Hit by an Uber, Lyft, or DoorDash Driver in Boca Raton? The First Question Isn’t Which Company.

By Daniel Drazen, Founding Partner, Drazen Mancini, P.A. Florida Bar No. 115454 · Admitted 2015 · Boca Raton, Florida

The short version. The insurance that applies after a crash with an app-based driver does not turn on the logo in the windshield. It turns on what the driver’s app was doing at the moment of impact. Florida’s rideshare statute, Fla. Stat. § 627.748, builds an entire insurance structure around that one variable, and the coverage floor swings from $50,000 to $1 million depending on which side of a line the driver happened to be on. Food and package delivery sits outside that structure. And the statute gives you a right to the app records that settle the question, which almost no one exercises.

The Variable Nobody Tells You About

They come in and tell me they were hit by an Uber. Or a DoorDash driver. Or an Amazon van on Glades Road.

That’s a reasonable way to describe what happened to you. It is not the way Florida law sorts it out.

Florida’s rideshare statute does not ask which company the driver worked for. It asks what the driver was doing inside the app. Two crashes at the same Boca Raton intersection, both caused by drivers with an Uber decal on the glass, can land in completely different insurance worlds because one driver had accepted a ride and the other was still waiting for one to come in.

You cannot see that distinction at the scene. In our experience it rarely comes through cleanly on the crash report either, because the reporting officer is documenting a collision, not adjudicating a coverage period. It may still be the single most consequential fact in your entire claim.

What the Statute Actually Requires

Section 627.748(7) sets minimum insurance by operating status. Three states, and the gaps between them are not small.

The app is off. No rideshare requirement attaches. The driver is driving a personal car on personal business, and ordinary Florida auto rules apply.

The app is on, but no ride has been accepted. Section 627.748(7)(b)1.a. requires primary liability coverage of at least $50,000 per person for death and bodily injury, $100,000 per incident, and $25,000 for property damage, plus PIP benefits meeting Florida’s minimums and uninsured and underinsured coverage under § 627.727.

The driver is engaged in a prearranged ride. Section 627.748(7)(c)1.a. raises the floor to primary liability coverage of at least $1 million for death, bodily injury, and property damage, plus PIP at the minimum amounts required of a limousine, plus UM and UIM coverage.

Fifty thousand dollars, or a million. The distance between those two numbers is one accepted ride request.

Which brings me to the detail that decides more of these cases than anything else on this page. Section 627.748(1)(b) defines a “prearranged ride” as beginning when the driver accepts the ride, continuing while the driver transports the rider, and ending when the last rider exits and is no longer occupying the vehicle. The $1 million tier attaches the moment the driver taps accept. Nobody has to be in the car yet. A driver who is empty, en route to a pickup, and watching a map is already inside the higher-coverage period, and an injured person who assumes otherwise is negotiating against the wrong policy without knowing it.

Food Delivery is Not a “Prearranged Ride”

Section 627.748 is built on a chain of defined terms, and the chain is worth walking, because most of the advice floating around this topic never walks it.

A “prearranged ride” is the provision of transportation by a TNC driver to a rider. § 627.748(1)(b). A “rider” is an individual who uses a digital network to obtain a prearranged ride between points chosen by the rider. § 627.748(1)(c). A “TNC driver” is someone who uses a vehicle to offer or provide a prearranged ride to a rider. § 627.748(1)(g).

A burrito is not a rider.

So here is the part you can take to the bank: the $1 million tier cannot attach to a delivery run. There is no rider. There is no prearranged ride. Section 627.748(7)(c) has nothing to grab onto. If you were hit by a delivery driver in Palm Beach County and someone tells you there’s a million-dollar policy waiting, ask them which statute they’re reading.

Below that, the ground gets less firm, and I’d rather tell you that than sell you a cleaner story.

DoorDash, Instacart, and Amazon Flex are not transportation network companies. Section 627.748 does not reach them at all, and whatever coverage exists in one of those cases comes from the platform’s private contractual arrangements, not a Florida statutory floor. It has to be established, not assumed, and it varies by platform and by circumstance.

Uber is a harder case, because Uber runs both a rideshare product and a food delivery product on one app. Section 627.748(7)(b) attaches its $50,000 tier while a driver is “logged on to the digital network but is not engaged in a prearranged ride.” A driver logged on to Uber’s app who picks up an Uber Eats order is, on the face of that text, still logged on to the digital network. Whether the logged-on tier follows him through the delivery is a question the statute does not squarely answer. I am not going to pretend it does.

The practical upshot is the same either way, and it’s the reason this section exists. The same driver, in the same car, on the same block, can be inside a $1 million statutory floor while carrying a passenger and standing on much softer ground twenty minutes later while carrying dinner. The car doesn’t change. The legal architecture does. Assume nothing about which policy answers until someone has actually looked.

Why the Driver’s Own Insurance May Pay You Nothing

Most people assume the driver’s personal auto policy sits underneath all of this as a backstop. In Florida that assumption is expressly wrong, and the Legislature is the one who made it wrong.

