
Andrew Pickett Law is a top Titusville rideshare accident law firm that handles Uber and Lyft crash cases throughout Titusville and North Brevard County for victims who need help getting medical treatment and financial recovery. Andrew Pickett prosecuted cases in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, so he knows how the other side builds a file before anyone calls it a case.
What You Need To Know
- A rideshare crash has more sides to it than an ordinary crash, because the app decides which insurance answers for you. A lawyer who handles rideshare claims keeps the insurance question from being decided without you.
- We wrote the page so you can finish knowing where you stand, whether or not you ever call us.
- You’ve got two years from the crash date to file a lawsuit.
- Uber and Lyft only have to keep the record of your ride for one year. Your deadline to sue runs two years, so the record can disappear first.
- Your first medical bills usually come from a policy in your own household, even though you were riding in someone else’s Uber.
- You don’t have to know what the driver’s app was doing, because the company’s own records show it.
- Screenshot your trip receipt, the driver’s profile and the license plate today, and report the crash inside the app.
- A written demand from a lawyer puts Uber or Lyft on notice to keep every record from your ride. Andrew Pickett tries injury cases to verdict, and insurers price a file differently when the lawyer holding it has taken cases to a jury.
- Your trip receipt. It is in the app right now, under your ride history. A screenshot belongs to you, and no company schedule can reach it.
- The company’s record of your ride. Kept for at least one year after the ride. A written demand from a lawyer stops the deletion.
- Your crash report. Ready in about ten days. Released only to the people involved and their representatives for the first 60 days.
- School zone camera video. Destroyed 90 days after the ticket from that day is finished.
A rideshare car was part of your crash, and you could have been anywhere around it. You may have been riding in the back of an Uber or a Lyft when another car hit it. You may drive for one of the apps and have been hurt on a shift. You may also have been in your own car, or crossing the street, when a rideshare driver hit you.
The same few worries turn up for all three within a day or two. The driver’s phone was doing something at the moment of impact, and nobody has explained what that has to do with your medical bills. The trip itself lives inside an app that has already moved on to the next ride. More than one insurance company may be calling, and none of the calls makes clear which company owes you anything.
Start with the record of your ride, because the company controls it and you don’t. Your coverage, the fee and the first call come next. The deadlines, the app periods and the statute citations sit further down.
Save the Record of Your Ride Today
The trip that hurt you lives inside an app that has already moved on to the next ride. The company can erase the record of your ride about a year after the crash, and you’ve got two years to sue.
Open the app tonight and save what’s still in it. Screenshot the trip receipt, the driver’s profile, the license plate and the route map, and keep the screenshots somewhere other than your phone.
Report the crash inside the app as well. A report puts the company’s own note on your trip, so the company can’t later say nothing happened during the ride.
A written demand stops the company from deleting its own copy. You can send the demand yourself, and a lawyer sends the version a rideshare company’s lawyers take seriously.
Which Insurance Applies Depends on What the App Was Doing
The driver’s phone decides which insurance covers your injuries, and most people find the rule backwards. Florida and the rideshare companies split a driver’s day into three stretches, and a driver carries different money in each stretch.
With the app off, the driver was an ordinary driver with ordinary car insurance. Signed on and waiting for a request, the driver carries coverage from the company, at lower limits. Once a driver accepts a ride, the company’s coverage jumps to $1 million.
Two insurance companies will argue about which stretch applied at the moment of impact, and both of them stand to gain real money from the answer. Your own screenshots of the trip settle the question faster than anything else does.
Your first medical bills usually start with a car policy rather than with either company. Ask which policy is paying before you pay anything yourself.
A Healed Rider on a Logged Trip May Not Need a Lawyer
Some rideshare claims settle without anybody’s help. If the app was clearly running a ride, your injuries healed, and the company’s insurer offered a number that covers the bills, take the offer and keep the whole amount.
The claims that go sideways go sideways over the app. One insurer says the driver was waiting for a request, the second says the driver had already accepted, and most of your recovery can ride on which answer sticks.
You don’t have to settle the app question on your own. Call us, read us what your app receipt says, and we’ll tell you which stretch the record supports.
The call and the review cost nothing, and nobody signs anything to have the conversation. Even if you finish the claim yourself, you finish it knowing which policy owes you.
What a Lawyer Costs, and Why You Pay Nothing to Start
Andrew Pickett Law works on a contingency fee only. We take a minority percentage of whatever we recover for you, and we charge no fee at all if we recover nothing. You’ll never write us a check to get started, and you’ll never see an hourly bill.
