Miami Uber and Lyft Accident Lawyer
You got into a car you did not own, driven by somebody you had never met, and now you are hurt and nobody will say whose insurance pays. We can take it from here. Call 844-643-7200 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Miami personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Miami-Dade County since 1993.
Uber and Lyft Accident claims in Miami
The rideshare company points at the driver, the driver points at their own insurer, and that insurer points back at the app. Meanwhile you are covering the treatment, missing work, and getting a different answer from everyone you call. Working out which policy was live at the moment of the crash is our job, and it starts the day you call.
In Miami-Dade the rideshare claims split three ways: passengers hurt in the vehicle, people struck by a driver on a trip, and drivers who are hurt while working. Passengers are the most straightforward, because a ride in progress puts the $1 million tier squarely in play. A rideshare driver injured by someone else is the awkward one, because they are usually not an employee, so there is no workers' compensation, and their own personal policy may exclude commercial use. Uninsured motorist coverage becomes the question, and whether the company's policy includes it depends on the tier they were in.
A Miami-Dade rideshare claim splits three ways: passengers hurt in the vehicle, people struck by a driver on a trip, and drivers hurt while working. All three run on the same question, which is what the app was doing at the moment of impact, and all three are answered from the platform’s own timestamps.
What to do after a uber and lyft accident in Miami
- Screenshot the trip in your own app, now. The receipt, the driver name and photograph, the vehicle and plate, the map of the route and every timestamp on it. In this practice the passenger is frequently holding the best evidence in the case on their own phone, and accounts get archived, apps get reinstalled and phones get replaced. It takes a minute and it is the one record nobody else controls.
- Report it through the platform, and keep what comes back. Reporting inside the app creates a record with a reference, and the reply usually confirms the trip, the driver and the times. That correspondence is useful precisely because it comes from the company rather than from the driver. Keep it, along with any email or notification, rather than relying on being able to find it later.
- Ask in writing that the trip and app-status data be preserved. The platform holds a record of when the driver was logged on, when a request was accepted, when the passenger was collected and when the trip ended, to the second. It is not kept indefinitely and a request has to identify the driver and the time window. Sent early it is routine. Sent late it becomes an argument about a dataset that decides which policy applies.
- Do not rely on the crash report for the app state. Officers record what they are told at the scene, and a driver in the middle of a collision is not always accurate about whether a request had been accepted. Reports in these cases frequently record the wrong period or say nothing about it at all. The report is not the evidence of which coverage applies, and treating it as though it were is how a claim gets valued against the wrong policy.
- See a doctor, and say you were in a rideshare. A passenger has no view of the road, no warning and nothing to brace against, and the injuries that matter often present two or three days later. Say in the medical record that you were a passenger in a prearranged ride, because that single line connects the treatment to the claim that will eventually be made against a commercial policy rather than a personal one.
Where these happen in Miami
Miami-Dade has the highest rideshare volume in the state and the densest mix of people on foot, on bicycles and in cars sharing the same streets, which is why the claims here come from three different directions.
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People struck outside the vehicle
A pedestrian or a cyclist hit by a driver mid-trip reaches the same policy as the passenger inside, and almost never knows it.
- Nothing at the scene identifies a vehicle as being on a prearranged ride
- A statutory policy that is frequently the largest coverage available to somebody on foot
- The trip data, which is the only way to establish the period after the fact
- A second claim against the driver’s personal coverage where the app was off
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Multi-vehicle collisions on the main roads
The Palmetto, I-95 and the wide surface roads, where a passenger ends up in a dispute among several insurers at once.
- Each carrier with an interest in shifting responsibility to another vehicle
- The sequence of impacts, established from vehicle damage and event data recorders
- A passenger who is not at fault at all, which removes most of the argument
- Fault divided between the drivers rather than assigned to one
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Visitors as passengers
A great many rideshare passengers here are on their way to or from an airport, a port or a hotel, and are gone within days.
