Port Richey Uber & Lyft accident lawyer

You tapped a button, a car arrived, and somewhere between the pickup and your front door, someone ran a light on US-19 or rear-ended you at the SR-54 and Little Road signal. Now you are hurt, the driver is apologizing, and a text from the rideshare company says it is "looking into it." Nobody has told you which insurance company is responsible.

That question has a precise answer under Florida law, and it depends on what the driver's app showed at the second of impact. Conde-Huggins Accident Injury Lawyers handles rideshare injury claims from our office on Ridge Road in Port Richey. Call (240) 421-5511 for a free consultation. There is no attorney's fee unless we win.

Why rideshare crashes in Pasco County are different

Uber and Lyft drivers work the whole county: bar runs along Main Street in New Port Richey, airport trips down the Suncoast Parkway to Tampa, hospital pickups at HCA Florida Bayonet Point, late-night rides home from Wesley Chapel. Between fares, drivers circle high-demand areas waiting for the next ping, a habit the industry calls deadheading. When the request lands, the driver is reading a screen, turning around, and accelerating toward a pickup, often on roads they do not know.

Two things make these cases harder than an ordinary car crash claim:

• Layered insurance. Up to four policies may be involved: the driver's personal auto policy, the rideshare company's commercial policy, the other driver's policy, and your own.
• Evidence you do not control. The trip log, GPS trail and app status that decide which policy applies live on the company's servers. They are not on the crash report.

Our job is to pin down the app status, preserve the trip data before it is overwritten, and put every responsible insurer on notice at the same time.

Which insurance pays after an Uber or Lyft crash in Florida?

Fla. Stat. § 627.748 is Florida's transportation network company (TNC) statute. Subsection (7) sets minimum insurance by "period," meaning what the driver was doing in the app when the crash occurred.

App off: an ordinary car crash claim

If the driver had not logged in, the rideshare company owes nothing. Your claim runs against the driver's personal policy. Because Florida does not require private drivers to carry bodily injury liability coverage, that policy may be nothing but $10,000 in PIP and $10,000 in property damage liability. Your own UM/UIM coverage becomes the main source of recovery.

Logged on and waiting: the thin layer

The driver is available but has not accepted a ride. The statute requires at least $50,000 per person and $100,000 per crash in bodily injury coverage and $25,000 in property damage, plus PIP and uninsured motorist coverage. Many personal auto policies exclude commercial activity, so the driver's own insurer may deny the claim. When that happens, § 627.748(7)(d) requires the TNC's insurer to step in from the first dollar. Insurers in this period routinely argue about whether the driver was really logged on. The app's timestamp decides it.

On the way to a pickup or carrying a passenger: the $1 million layer

From the moment the driver accepts a request until the passenger exits, the law requires at least $1,000,000 in coverage for death, bodily injury and property damage, plus PIP and UM. This is the coverage most passengers assume applies to every rideshare crash. It applies only during a prearranged ride, and the company will check the log to the second.

If you are unsure which period applied, do not guess on a claim form. Call (240) 421-5511 and let us pull the records first.

What PIP means for a rideshare passenger

Florida's no-fault system still applies when you are riding in someone else's car. Under Fla. Stat. § 627.736, personal injury protection pays the first $10,000 of your medical and disability benefits regardless of fault: 80 percent of reasonable medical bills and 60 percent of lost gross income.

Whose PIP? If you own an insured vehicle, or you live with a relative who does, that household policy is first. If you have no household auto policy, the PIP on the rideshare vehicle generally covers you as an occupant.

Three rules trip up passengers every week:

1. The 14-day rule. You must receive initial medical care within 14 days of the crash or PIP medical benefits are lost.
2. The emergency medical condition rule. Unless a physician, physician assistant, dentist or advanced practice registered nurse determines you had an emergency medical condition, PIP medical benefits are capped at $2,500. A chiropractor cannot make that determination.
3. The permanent-injury threshold. To recover pain and suffering from the at-fault driver, Fla. Stat. § 627.737(2) requires a permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability, significant and permanent scarring, significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function, or death.

Getting seen quickly at Morton Plant North Bay, HCA Florida Trinity or Bayonet Point, and then following up with the right kind of provider, is both medical advice and legal strategy.

Who was at fault, and does it matter?

Yes. The policy that pays is the policy of the person who caused the crash, so fault comes first.

