By Jay Wasserman
South Florida runs on rideshare. Between the airports, the cruise terminals, the arenas, and a hospitality economy where a large share of workers do not drive to a shift they finish at 2 a.m., Uber and Lyft vehicles are a constant presence on I-95, the Palmetto, and every arterial in Broward and Palm Beach County. When one of them is in a crash, the injured person — passenger, other driver, cyclist, or pedestrian — walks into a claim that looks like an ordinary auto case and is not one.
The difference is not the driving. It is the insurance. Florida regulates Uber and Lyft under Fla. Stat. § 627.748, the transportation network company statute, and that statute divides a rideshare driver’s day into phases. Which phase the driver was in at the moment of impact can be the difference between $1 million in available coverage and $50,000 — or, in one common scenario, no commercial coverage at all. Nothing else about the case matters as much, and the answer is written in app data that nobody preserves unless someone asks for it.
The three phases
Florida’s TNC statute requires a rideshare driver, or the company on the driver’s behalf, to carry primary automobile coverage that recognizes the vehicle is being used to transport riders for compensation. What that coverage has to be depends entirely on what the driver was doing.
Phase 0 — the app is off. The driver is running errands, driving the kids, or heading home. This is a private passenger vehicle in every legal sense. Only the driver’s personal auto policy applies, with whatever bodily injury limits that policy carries — which in Florida is often none, because the state does not require bodily injury liability coverage at all.
Phase 1 — logged on, waiting for a ride request. The driver is available on the network but has not accepted a trip. The statute requires primary liability coverage of at least $50,000 for death and bodily injury per person, $100,000 per incident, and $25,000 for property damage. In practice, Uber and Lyft carry contingent coverage at these limits that applies when the driver’s personal policy does not.
Phase 2 and 3 — a ride has been accepted. From the moment the driver accepts a request, through the drive to the pickup, the ride itself, and the drop-off, the statute requires primary liability coverage of at least $1 million for death, bodily injury, and property damage. Both major platforms carry $1 million liability policies for this window.
The gap between Phase 1 and Phase 2 is a factor of twenty, and it can turn on a single tap of a screen seconds before impact. That is why the phase question is the first thing an experienced attorney investigates and the first thing a rideshare insurer tries to characterize.
The coverage riders are almost never told about
There is a second requirement inside the statute that gets far less attention than the $1 million liability figure and, in serious cases, is often worth more.
While a driver is engaged in a prearranged ride, the required coverage must also include personal injury protection benefits meeting the minimum amounts required of a limousine under Florida’s no-fault law, and uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage as specified in Fla. Stat. § 627.727.
Read that again, because it changes the analysis in the most common serious-injury scenario of all: the rideshare vehicle is not at fault. A passenger in an Uber that is broadsided by an uninsured driver running a red light is not limited to whatever that driver carries. The rideshare policy’s UM coverage stands behind the ride. Given how many Florida drivers carry no bodily injury coverage whatsoever, this is frequently the only meaningful source of recovery in the case — and it is routinely missed, because the passenger reasonably assumes the rideshare insurance is irrelevant when the rideshare driver did nothing wrong.
Our guide to uninsured and underinsured motorist claims in Florida explains how UM claims are proved, why written consent must be obtained before settling with the at-fault driver, and what first-party bad faith under Fla. Stat. § 624.155 requires.
PIP, the 14-day rule, and the threshold still apply
The commercial coverage does not displace Florida’s no-fault system. Every rideshare injury claim still runs through it.
Personal injury protection pays 80 percent of reasonable and necessary medical expenses and 60 percent of lost wages, up to $10,000 — but only where an emergency medical condition is diagnosed by a qualifying provider. Without that finding, benefits stop at $2,500. And under Fla. Stat. § 627.736, initial care must be received within 14 days of the crash or PIP benefits are lost entirely.
For a passenger, PIP generally comes from their own auto policy if they own a Florida-registered vehicle, then from a resident relative’s policy, and only then from coverage on the vehicle they occupied. A tourist or a passenger with no household auto policy usually looks to the rideshare vehicle’s coverage. The order matters less than the deadline: the 14-day window runs from the date of the crash regardless of which policy ultimately pays, and someone who flew home to another state two days later is the person most likely to miss it.