- App records held on a phone that leaves the state within the week
- Witnesses who are also visitors, unreachable within a month
- Treatment that begins here and continues somewhere else
- A claim brought in Florida regardless of where the passenger lives
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The driver population
A very large number of people drive for these platforms in this county, and the gaps in their own coverage are the least understood part of the practice.
- No compensation claim, because drivers are not treated as employees
- Personal policies that exclude use while logged on to a platform
- Uninsured motorist coverage that depends on the period at the moment of impact
- Drivers logged on to two platforms, whose real hours appear in neither record alone
What causes them
- Accepting or declining a request while moving, which is a screen interaction at speed
- Stopping in a live traffic lane to collect or set down rather than pulling to the curb
- Passengers stepping out into traffic on the road side of the vehicle
- Following navigation on unfamiliar roads, including sudden turns and stops at the last moment
- Long hours across two platforms at once, which no single company record shows
The injuries we see, and what each one turns on
Neck and spine
Herniations and fractures, and the standard answer that a low-speed collision could not have caused them. Nearly every adult spine shows wear on imaging, so the argument is that the crash found it rather than caused it. A clear picture of function before and after is what answers it.
People outside the vehicle
A pedestrian or a cyclist struck by a driver who was mid-trip is claiming against the same statutory coverage as the passenger inside, which is frequently the largest policy available to them by a wide margin. They are also the least likely to know it exists, because nothing at the scene identifies the vehicle as being on a trip.
Knees, wrists and lower legs
The injuries of somebody who was sitting forward, holding a phone or luggage, and was not expecting anything. Several need hardware and then a second operation to remove or revise it, which is the part an early offer never includes.
What Florida law requires you to prove
Three periods, and roughly a million dollars between two of them
Fla. Stat. § 627.748 sets what a transportation network company has to carry, and it changes three times. With the app off there is nothing from the company at all and only the driver’s personal policy. While a driver is logged on and waiting for a request, a lower contingent tier applies: $50,000 per person, $100,000 per incident and $25,000 in property damage. Once a request is accepted and until the last rider gets out, at least $1 million in primary liability coverage applies. Nothing else about the collision changes as much as which of those three it was.
Who can claim against it, which is more people than expect to
The coverage is not limited to the passenger. Another driver, a cyclist and a pedestrian struck during a prearranged ride all reach the same policy, and for somebody on foot it is frequently the largest policy available to them by an order of magnitude. A passenger is also rarely at fault for anything, which removes most of the argument and moves the dispute onto the extent of the injury rather than onto responsibility.
The driver’s own position, and the deadlines
A rideshare driver injured by somebody else is generally not an employee, so there is no compensation claim behind them. Many personal auto policies exclude use while logged on to a platform, which is a gap most drivers do not know they have until it matters, and what uninsured motorist coverage is available can depend on the period. Most claims arising on or after March 24, 2023 carry a two-year deadline under Fla. Stat. § 95.11, and fault is shared under Fla. Stat. § 768.81.
The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide uber and lyft accident page rather than being restated in every market.
How we prove it in Miami-Dade County
Three kinds of claimant, one dataset. Whoever was hurt, the work starts in the same place: establishing which period the driver was in and getting the record that proves it preserved.
- The platform’s trip and app-status data, requested in writing and identifying the driver and time window
- The passenger’s own app record: receipt, driver, vehicle, route and every timestamp
- The exact moment a request was accepted, and the moment the trip ended
- Event data recorders in every vehicle involved, in a multi-vehicle collision
- The declarations pages for the driver’s personal policy and for any rideshare endorsement
- Data from a second platform where the driver was logged on to more than one
- Witness names and contact details taken on the day, since visitors are unreachable within weeks
- Building, garage and business camera footage, which covers these streets and cycles within weeks
A pedestrian or a cyclist has the hardest version of this problem, because nothing at the scene tells them the car that hit them was working. Asking the question early is the only way that policy is ever reached.
Who would handle your case
Being hurt in Miami is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled uber and lyft accident claims across Florida since 1993, and one of them will take yours from the first call to the last check. They will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.
