Bodily Injury Per Accident

Overview

Bodily Injury Per Accident is the aggregate cap on bodily-injury payouts for a single covered auto accident. It is the second figure in the classic split-limits notation (100/300/100, for example) and governs the total pool available to all injured parties from one incident, subject to each claimant's individual per-person cap.

This limit exists because auto accidents often produce multiple victims — a multi-passenger vehicle, a crowded crosswalk, a chain collision. Without a per-accident aggregate, an insurer's exposure on a single crash would be theoretically unbounded as the number of claimants grew.

How It Works

The per-accident limit works as a ceiling that sits above the per-person caps. No matter how many people are injured in a single accident, the insurer's total BI payout for that accident cannot exceed this aggregate.

Example — multiple claimants: A delivery van with 250/500/100 coverage causes a multi-car pileup injuring six people with proven damages totaling $900,000. Each claimant is eligible for up to $250K per person, but the aggregate payout is capped at $500,000 for the accident. Apportionment is typically handled by pro-rata formulas or in settlement negotiations.

Example — few high-severity claims: Same policy, two severe injuries with damages of $400K and $350K. Each claimant is capped at $250K, so the policy pays $250K + $250K = $500K — the per-accident cap is met by just two individual caps.

The per-accident BI limit does not include Property Damage — PD is a separate limit (the third figure in the split). Combining BI + PD exposure means some accidents can draw against three distinct caps in parallel.

Common Configurations

Per-accident limits typically scale at 2x to 3x the per-person cap:

As noted in Bodily Injury Per Person, most commercial insureds carrying $1M contractual requirements satisfy them via CSL rather than split limits.

On the COI / Where it appears on ACORD 25

BI per accident appears in the Automobile Liability row of the ACORD 25, labeled BODILY INJURY (Per accident). It is the third limit in the AL column, sandwiched between BI per person and Property Damage.

If the AL row shows a Combined Single Limit, the BI-per-accident field should be blank or marked "Included." A populated CSL plus a populated BI-per-accident is either an error or an unusual layered structure that warrants review.

Why It Matters for Compliance

• Normalization against CSL requirements: When a contract demands "$1M CSL," Inori compares the per-accident BI limit (plus PD) to $1M. A policy showing 500/1000/500 satisfies $1M CSL in most jurisdictions; 250/500/100 does not.
• Fleet risk triaging: High-exposure vendors (freight, passenger transport, school buses) warrant scrutiny when BI-per-accident is below $2M, regardless of contract minimums.
• Extraction integrity: Inori's bodily_injury_per_accident field is validated as a positive integer; values below BI-per-person (logically impossible) would be flagged for manual review.

Related Concepts

BI per accident is inseparable from Bodily Injury Per Person — the two caps interact on every multi-claimant accident. Together they constitute the liability side of Split Limits, which contrasts with the simpler Combined Single Limit structure. Both apply exclusively to Commercial Auto Liability policies.