• The rideshare driver was negligent if they were reading the app, speeding to a pickup, drowsy after a second job, or stopped in a travel lane to load a passenger.
• The other driver may be at fault if they rear-ended the rideshare car, ran a light, or turned left across its path. Then the other driver's bodily injury coverage is first, and the rideshare UM layer or your own UM may follow.
• Both drivers can share fault. Florida's modified comparative negligence rule in Fla. Stat. § 768.81(6) reduces each party's recovery by their percentage of fault and bars recovery entirely for anyone found more than 50 percent at fault. Passengers are almost never assigned a share.
• Someone else entirely may be responsible: a brake or tire defect, a bar that knowingly served a driver who was habitually addicted to alcohol (Florida's dram shop rule under Fla. Stat. § 768.125 is narrow), or a government entity that left a signal dark.

Can you sue Uber or Lyft themselves?

Florida's TNC statute treats drivers as independent contractors when the company meets the statute's conditions, so the company is generally not vicariously liable the way an employer would be for an employee. That is why most of these cases are insurance claims against the required coverage rather than lawsuits naming the company.

There are exceptions. Florida requires TNCs to run criminal background and driving-record checks before approving a driver and to remove drivers who no longer qualify. If a company approved someone with a disqualifying record, or kept a driver active after repeated complaints about impairment or dangerous driving, a direct negligence claim against the company may be available. Those cases turn on internal records, and we request them early.

What to do after a rideshare crash in Port Richey

1. Call 911. On US-19, SR-52, SR-54 or the Suncoast Parkway, Florida Highway Patrol Troop C will usually respond. Inside city limits, Port Richey Police or New Port Richey Police may take the report.
2. Screenshot the trip in your app before it disappears from the "recent" list: driver name, vehicle, pickup and drop-off, and the time.
3. Report the crash in the app. Both Uber and Lyft have in-app incident reporting. Keep it factual. Do not describe your injuries as minor.
4. Get medical care within 14 days. Sooner is better. The ER at HCA Florida Bayonet Point in Hudson is the county's trauma center.
5. Decline recorded statements. The rideshare insurer's adjuster may call within a day. You are not required to give a recorded statement, and anything you say about fault or how you feel will be used later.
6. Buy the crash report through the Florida Crash Portal after it posts, or let us do it. For the first 60 days it is available only to the parties, their attorneys and insurers.

Then call (240) 421-5511. We meet clients at home or in the hospital anywhere in Pasco County, and our staff speak Spanish.

The two-year deadline and why it is shorter than it sounds

For crashes on or after March 24, 2023, a negligence lawsuit must be filed within two years under Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(a). Wrongful death claims also carry a two-year limit. Rideshare claims burn time faster than most: the company's trip data retention is not permanent, dashcam footage is overwritten in days, and three or four insurers each need written notice before anyone starts a serious evaluation. Two years is the last day to file suit, not the day to start.

What a rideshare injury claim may include

Economic losses are itemized: emergency care, imaging, surgery, physical therapy, prescriptions, mileage to appointments, lost wages (prorated for salaried workers), lost overtime or commissions, and the cost of future care if the injury is permanent. Under Fla. Stat. § 768.0427, the evidence of medical bills is limited to what was actually paid or what your coverage would pay, so how your treatment is billed affects the value of the claim. We plan for that from the first appointment.

Non-economic losses, meaning pain, inconvenience, mental anguish and the loss of the ability to enjoy your life, are available against the at-fault driver only if you cross the permanent-injury threshold described above. When a rideshare crash takes a life, the personal representative of the estate may bring a wrongful death claim under Fla. Stat. §§ 768.16–768.26 for the spouse, children, parents and dependent relatives. See our wrongful death page for how those claims work.

Punitive damages are rare and require intentional misconduct or gross negligence. A company that kept an impaired driver on the platform after warnings is the kind of case where we evaluate them.

Why your own UM/UIM coverage still matters

Even with the $1 million layer in play, UM/UIM coverage on your own policy can be decisive. The at-fault party may be a third driver with no bodily injury coverage. The crash may fall in the logged-on-and-waiting period, where $50,000 per person runs out fast against a surgery bill. Or the driver may have been off the app entirely. Uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage under Fla. Stat. § 627.727 follows you as a passenger in any vehicle. If you have it, we use it. If you are reviewing your own policy after reading this, add it.

For crashes involving a county bus or a school bus rather than a rideshare car, the rules change completely; see our bus accident page. If you were hit by a rideshare car while walking or cycling, our pedestrian accident and bicycle accident pages explain how PIP reaches you.

Talk to a Port Richey Uber & Lyft accident lawyer today

Conde-Huggins is at 6609 Ridge Road, Suite 4, Port Richey, between US-19 and Little Road. Clementine Conde has practiced in Florida courts since 1992 and handles every rideshare case the firm takes. The consultation is free, you pay no attorney's fee unless we recover compensation, and someone answers the phone 24 hours a day. Call (240) 421-5511 or contact us online, and bring your trip screenshot.