Florida law caps a contingency percentage, so no firm sets its own ceiling. The exact numbers and the Bar rule behind them sit on the Titusville car accident page. We charge the same fee percentage on a rideshare case as on any other crash case. We back the Bar’s cap with a commitment of our own. We work your case to its maximum value, and you stay out of pocket for nothing while the case runs.
Case costs run alongside the fee, and we advance the case costs rather than billing you while you’re still healing. On a rideshare case the costs are usually filing fees, medical records and expert reports. Ask any firm you talk to, including us, who pays the advanced costs if you lose. Firms answer the question differently, so get the answer in writing before you sign anything.
He’s Already Worked From the Other Side of the Table
Before he represented injured people, Andrew Pickett tried cases for the state in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit. He has already worked from the other side of the courtrooms a Brevard case can end up in. He trained at the Trial Lawyers College, and he tries injury cases to verdict. A rideshare claim runs through layers of corporate coverage, and the insurers behind the layers value a file differently when the lawyer holding it has taken cases to juries.
Clients tell us the same thing in their reviews: they always knew where their case stood. We’ll tell you the next step and roughly when to expect it. When something changes, we’ll call you about the change.
Read Us the Trip Receipt and We’ll Name the Policy That Owes You
A first call is a conversation, not a commitment. You read us what the app receipt says and describe the crash, and we’ll tell you which insurance period your ride falls in.
Bring your trip receipt, the driver’s name from the app, and the crash report number if you have it. You can call with no paperwork at all.
If Andrew Pickett Law takes your case, our fee comes out of a recovery and nothing comes out of your pocket while the case runs. If the claim doesn’t need a lawyer, we’ll tell you and you can take the offer.
You Probably Are Not Too Late, but the Record of Your Ride Might Be
The piece most likely to be missing from your case is not your memory of the crash. It is the record showing what the driver’s app was doing when the crash happened. You get two years to sue. The company only has to keep the record of your ride for one.
Your time to sue runs out two years after the crash
You must file a lawsuit over a crash here within two years of the crash date.1 The two-year rule came from a change Florida made in March 2023, and you will still see the older four-year figure in a lot of places. The Titusville personal injury page covers the deadline and the exceptions to it. If your crash happened inside the last two years, this clock is not your problem yet.
The company can erase the record of your ride a year before you have to sue
Florida requires Uber and Lyft to keep each ride’s records for at least one year after the ride.2 Put the two clocks side by side and the gap is plain. A company can follow that retention law in full and still be rid of your trip a year before your time to sue runs out.
Nobody has to hide anything for that to happen. Ordinary file cleanup deletes your trip on the same schedule it deletes every other trip, while the claim it would have decided is still alive. A written demand from a lawyer stops that deletion.
The record of your ride decides more here than it would after an ordinary crash. Florida’s rideshare law splits a driver’s time into periods set by what the app was doing, and different insurance applies in each.3 The company’s logs are the proof of which period your crash fell in, and that record decides who pays for your injuries.
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Who Pays for Your Injuries Depends on What the Driver’s App Was Doing
The insurance available after a rideshare crash can swing from almost nothing to a million dollars, and the app decides which. Florida wrote one statute for app-based ride companies, and it treats Uber and Lyft exactly alike.3 The statute sets three coverage tiers, one for each state the driver’s app can be in. The headings below run through them in order, from app off to passenger aboard.
With the app off, the driver was an ordinary driver and the company owes nothing
With the app closed, the driver was running a personal errand, and the company owes nothing for that period. Only the driver’s personal policy is in play. Florida does not require ordinary drivers to buy the coverage that pays for other people’s injuries.4 A crash with an off-app driver can leave you leaning on your own policy instead.
Your own policy usually holds the answer. The part of it that steps in when the at-fault driver has nothing is called uninsured motorist coverage, or UM. The Titusville car accident page explains how UM works and the notice rule that comes with it. That page also covers the fault rules, including the bar on any recovery for a person found more than half responsible for their own crash.
A driver signed on and waiting is covered, but at the lowest limits on this page
From the moment a driver signs on, the coverage this statute requires has to exist, even with no passenger aboard. The limits in this waiting period are $50,000 per person and $100,000 per crash for injuries, plus $25,000 for property damage.3
The statute asks for more than that liability tier whenever the app is on. It also requires medical coverage that pays without asking who caused the crash, which Florida calls personal injury protection, or PIP. The statute requires that same UM coverage during this period.3 People who assume the waiting period carries a bare minimum and nothing else are missing those two layers.