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Brett J. Yonon Senior Trial Attorney Selected to Florida Super Lawyers in 2024 and 2025. Brett Yonon is who this firm puts on a catastrophic injury or a death in the family, and he has tried those cases to verdict. Full profile → -
Richard P. Pravato Founding & Managing Attorney Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by The Florida Bar since 2004, and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Injury cases exclusively since 1996. Full profile →
How insurance companies handle these claims
Almost every move in a rideshare claim is aimed at the same thing: establishing that the collision happened in a cheaper period than it did. Knowing that in advance explains most of what follows.
- The crash report says nothing about a trip
- Common, and not evidence of anything. Officers record what they are told, and a report that omits the app state simply reflects what was said at the roadside. It is neither a finding nor binding. The trip data is what settles it, which is why the preservation request goes out before anybody argues about the report.
- The lower waiting tier is applied
- The most valuable dispute in this practice, because the difference between the waiting tier and a prearranged ride is roughly a million dollars. The line is drawn at acceptance of a request and it runs until the last rider gets out. The company’s own timestamps establish it to the second, which is why the data is requested rather than debated.
- The data is no longer available
- Retention is not indefinite and the request has to identify the driver and the time window, which is exactly why it is sent early rather than after a position has hardened. A preservation letter in the first weeks costs nothing. The same letter in the sixth month becomes an argument about what a company chose to keep.
What a claim can include
Lost income and lost earning capacity
Wages missed, and separately what somebody can no longer earn. For a driver, the vehicle is the job, and losing the use of either is the same loss.
Pain, and what daily life has become
Sleep, mobility, and the things somebody used to do without thinking about them. It is proved with the account of the people around the injured person as much as with records.
The vehicle and what was in it
Repair or actual cash value, the rental while it is sorted out, and personal property destroyed in the collision. For a driver, also the earnings lost while the car is off the road.
Why Wolf & Pravato in Miami
A Miami-Dade rideshare case is filed in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, and the firm has an office on Brickell Avenue rather than a mailing address here. We work with clients in Spanish and English, and the preservation work that decides these claims has to happen in the first weeks rather than when a position has hardened.
The firm is led by a Board Certified Civil Trial lawyer, a certification held by 861 attorneys in Florida against a membership over 109,000. Insurance companies keep their own records of which firms in a county actually try cases, and that record moves an offer further than anything a firm can say about itself.
There is no charge to ask. Our fee comes out of what we recover and nowhere else, and if the answer is that you do not have a case, that is the answer you will get.
Miami uber and lyft accident questions
I drive for Uber and someone hit me. What covers me?
It depends what period you were in and what your own policy says. There is generally no workers’ compensation, because drivers are not treated as employees. Your personal policy may exclude use while logged on, which is a common gap. Where the at-fault driver is uninsured or underinsured, the uninsured motorist coverage available to you can depend on whether a ride was in progress. It is worth having all of it read together.
I was on a bicycle and a car turned into me. I have no idea if it was a rideshare.
It is worth finding out, because it can change the available coverage by an order of magnitude. Nothing at the scene marks a vehicle as being on a trip, and a driver has little reason to volunteer it. The driver and plate details from the crash report are enough to ask the platforms, and the trip data answers it. Somebody on foot or on a bicycle is the claimant this most often benefits.
Several cars were involved and everybody is blaming everybody.
As a passenger you are the one person nobody can blame, which is a stronger position than it feels like. Each insurer has an incentive to point at another driver, and the sequence of impacts is established from the vehicle damage and the event data recorders rather than from anybody’s account. What the app was doing decides which policy sits behind the vehicle you were in.
The driver says the app was off. Can that be checked?
Yes. The platform holds trip and app-status data showing exactly when a driver was logged on and when a ride was accepted. It we can get and it is not a matter of anyone’s word. Because it decides which coverage applies, it is one of the first things we request.
Does this apply to Lyft as well?
Yes. Fla. Stat. § 627.748 governs transportation network companies generally rather than any single brand, so the same coverage tiers apply to Lyft and to other platforms operating in Florida.
The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.
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Tell us what happened
A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. We are at 1111 Brickell Avenue, 11th Floor, Miami, FL 33131.