Section 627.748(8)(b)1. permits a personal auto insurer to exclude any and all coverage under a policy issued to a rideshare driver for any loss occurring while that driver is logged on to the app or providing a prearranged ride. The statute then lists what may be excluded and the list leaves nothing standing: bodily injury and property damage liability, uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, medical payments, comprehensive, collision, and personal injury protection. Section 627.748(8)(c)1. finishes the job by providing that an insurer relying on such an exclusion has no duty to defend or indemnify the claim.

That is not an insurance company finding a loophole. The permission slip is written into the statute.

The counterweight sits in § 627.748(7)(d) and (7)(e), and it matters. If the driver’s coverage has lapsed or falls short of what the statute requires, the insurance maintained by the rideshare company must provide the required coverage beginning with the first dollar of a claim, and it carries the duty to defend. The company’s coverage also cannot be made contingent on the personal insurer denying the claim first. When an adjuster tells you to go exhaust the driver’s personal policy before anyone will look at the company’s coverage, he is describing a sequence the statute does not require.

Florida Gives You a Right to the App Records

Two provisions exist in this statute for one reason: the Legislature understood that app status decides these cases.

Under § 627.748(7)(h), a rideshare driver must, upon request, disclose to any party directly involved in the accident whether he or she was logged on to the app or engaged in a prearranged ride at the time of the crash. That obligation runs to you, alongside the duty to hand over insurance information, and nothing in the statute confines it to the roadside.

Under § 627.748(8)(d), in a claims coverage investigation, the rideshare company itself must, upon request by a directly involved party, immediately provide the precise times the driver logged on and off the app in the 12-hour period before the crash and the 12-hour period after it.

Read that qualifier and then read the rest, because both halves are load-bearing. The duty is triggered inside a claims coverage investigation. It is not a standing right to demand records for any reason at any time, and anyone who tells you otherwise is overselling. But within a coverage investigation, which is exactly where you are after a rideshare crash, the company holding the data and holding the strongest interest in how the coverage question comes out is required by Florida statute to produce the timestamps. Immediately. Not after a lawsuit is filed. Not after discovery opens.

Those timestamps decide the tier. They are the difference between a $50,000 floor and a $1 million floor, and between a claim inside this statute and a delivery run that isn’t. They are also the kind of record that gets harder to pin down as months pass and memories, screenshots, and account histories drift.

We ask for them early. In our practice, almost nobody has asked before they walk in, and it isn’t because they weren’t paying attention. It’s because nobody told them the right existed.

Suing Uber Itself is Harder Than People Expect

If a company’s driver hurt you, suing the company feels like the obvious move. Florida has made that specific move difficult, and it did so on purpose.

Section 627.748(18)(a) shields a rideshare company from vicarious liability for harm arising out of the use of a vehicle while a driver is logged on, provided three conditions hold: the company itself was not negligent and committed no criminal wrongdoing, the company met all of its own obligations under the statute, and the company is not the owner or bailee of the vehicle. Section 627.748(9) reinforces the structure by treating a driver as an independent contractor rather than an employee where four conditions are met, among them that the company does not dictate the driver’s hours and does not bar the driver from working for competitors.

The shield has edges, though, and the edges are where the work is.

It shields against vicarious liability, meaning liability imposed on the company purely because its driver caused harm. Section 627.748(18)(b) says in terms that the subsection does not alter or reduce the coverage or the policy limits required under subsection (7), and does not alter the liability of any person other than the company’s own vicarious liability. The insurance obligation survives it completely. And the shield is conditional, not automatic: it depends on the company having fulfilled its obligations under the statute, which is a question of fact.

So we generally don’t spend our energy trying to drag a technology company into a courtroom. We spend it identifying the correct policy and forcing it to respond, and that turns on the app records.

Amazon is structurally different and deserves its own caution. Amazon-branded vans are often operated by independent contractor companies under Amazon’s Delivery Service Partner arrangement, which puts the driver, the contractor company, and Amazon in three separate positions with three separate insurance postures. Which of them belongs in a claim depends on facts specific to the crash and to contracts you have not seen. It cannot be read off the logo on the door.

The Florida Rules Underneath All of It

Whatever the app was doing, these claims still run through Florida’s ordinary machinery. Boca Raton crashes are litigated in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, in Palm Beach County.

Florida remains a no-fault state at the threshold, and PIP is narrower than most people believe. Under § 627.736(1)(a), medical benefits are payable only if you receive initial services and care within 14 days of the crash, and then at 80 percent of reasonable expenses. That fourteen-day window closes quietly and it closes on people who felt fine on day one and worse on day twenty. Reimbursement runs up to $10,000 where a qualifying provider has determined that you had an emergency medical condition, per § 627.736(1)(a)3., and is limited to $2,500 where a provider affirmatively determines that you did not, per § 627.736(1)(a)4. That $10,000 is the ceiling for medical and disability benefits together, not a medical figure standing alone.

To step outside no-fault and recover for pain and suffering, § 627.737(2) requires that the injury consist in whole or in part of a significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function, a permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability other than scarring or disfigurement, significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement, or death.

