You usually have 2 years from the crash date to file an injury lawsuit in Hawaii. Yes, you can get your own doctor even if the insurer sent you to its doctor. The better question is whether that insurance exam is being used to cut off your no-fault benefits or to undervalue your injury claim.

After a Kaneohe rear-end crash on Kamehameha Highway or an evacuation-route wreck during flash-flood season, the insurance doctor is usually doing an IME or records review for the company. That doctor is not your treating physician. Hawaii's no-fault law requires PIP coverage, and most policies provide at least $10,000 in medical and rehabilitative benefits under HRS Chapter 431:10C.

You can keep treating with your own doctor, urgent care, specialist, or physical therapist and send those records to the insurer. If the company says treatment is no longer necessary because of its doctor, ask for the denial in writing and ask which report they relied on.

What you should do next:

• Get a copy of the IME report and every denial letter.
• Tell your own doctor exactly how the crash happened and what symptoms got worse afterward.
• Keep records of missed work, prescriptions, therapy, and imaging.
• Do not sign forms you cannot read.
• If there was a police response on Oahu, get the Honolulu Police Department report number.

In Hawaii, whether you can move beyond no-fault and make a bodily injury claim often turns on the injury threshold, including more than $5,000 in medical-rehabilitative expenses or another qualifying injury. A strong treating-doctor opinion can matter a lot there.

If the adjuster is pushing English paperwork you do not understand, slow it down. A fast signature can hurt more than a delayed one.