Florida Accident & Injury Laws

Everything that determines what your claim is worth in Florida: deadlines, fault rules, and minimum insurance — with citations to the actual statutes.

The 4 rules that decide your Florida claim

By AccidentCompass Editorial Team · Updated July 13, 2026

Florida runs its crash claims on different plumbing than the rest of the country: your own policy pays first (no-fault PIP), suing for pain and suffering requires clearing a statutory injury threshold, and the at-fault driver may — legally — carry zero bodily injury coverage. Add the 2023 tort reform (HB 837) that cut the filing deadline in half and hardened the fault rule, and Florida is where out-of-date advice costs the most. Around 3,138 people died on Florida roads in 2024 and FLHSMV logged over 380,000 crashes, led by Miami-Dade with roughly 60,000. Here’s the system, layer by layer.

Layer one: PIP, and the 14-day rule that forfeits it

Florida’s personal injury protection ($10,000, § 627.736) pays 80% of reasonable medical costs and 60% of lost income regardless of fault — it’s why fault arguments don’t delay your first medical bills. But the statute hides two tripwires:

• The 14-day rule. Benefits exist only if you received initial care — ambulance, ER, physician, chiropractor — within 14 days of the crash (§ 627.736(1)(a)). Feel “mostly fine” for three weeks and then discover the herniated disc? PIP pays nothing.
• The $2,500 sub-cap. Full benefits require an “emergency medical condition” determination by a qualified provider; without it, PIP stops at $2,500. Whether that phrase appears in your chart is worth $7,500 — literally.

Practical rule for every Florida crash, however minor it feels: get examined within days, not weeks, and make sure follow-up care is documented. In Florida, prompt treatment isn’t just medically wise — it’s a statutory precondition of your own coverage. (Repeal keeps being proposed; as of mid-2026 every repeal bill has died, and PIP remains the law.)

Layer two: the injury threshold — Florida’s gate to real damages

PIP’s $10,000 evaporates fast, but you can’t simply sue the at-fault driver for pain and suffering the way you could in Texas or Georgia. Florida’s threshold statute (§ 627.737(2)) reserves non-economic damages for injuries involving:

1. Significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function,
2. Permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability,
3. Significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement, or
4. Death.

In practice, the second prong — a physician’s finding of permanent injury — is where most contested Florida cases are won or lost. It’s a medical-evidence question: imaging, specialist opinions, impairment ratings, and consistent treatment. This is also why gaps in care hurt twice in Florida: once with the adjuster, and once at the threshold. Economic damages (bills beyond PIP, lost wages) don’t require the threshold — but the value that changes lives sits behind it.

Layer three: HB 837 — two years, and a real fault bar

Florida’s 2023 tort reform rewired the claim you file when you do clear the threshold:

• Two years, not four. Negligence actions accruing after March 24, 2023 must be filed within two years (§ 95.11(5)(a); wrongful death was already two, § 95.11(5)(e)). Enormous numbers of Floridians still believe they have four years; they don’t.
• Modified comparative fault. Florida abandoned pure comparative: a plaintiff found more than 50% at fault recovers nothing (§ 768.81(6); medical negligence excepted). At exactly 50-50 you still recover half — but one point past it, zero. Fault percentages are now existential, and the recorded statement you give the other insurer is where they’re manufactured.
• Bad faith rebalanced. Insurers got a 90-day safe harbor: tendering policy limits within 90 days of notice immunizes that bad-faith route (§ 624.155), and “mere negligence” is no longer bad faith. Well-documented, promptly-demanded claims get paid faster; sloppy ones lose their leverage.

The coverage trap: BI insurance is optional in Florida

Here’s the fact that shocks transplants: Florida requires only PIP ($10,000) and property damage liability ($10,000) — it is essentially alone in not requiring bodily injury liability coverage of ordinary drivers (§ 324.022; BI of 100/300 plus $50,000 PD is forced only after a DUI, § 324.023). Combine that with roughly 16% of Florida drivers uninsured outright and among the nation’s worst underinsurance rates (IRC), and the person who hits you frequently has nothing behind them at all.

Your realistic protections, in order: UM/UIM coverage — Florida insurers writing BI must offer it, rejection requires a signed OIR-approved form, and coverage stacks across your vehicles by default unless you signed non-stacking language for a discount (§ 627.727). If you own a Florida policy and haven’t checked your UM election, do it this week; it’s the single highest-leverage line on the page. Then MedPay if you carry it, and the defendant hunt: employers and commercial policies, trucking carriers with federal minimums, and Florida’s narrow dram shop statute (§ 768.125 — liability only for knowingly serving minors or a person “habitually addicted” to alcohol).

Suing the government: caps that just survived a veto

Claims against Florida agencies, cities, and counties run through § 768.28: written notice to the agency (plus the Department of Financial Services, except for municipalities and counties) within three years (two for wrongful death), a six-month investigation period before suit, and recovery capped at $200,000 per person / $300,000 per incident — with no punitive damages or prejudgment interest. Anything above the caps requires a claims bill passed by the Legislature, a political process that takes years. And the caps are current law, not old news: the 2026 bill that would have raised them (HB 145) was vetoed on June 30, 2026. Government-defendant cases in Florida are procedural minefields with modest ceilings — which makes early legal guidance on who else is liable worth more than anywhere.

What no-cap Florida still gives you

HB 837 changed procedure, but Florida still has no general caps on compensatory damages in ordinary injury cases — its Supreme Court struck down even the medical-malpractice non-economic caps (Kalitan, 2017). Punitive damages are capped at the greater of 3× compensatory or $500,000 (§ 768.73), with higher and uncapped tiers for profit-motivated and intentional misconduct. A Florida claim that clears the threshold, beats the fault bar, and finds real coverage is worth full value — the system’s filters are at the front, not the ceiling.

What to do right now

The Florida checklist, in statutory order: get examined within 14 days (it’s your PIP), document everything and keep treating consistently (it’s your threshold evidence), notify your own insurer, decline the at-fault insurer’s recorded statement (it’s their 50%-bar factory), photograph vehicles before repair, and pull your declarations page to check UM and stacking. Then use the form on this page for a free case review with a vetted Florida lawyer — or start with the car accident, motorcycle, or wrongful death guides. In a state where deadlines were cut in half and coverage is optional, the expensive mistakes all happen in the first two weeks.

Sources

• Fla. Stat. § 95.11 (2025) — limitations · HB 837 (2023) — staff analysis · § 768.81 — comparative fault
• § 627.736 — PIP and the 14-day rule · § 627.737 — injury threshold · § 627.727 — UM/UIM · ch. 324 — financial responsibility
• § 768.28 — sovereign immunity, notice and caps · HB 145 (2026) — vetoed June 30, 2026 · § 768.73 — punitive damages · § 768.125 — dram shop
• § 624.155 — insurer bad faith · North Broward Hospital District v. Kalitan (Fla. 2017)
• FLHSMV — crash dashboard · IIHS — state fatality data (2024)