The filing deadline is short. Following the 2023 tort reform package, § 95.11(5)(a) gives two years for a negligence action, and § 95.11(5)(e) gives two years for wrongful death. Florida’s old four-year window is not the rule for a crash today, and if that is the number in your head, the number in your head is out of date.

And under § 768.81(6), a party found more than 50 percent at fault for their own harm recovers nothing. Not a reduced award. Nothing. Which is why, when an insurer starts building a comparative fault argument against you, we do not treat it as a haggling tactic. It is an attempt to zero the claim, and it deserves to be met that way.

What This Looks Like in Boca Raton

The abstractions land somewhere concrete. They land at the Glades Road interchange at I-95, on Federal Highway, on Palmetto Park Road at the hour when the restaurant orders stack up, in the surface lots around Mizner Park and Town Center where drivers idle waiting for the next ping.

At the moment of impact, the person who hit you was in one of a small number of legal states. Offline. Logged on and waiting. Engaged in a prearranged ride. Or running a delivery, which the $1 million tier does not reach.

You cannot tell which by looking. The record exists, the statute gives you a route to it, and the answer shapes what your claim is worth.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Uber’s $1 million policy apply to my crash? Only if the driver was engaged in a prearranged ride. That period is defined at § 627.748(1)(b), and it starts the instant the driver accepts the request, not when you get in the car, so it covers the empty drive to the pickup. If the driver was logged on but had not yet accepted a ride, the statutory floor drops to $50,000 per person and $100,000 per incident. If the app was off, the rideshare statute doesn’t enter into it.

I was hit by a DoorDash driver. Is that the same thing? No. Section 627.748 regulates the transportation of riders, and a food or package delivery isn’t one. The $1 million tier cannot attach to a delivery run. DoorDash, Instacart, and Amazon Flex aren’t transportation network companies at all, so any coverage in those cases comes from the platform’s own contractual insurance rather than a state minimum, and it has to be identified rather than presumed. A driver making an Uber Eats delivery while logged on to Uber’s app is a murkier question that the statute doesn’t cleanly resolve. Either way, don’t assume a policy is there until someone has confirmed it.

How do I prove what the driver’s app was doing? Ask the driver, then ask the company. Section 627.748(7)(h) obligates the driver, upon request, to tell any directly involved party whether he was logged on or on a prearranged ride when the crash happened. Section 627.748(8)(d) obligates the company, in a claims coverage investigation and upon request by a directly involved party, to immediately produce the exact log-on and log-off times for the 12 hours before and the 12 hours after. Make the request early. That timestamp is usually the fact the coverage question turns on.

Can I sue Uber or Lyft directly? Rarely on vicarious liability alone. Section 627.748(18) protects the company against liability imposed simply because its driver caused the crash, so long as the company wasn’t itself negligent, met its statutory obligations, and doesn’t own the vehicle. What that protection does not do is touch the insurance requirements in subsection (7), and it says nothing about the driver’s own liability. In practice the useful question isn’t whether a technology company can be named. It’s which policy has to answer.

An Amazon van hit me. Who is responsible? It depends on who was actually operating it. Many Amazon-branded delivery vehicles are run by independent contractor companies under Amazon’s Delivery Service Partner model, which puts the driver, the contractor, and Amazon in three distinct positions. The branding on the van doesn’t settle it. The contracts and the crash facts do.

How long do I have to file in Florida? Two years for negligence under § 95.11(5)(a), and two years for wrongful death under § 95.11(5)(e). The 2023 tort reform legislation shortened Florida’s older four-year deadline, and the shorter clock is the one that governs a crash today.

What if the insurer says the crash was partly my fault? Take it seriously and take it early. Under § 768.81(6), a person found more than 50 percent at fault for their own harm recovers nothing at all. That turns fault allocation into a threshold question rather than a bargaining detail, and it is one more reason the objective evidence, app records included, carries so much weight.

If You Were Hit by an App-Based Driver in Palm Beach County

A timestamp answers the coverage question in these cases, and Florida law gives you a route to that timestamp. Very few people ever take it.

Drazen Mancini, P.A. is a personal injury firm in Boca Raton. If you were injured by a rideshare or delivery driver in Palm Beach County and nobody has yet explained which insurance period your crash fell into, call us and we’ll walk you through it. Consultations are free. We handle injury matters on a contingency fee, which means no attorney’s fee unless we obtain a recovery for you. [COUNSEL: confirm required costs-disclosure language before publication]

Drazen Mancini, P.A. · 1489 W Palmetto Park Rd, Suite 500, Boca Raton, FL 33486 · (561) 783-4534

Daniel Alexander Drazen is a founding partner of Drazen Mancini, P.A. in Boca Raton. He earned his J.D. from Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad College of Law in 2014 and was admitted to The Florida Bar in 2015 (Bar No. 115454), where he is a member in good standing. This article discusses Florida law as of July 2026 and is provided for general information. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes change and outcomes depend on the specific facts of each case. Anyone injured in a crash should speak with a lawyer about their own circumstances.