Ridesharing has picked up in popularity and many people now use it as a primary way of traveling. Unfortunately, that does not make auto accidents any less likely. If you were in a crash with one of these vehicles, or were a passenger, one of our Winter Garden Uber accident lawyers could help you determine your next steps.
There will be coverage available to a person who is in a crash with an Uber or is an Uber passenger. An Uber driver who gets rear-ended is going to have underinsured motorist coverage available to them in the form of $50,000, or it may be all the way up to a million dollars. It depends on what the stage of the ride someone is in. Stage One refers to an Uber driver who does not have the app turned on. Stage Two means the driver has logged into the app but does not have any passengers. Stage Three means there is a passenger in the Uber.
An Uber driver who gets struck by a car in Stage Three could have up to a million dollars in coverage available to them. The passenger might have a personal policy that may be available to them, but they will also benefit from the Uber policy. The same also applies for Lyft riders.
This also applies to someone driving for a company, such as Domino’s, that has the company logo on the roof. It is important to get a qualified attorney who can determine if this person was working at the time of the crash.
The Umansky Law Firm Criminal Defense & Injury Attorneys has handled many Uber accident cases. On multiple occasions the driver has either been rear-ended or is at fault for the accident, but the passenger takes off before the cops come. It is important for passengers to stick around after a crash since they might not realize immediately that they have an injury.
If a person’s Uber driver is not willing to share the names or identities of the passengers to an investigator, a lawyer might have to subpoena the records from the company. They maintain the records of the individuals who were in the car, which is discoverable information.
A person can get the rider’s information, but if the official rider has another passenger or a guest with them in the car, that information will not be available unless the lawyer locates the driver and sends an interrogatory to defense counsel to get anyone named in the car. However, even this is not full-proof, requiring a deposition of the rider.
A Winter Garden lawyer’s goal is to figure out the truth of what happened in the rideshare accident. If that means serving subpoenas, doing discovery, and scheduling depositions to figure out the answers to the questions, then it is going to be worth it if it corroborates the plaintiff’s story.
Regardless of who is at fault, an injured passenger is entitled to seek some type of remedy. Progressive Auto Insurance typically provides insurance to those who are involved in collision and Uber provides its users up to a million dollars in liability cap. If the driver is not at fault for the accident, the passenger and the driver are both allotted their own individual underinsured motorist policies. The first element to consider is whether the at-fault party has liability coverage. If they do, their liability coverage is going to be primary. The underinsured motorist is going to be the supplement coverage.
An injured person should get the contact information of the Uber driver and save all records of that ride. They can go through the process of making an insurance claim with Uber after speaking with a Winter Garden attorney.
Common carriers are a term used for taxis or the LYNX system. The complications of a common carrier, however, is the coverage. Common carriers are protected by sovereign immunity and that the coverages are limited to $200,000. If a LYNX bus rear-ends someone, there will be guaranteed coverage but at a maximum of $200,000, and the plaintiff will not get any more than that. When dealing with private commercial policy like Uber, the coverage is half a million dollars or more in the umbrella policy.
You will be dealing with Uber’s insurance carrier aggressively attempting to determine liability and apportion fault before you are given a fair shake. It is important to have a Winter Garden Uber accident lawyer at your side. Call us now for a consultation.
The Umansky Law Firm Criminal Defense & Injury Attorneys
