worth calling?

Yes, and it is worth calling sooner rather than later, because the rule changed in 2026 and it now depends on what kind of accident it was.

In a car accident case, you can still recover if you were up to half at fault, and what you recover is reduced by your share. If you were more than half at fault, you recover nothing for pain and suffering.

In other injury cases – a fall, a construction accident, a dog bite – your share simply reduces what you recover and does not bar the claim.

Either way, the percentage is argued rather than obvious, and it is usually lower than the other side’s insurer first suggests.

The other driver had no insurance. Do I still have a case?

Often, yes. Your own policy may carry uninsured motorist coverage, and where the driver was never identified there is a state fund that exists for exactly that situation. It has its own deadlines, so do not sit on it.

Do I have to come to your office?

No. We can take the details by phone or on WhatsApp, and if your injuries make travel difficult we will come to you. You are welcome to visit — we are on Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill — but nothing requires it.

It’s Time To Win Your Case, Big.

Michael D. Ribowsky and his accident lawyers handle claims for physical and psychological injuries caused by someone else’s negligence. A great deal turns on timing and on detail — what was photographed, when treatment started, who was spoken to and when. Those are the things that decide what a case is worth, and they are decided in the first days rather than at the end.

We take every case seriously and we do what it takes to recover the most the facts will support, which depends on where and how you were injured and what it has cost you. Flushing is one of the busiest corners of Queens and one of the neighbourhoods we hear from most. See how we handle injury claims across Queens.