The question every client asks first is the one no honest lawyer can answer on the first call. Compensation for a Queensland car accident is not an average, a table or a percentage of anything. It is the sum of separate amounts, each proved on evidence, and the largest of them depend on how the injury affects your work for the rest of your life. What can be explained is the method, and the method is what tells you whether an insurer's offer is fair.

Key points

  • Compensation is built from separate heads: general damages, past and future lost income, treatment, care and equipment, less refunds.
  • General damages are fixed by the injury scale value (0–100) in the Civil Liability Regulation; economic loss depends on your earnings and the injury's effect on them.
  • The same injury can be worth several times more for one person than another, because of age, occupation and how the injury affects their work.

The pieces

General damages. The injury itself. Queensland assigns every injury an injury scale value from 0 to 100 using the tables in the Civil Liability Regulation, and the dollar amount for each value is fixed by law (see below). A whiplash that resolves within months sits near the bottom. A serious brain or spinal injury sits near the top. There is no negotiation about the dollar figure once the ISV is agreed; the argument is about the ISV, which turns on the medical evidence.

Past economic loss. Wages, shifts and contract income you have already lost, with interest and superannuation.

Future economic loss. Usually the largest amount for anyone whose injury affects their work. It is the income you are likely to lose from now to retirement because the injury limits what you can do: fewer hours, lighter duties, a different career, earlier retirement. A 30-year-old tradesperson who can no longer lift has a very large future loss; a 64-year-old office worker with the same injury may have little. The Act caps the weekly earnings that can be used at three times average weekly earnings.

Treatment. Past expenses, and the future treatment your doctors say you will need.

Care. Paid help at cost, and unpaid help from family once it exceeds six hours a week for six months.

Less refunds. Medicare, Centrelink, a health fund or WorkCover, for what they have paid.

How general damages are calculated in Queensland

General damages compensate for the injury itself: pain and suffering, and the loss of enjoyment of life. Under section 61 of the Civil Liability Act 2003, the injury is given an injury scale value (ISV) on a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 means the injury is not severe enough to justify any general damages and 100 is an injury of the gravest kind. CTP claims are assessed the same way.

The rules for working out the ISV are in the Civil Liability Regulation 2025, which replaced the Civil Liability Regulation 2014 from 1 September 2025. The Regulation:

  • lists injuries by body part and severity, each with a range of ISVs;
  • sets out matters the court may or must consider in placing an injury within its range, which turn on the medical evidence;
  • deals with multiple injuries: the starting point is the range for the dominant injury, and the ISV may be assessed higher to reflect the other injuries, but should rarely be more than 25 per cent higher than the maximum ISV for the dominant injury;
  • provides the Psychiatric Impairment Rating Scale (PIRS) for assessing mental disorders, and the requirements a medical expert must follow in giving a PIRS rating.

The ISV is then converted into a dollar amount under section 62 of the Act, using the amounts in the Civil Liability Indexation Notice. Those amounts are indexed each year, and the amounts that apply depend on when the injury happened, so the same ISV can be worth a different amount for two different dates of injury.

There is no reliable online CTP calculator, because each claim depends on these factors: where the injury sits within its range on the medical evidence, how several injuries interact, the date of the injury, and, for the larger heads of damage, the person's own earnings, age and prognosis.

Why there is no average

Two people with an identical fracture: one is a 28-year-old carpenter who cannot go back on the tools, the other a 60-year-old accountant back at her desk in a month. The general damages are similar. The future economic loss is different by an order of magnitude. Any "average payout" figure blends those two people and describes neither. Online calculators do the same thing with more decimal places.

What decides your number

Your age, your occupation and earnings, whether the injury is permanent, and what the specialist reports say about your capacity for work. None of that is known until the injury has stabilised, which is why a claim settled early is settled low, and why an offer that arrives before the specialist has reported is an offer on the insurer's terms.

Reading an offer

Ask for it broken into heads. If future economic loss is nominal and the medical evidence says the injury is permanent, or if future treatment is missing and your surgeon has recommended it, the offer is low. That comparison is the whole of what a lawyer does at the conference, and it is why the first consultation, which is free, is worth having before you accept anything.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a car accident compensation calculator for Queensland? Not one that is reliable. General damages are fixed by the injury scale value, but the largest head, future economic loss, depends on your own earnings, age and prognosis, which no calculator has.

What is the maximum compensation for a car accident in Queensland? There is no fixed maximum for the total. General damages are capped at the top of the injury scale, and the weekly earnings used for economic loss are capped at three times average weekly earnings.

Is car accident compensation taxable in Australia? Lump sum compensation for personal injury is not assessable income. Interest on the lump sum after settlement, and income earned by investing it, is.

Sources

  • Civil Liability Act 2003 (Qld), ss 54 (limit on economic loss), 59 (gratuitous services), 61–62 (general damages and injury scale values) — legislation.qld.gov.au
  • Civil Liability Regulation 2025 (Qld), s 5 and schedules 2 to 5 (rules and ranges for injury scale values; replaced the Civil Liability Regulation 2014 from 1 September 2025) — legislation.qld.gov.au
  • Civil Liability Indexation Notice, made each year under s 62 of the Civil Liability Act 2003 (dollar amounts for each injury scale value) — legislation.qld.gov.au
  • Motor Accident Insurance Commission, General damages — maic.qld.gov.au
  • Motor Accident Insurance Commission, Can I claim? (what compensation covers) — maic.qld.gov.au
  • Australian Taxation Office, Compensation and damages payments — ato.gov.au