Once a ride is accepted, the coverage jumps to $1 million
From the moment a driver accepts a ride until the passenger is dropped off, the required coverage is $1 million.3 The PIP and UM layers keep running underneath it. The million-dollar figure people have heard about exists only in this period, so it does not apply to most rideshare crashes.
Coverage does not climb gradually as the driver moves from waiting to an accepted ride. Twenty times the coverage can turn on a few seconds of app time, and on nothing you could have seen from where you were sitting. For that reason, which period your crash fell in usually decides how much coverage you can reach.
The independent contractor label scares people off this coverage, and it should not. Uber and Lyft call their drivers independent contractors, and Florida law backs that label for the companies’ purposes.5 It does not matter here. The statute requires this coverage to exist whenever the app is on, and it lets the company’s own policy satisfy it, which is how both companies do it.3 If the driver’s insurance has lapsed or falls short, the company’s policy has to answer from the first dollar and has to defend the claim, and the company’s insurer is not allowed to wait for a personal insurer to deny first.3 You do not have to prove the driver was an employee to reach any of that. Suing the company over its own conduct is a separate fight, and reaching this coverage does not depend on it.
Two insurance companies will argue about which period your crash fell in
Nobody expects you to know what the driver’s app was doing, and you do not have to accept anyone’s first answer about it. The app’s status at the moment of impact is a recorded fact rather than a memory. The company’s systems log when a driver signs on, when a ride is accepted, and when a passenger gets in. They record where the car was, minute by minute, as well.
In the early weeks, insurance companies settle the period question among themselves. The driver’s personal insurer and the company’s insurer sit on opposite sides of the period lines. Each one pays less if the crash lands on the other side, so treat their first answers as opening positions rather than as findings.
Suppose your driver had just dropped someone at the riverfront and was waiting for the next ride. A car then ran the light on US 1 and hit you. The company’s logs decide whether that morning carries the waiting tier or the million-dollar tier, not anyone’s memory. You do not have to referee that argument yourself, and the one-year clock described above is why it cannot wait.
Your first medical bills usually start with a policy in your own household
A passenger who waits for the driver’s insurance to pay the first medical bills can wait right past a deadline. Your first bills usually come from a policy already in your own household, even when you were riding in someone else’s Uber. Florida pays the first layer of crash medical care without asking who caused the crash. People call that a no-fault state. The PIP coverage described above does that work, and it pays 80 percent of medical bills and 60 percent of lost wages, up to $10,000.6
PIP money reaches only the people who saw a doctor within 14 days of the crash. If your crash was recent and nobody has examined you yet, that appointment outranks everything else on this page.
Whose PIP pays is where rideshare claims surprise people. If you own a car with the coverage Florida requires, your own policy pays first, even though you were riding in someone else’s car.7 The policy on the car you rode in covers a passenger only when that passenger owns no such policy. Riders who assume the driver’s insurance takes care of them wait for a payment that never comes. They can burn days of the 14-day window waiting.
A passenger who owns no vehicle gets the opposite result. The policy on the car they rode in covers them as an occupant.7 That includes a visitor from out of state: the Florida policy on the rideshare car reaches anyone occupying it, whether or not they live here, and a car parked at home in another state does not count against them.7 Many rideshare passengers here are visitors in town for a cruise or a launch, and the 14-day rule applies to them exactly as it applies to a local. Beyond that first layer, a visitor’s claim leans on the company coverage tiers.
After that, your claim follows the same money rules as any Titusville crash case. Your own UM coverage requires written notice to your insurer before you settle with anyone.8 A jury hears the amounts actually paid for your medical care, not the amounts billed.9 A Brevard hospital that files on time can claim part of a settlement.10 The Car Accident Lawyers page explains all three rules.
The Proof of Your Ride Is Sitting on the Other Side’s Computers
Nearly everything that proves what happened to you belongs to the company you may have a claim against. The trip, the route, the app status and the driver’s record all sit on Uber’s or Lyft’s servers. The company saved none of it with you in mind, and a deletion schedule written long before your crash decides how long it stays.
A copy you make yourself sits outside the company’s deletion schedule. Below is what exists right now, who holds it, and how long you have.