The permanent injury threshold applies too. Under Fla. Stat. § 627.737(2), a person entitled to PIP benefits can recover noneconomic damages — pain, suffering, loss of the ability to work or live normally — only by proving significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function, permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability, significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement, or death. A $1 million liability policy sitting behind the ride is worth nothing on the noneconomic side if the medical record never establishes permanency. The record that does establish it is built in the first months of treatment, not at mediation. The same rules, from inside an ordinary vehicle, are covered in our guide to Florida car accident claims.
If you drive for Uber or Lyft, your own policy may not cover you
Drivers are the group most exposed by this statute, and most of them do not know it.
Section 627.748 expressly permits a personal auto insurer to exclude all coverage under the policy for any loss occurring while the insured is logged on to a rideshare network or providing a prearranged ride. That exclusion is not limited to liability. It can reach uninsured motorist, medical payments, comprehensive, collision, and PIP. Most standard Florida personal auto policies contain exactly such an exclusion, and the statute does not require the insurer to use any particular wording or even to reference the statute to make it effective.
The practical result is a driver whose own car is destroyed in a Phase 1 crash caused by an uninsured driver, whose personal policy denies collision and UM because the app was on, and who discovers that the platform’s contingent Phase 1 coverage was never designed to make them whole. The fix is a rideshare endorsement — the statute expressly allows insurers to provide primary or excess coverage by endorsement — purchased before the crash, not after. Any Florida driver who works either platform should confirm in writing what their personal policy does and does not do while the app is running.
Suing Uber or Lyft itself is harder than it looks
Injured people naturally want to bring the claim against the company whose name is on the windshield placard. Florida law makes that difficult, and a recent appellate decision has made it harder still.
Section 627.748 provides that a rideshare driver is an independent contractor and not an employee of the platform where four conditions are met: the company does not unilaterally prescribe the hours the driver must be logged on, does not prohibit the driver from using other rideshare networks, does not restrict the driver from other work, and has a written agreement confirming the arrangement. Because the standard driver agreements are drafted to satisfy all four, the ordinary route to holding a company responsible for its driver — vicarious liability, respondeat superior, agency — is generally closed.
In Abner v. Lyft Florida, Inc., No. 3D24-0479 (Fla. 3d DCA Oct. 22, 2025), the Third District applied the statute for the first time at the appellate level and affirmed summary judgment for Lyft on both vicarious liability and negligent hiring. The court held the four statutory conditions were satisfied — the driver agreement restricted the driver only while actively providing rides — and rejected the negligent hiring theory because Lyft had run the background and driving-history checks the statute requires, and the driver’s prior citations did not meet the statute’s disqualifying criteria.
The statute sets those criteria: a platform may not authorize a driver with more than three moving violations in the prior three years, or a conviction within the past five years for a felony, DUI, reckless driving, hit and run, or fleeing law enforcement, with the background check repeated every three years. After Abner, compliance with those requirements is close to a complete answer to a negligent hiring claim in Florida.
None of this leaves an injured person without a remedy — the $1 million policy exists precisely because the driver is a contractor rather than an employee. It does mean the claim should be built around the coverage and the driver’s negligence rather than around a theory of corporate liability that Florida law has largely foreclosed. A direct corporate claim survives only where the platform’s own conduct is independently negligent and outside what the statute addresses, which is a narrow and fact-specific inquiry.
Proving which phase applied
Everything above turns on a fact controlled entirely by a private company’s servers. Establishing it is the investigation.
The statute gives you a starting point: a rideshare driver must disclose, on request, to anyone directly involved in the crash, to their representative, to the automobile insurers, and to investigating law enforcement, whether the driver was logged on to the network or engaged in a prearranged ride at the time. Asking the question at the scene, and noting the answer, is worth more than any reconstruction done later.
The corroborating evidence has a short shelf life and has to be requested deliberately:
- Trip and status records from the platform — the log-on time, the request acceptance timestamp, the assigned trip, and the GPS breadcrumbs — which come from the company, not from the driver.
- The driver’s phone, which shows the app state and, critically, whether the driver was interacting with the screen when the crash occurred.
- The passenger’s own trip receipt and app history, which is the one piece of this record the injured person may already possess. Screenshot it before it scrolls out of the app.
- Dashcam footage, which many rideshare drivers run and which is typically overwritten in days.
- Commercial and municipal surveillance video along the corridor, most of which recycles in 7 to 30 days.
