What is considered to be "serious impairment" in a motor vehicle accident?

Even inability to socialize in any meaningful fashion with friends and former customers or business associates, provided such activity amounted to something more than trivial importance to the claimant, may constitute “serious” impairment. The appropriate analysis should not be based on “arithmetic reckoning”. Substantial interference in the ability to carry on usual function in a pain-free manner, including inability to perform household functions, inability to maintain intimacy with a partner or spouse, inability to enjoy usual family relationships and inability to sleep through the night without interference from pain, will constitute “serious” impairment: see Cadorette v. Cadotte, [1998] O.J. No. 2993 (S.C.J.).

Finally, where usual activity including employment continues in the presence of chronic pain, but substantially interferes with one’s pre-accident combined capacity for work and pleasurable activity, including meaningful and regular socialization and capacity for household chores, this will constitute “serious” impairment: see Frankfurter v. Gibbons, [2003] O.J. No. 762 (S.C.J.). Threshold Analysis for Karen The Lay Evidence