Save your own copy of the trip today
Open the app and save what is still in it. Screenshot the trip receipt, the driver’s profile, the license plate and the route map. Report the crash inside the app as well, because the report puts the company’s own note on your trip that something happened during it. Those copies take about ten minutes to make and they never expire.
A letter stops the company’s copy from being deleted on schedule
A lawyer sends a written demand that the company keep every record connected to your trip. The letter is called a preservation demand. It turns a file the company may discard on schedule into one it is on notice to keep. Sending it in month two rather than month thirteen is the difference between holding the record and arguing about what the record would have shown.
Your crash report is ready in about ten days, but not to everyone
For the first 60 days, the report goes only to the people involved and their representatives.11 Which agency wrote your report depends on where the crash happened. The Titusville car accident page walks through the fee, the timing and the split among Titusville Police, the Sheriff’s Office and the Highway Patrol.
A camera in a school zone may hold the only video of your crash
Titusville runs speed cameras in its school zones, and one of them can capture a crash inside the zone.12 The footage is destroyed on a schedule of its own, so a written request has to reach the city within weeks. The Titusville car accident page covers the zones and the timing.
Frequently Asked Questions About Uber and Lyft Accident Claims
Can I sue Uber or Lyft directly after a crash?
Most rideshare recoveries never require suing the company itself, and the fine print makes that route harder than people expect. When you installed the app and tapped agree, you accepted the company’s terms. Those terms include a promise to bring disputes with the company to a private decision-maker instead of a court, one person at a time. The promise is called binding individual arbitration. Uber’s United States terms apply it expressly to incidents or accidents resulting in personal injury or death. They also give up the right to join a class action, and they carve out claims of sexual assault or harassment.13 Lyft’s terms contain an arbitration provision of their own.14
Nobody has settled whether that clause will be enforced against a passenger’s injury claim, and we will not pretend otherwise. The terms send even that question to an arbitrator in the first instance.13 Whatever comes of it, the clause does not swallow the rest of the case. After most rideshare crashes, the claim runs against the driver who caused the crash and against the coverage the statute forced the company to provide.3 Neither of those claims is the same thing as suing the company over its own conduct. Arbitration only matters when you go after the company itself. Those cases are a minority, and taking one on is a deliberate choice rather than a default.
What if the driver was delivering food instead of carrying a passenger?
Florida’s rideshare statute covers companies that move people.15 A driver in the middle of an Uber Eats or DoorDash run may sit outside it entirely. That trip runs under whatever coverage the delivery platform chose to provide, not the tiers above. Nothing about the car tells you which kind of trip it was, and the same car often runs both kinds of app in one evening. Only the company’s system shows which app was live and in what mode.
Does Titusville have Uber and Lyft rules of its own?
No, and that is a definite answer rather than a gap in the research. Florida reserved rideshare regulation to the state alone.16 No city or county may impose its own requirements on the companies or their drivers. Titusville has no rideshare ordinance and could not adopt one. We build a Titusville rideshare case on the state statute and ordinary traffic law.
The same law leaves one class of places out. Airports and seaports may set where pickups happen and charge fees for them.16 Orlando International has designated rideshare lots for that reason, and Port Canaveral has pickup rules of its own, while Titusville has nothing of the kind. What Port Canaveral’s rules mean for a claim sits with the Titusville personal injury page.
The absence of local rules does not make the local pattern ordinary. Rideshare traffic here moves with events rather than with commutes. Launch mornings surge the apps around the Max Brewer Bridge and the US 1 viewing spots. Cruise turnaround days stack long Port Canaveral runs end to end. Both patterns run through the same handful of roads, including US 1, SR 405 and SR 406. No local rideshare rule governs driving on any of them.
I drive for Uber or Lyft and was hurt on a trip. What covers me?
The required on-app coverage includes UM protection during both periods when your app is on.3 Your own PIP handles the first medical bills the way it would after any crash. Damage to your car runs through a separate platform layer, and it comes with a condition drivers miss. You reach it only if your personal policy already carries both comprehensive and collision coverage. Liability alone will not do, and neither will collision on its own. The companies call it contingent collision, and it pays after a $2,500 deductible, or $1,000 on a car obtained through Uber’s Vehicle Marketplace.17 Check your personal policy for comprehensive and collision before you count on the platform paying for the car.
My Uber crashed on the way to Orlando International. Is that still a Titusville case?