- Event data recorder downloads from the vehicles, which become unavailable once a car is repaired or salvaged.
A preservation letter sent to the platform, the driver, and both insurers in the first weeks is what keeps this record intact. It is also what prevents a Phase 2 crash from being defended, months later, as a Phase 1 crash.
Comparative fault, damages, and the clock
Two rules from Florida’s 2023 tort reforms shape every rideshare case. Under Fla. Stat. § 768.81, a plaintiff found more than 50 percent at fault recovers nothing, which is why a rideshare insurer’s early theory of the crash matters even where liability looks obvious. And under Fla. Stat. § 768.0427, evidence of past medical expenses is limited to amounts actually paid rather than amounts billed, with specific disclosure requirements for treatment provided under a letter of protection — a rule that shapes how care should be arranged from the first month.
Negligence claims arising from crashes on or after March 24, 2023 must be filed within two years under Fla. Stat. § 95.11. A UM claim against the rideshare policy is a contract claim with its own, longer deadline, but it is practically dependent on the liability case being developed on the shorter one. Where the crash is fatal, the claim belongs to the estate’s personal representative under Florida’s Wrongful Death Act — see our guides to wrongful death claims in Florida and to Florida’s personal injury deadlines.
Frequently asked questions
I was a passenger in an Uber that got hit by another car. Whose insurance pays? Both, in sequence. The at-fault driver’s liability coverage pays first, and if it is nonexistent or insufficient, the rideshare policy’s uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage applies because the vehicle was on a prearranged ride. Your own PIP, or a resident relative’s, typically covers the first medical bills. Do not settle with the at-fault driver’s insurer before the UM carrier consents in writing.
The Uber driver caused the crash and I was in the other car. What can I recover? That depends on the phase. If a ride had been accepted, $1 million in liability coverage applies. If the driver was logged on but waiting, the statutory floor is $50,000 per person and $100,000 per incident. If the app was off, you are limited to the driver’s personal policy and your own UM coverage. Establishing the phase is the first order of business.
Can I sue Uber or Lyft directly? Usually not on a theory that the driver’s negligence is the company’s responsibility. Florida’s TNC statute classifies these drivers as independent contractors where four conditions are met, and the Third District confirmed in Abner v. Lyft Florida in 2025 that this bars vicarious liability and, where the statutory background checks were performed, negligent hiring claims as well. The commercial policy required by the same statute is normally where the recovery comes from.
I drive for Uber part time. Does my own insurance cover me? Often not while the app is on. Florida law lets personal auto insurers exclude every coverage in the policy — liability, UM, PIP, collision, comprehensive, medical payments — for losses occurring while a driver is logged on or carrying a passenger. Ask your insurer for a rideshare endorsement in writing, and do it before you need it.
How do I prove the driver had accepted a ride? Through the platform’s own records: log-on times, trip acceptance timestamps, and GPS data. Florida law also requires the driver to tell you, on request, whether they were logged on or on a prearranged ride at the time of the crash. Ask at the scene, and preserve your own trip receipt if you were the passenger.
I was walking when a rideshare vehicle hit me. Is my claim different? The phase analysis is the same, and so is the coverage that results. What changes is which PIP policy pays first and how fault is analyzed under Florida’s pedestrian statutes — covered in our guide to pedestrian and bicycle accidents in Florida.
I was visiting Florida and got hurt in a Lyft. Does Florida law still apply? Generally yes for a crash on Florida roads. Because you likely have no Florida household PIP policy, coverage on the vehicle you occupied usually becomes the source of no-fault benefits — and the 14-day treatment deadline still runs, which is the single most common way an out-of-state passenger’s claim is damaged before it starts.
Talk to a Florida rideshare accident attorney
Rideshare cases are won or lost on facts that live on someone else’s servers and expire on someone else’s schedule: a trip timestamp, a dashcam loop, a 14-day treatment window, a permanency opinion that either exists in the chart or does not. KWBR’s auto accident and personal injury practices handle Uber, Lyft, and commercial passenger-vehicle crashes throughout South Florida, including wrongful death claims. If you were injured as a rideshare passenger, as a driver on the platform, or by a rideshare vehicle, contact us while the record still exists.
This article is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice. Statutes, policy language, and insurance coverage vary with the facts, and every case turns on its own circumstances; consult a qualified Florida attorney about your situation.