Often it is not, and geography decides that rather than your home address. The airport run leaves Brevard County on SR 528, so a crash out there is generally another county’s case, heard in another circuit’s courts. Florida lets airports keep their own pickup rules, and those cover pickups there.16 None of the geography changes the coverage periods, which follow the driver’s app rather than the map.
References
- Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(a) — two-year limitations period for negligence, as amended by ch. 2023-15, for causes accruing on or after March 24, 2023.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.748(15)(a) — a transportation network company must retain individual ride records for at least one year after the date the ride is provided.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.748(7) — transportation network company insurance: the three coverage periods; $50,000 per person / $100,000 per incident / $25,000 property damage while logged on and waiting; $1 million from ride acceptance through drop-off; PIP per § 627.736 and UM per § 627.727 required during both on-app periods; § 627.748(7)(a) places the duty on the TNC driver or on the TNC on the driver’s behalf; (7)(b)2 and (7)(c)2 allow either party’s policy or a combination to satisfy it; (7)(d) makes the TNC’s policy answer from the first dollar, with a duty to defend, where the driver’s has lapsed or falls short; (7)(e) bars the TNC’s insurer from requiring a personal insurer to deny first.
- Fla. Stat. § 324.022 — financial responsibility; property damage liability required, bodily injury liability not required of ordinary drivers.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.748(9) — drivers are independent contractors, not employees, where the section’s conditions are met.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.736 — personal injury protection; 14-day treatment requirement; 80% medical and 60% wage benefits within the $10,000 limit.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.736(4)(e)4 — PIP priority: the insurer of the vehicle’s owner pays other occupants only when the injured person does not own a motor vehicle for which security is required; an owner-passenger claims under their own policy. The residency condition in § 627.736(4)(e)4 governs only the struck non-occupant limb, not the occupant limb; security is required under § 627.733 only of vehicles registered in Florida or present here more than 90 days in the preceding 365.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.727 — uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage; written notice before settlement.
- Fla. Stat. § 768.0427 — evidence of medical damages; amounts paid rather than billed.
- Brevard County Code §§ 54-66 to 54-71 — liens for hospital care; filing with the Clerk of the Circuit Court.
- Fla. Stat. § 316.066 — crash report confidentiality for 60 days except to parties and their representatives; sworn statement and fee.
- Titusville Code of Ordinances §§ 20-70 to 20-80 — school zone speed detection; permitted use of recordings and the 90-day destruction requirement.
- Uber Technologies, Inc., U.S. Terms of Use — arbitration agreement covering “incidents or accidents resulting in personal injury or death to you or anyone else”; class-action and mass-action waivers; delegation of threshold arbitrability to the arbitrator; carve-outs for small-claims matters and for individual claims of sexual assault or sexual harassment. Last modified 8/12/2026.
- Lyft, Inc., Terms of Service — arbitration provision.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.748(1) — definitions; “transportation network company” and “prearranged ride” are defined around transporting riders, which is why a delivery trip may fall outside the section.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.748(17) — transportation network companies governed exclusively by state law; political subdivisions may not impose additional requirements; airports and seaports may designate staging and pickup areas and charge fees.
- Uber, “Insurance for Rideshare and Delivery Drivers,” and the equivalent Lyft summary — $1 million on-trip liability; contingent comprehensive and collision, actual cash value, $2,500 deductible ($1,000 for a vehicle obtained through Uber’s Vehicle Marketplace), available only where the driver’s personal policy includes both comprehensive and collision, and only en route or on a trip (not offline, and not while online but before accepting).
Other Case Types We Handle
- Car Accident
- Truck Accident
- Motorcycle Accident
- Pedestrian Accident
- Bicycle Accident
- Scooter Accident
- Golf Cart Accident
- Boating Accident
- Slip and Fall
- Premises Liability
- Airbnb and Vacation Rental
- Dog Bite
- Sexual Abuse
- Workers’ Compensation
- Wrongful Death
Areas and Zip Codes Served From Our Titusville Office
- Titusville — 32780 and 32796
- Mims and Scottsmoor — 32754
- North Brevard County
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Meet Andrew Pickett
Dealing with the murky policies of insurance companies designed to confuse and prevent you from receiving compensation is our expertise.
15+ years experience as a personal injury attorney.
Specialized in battling insurance companies.
95% settlement rate for clients.
Handled 500+ personal injury cases.
Collected more than $38 million for clients.
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