A Florida car accident insurance claim is how you recover your medical bills, lost wages, and other losses after a crash. Florida is a no-fault state, so your own Personal Injury Protection (PIP) coverage pays first, up to $10,000, no matter who caused the accident. A serious injury lets you step outside that system and claim the full value of your losses from the at-fault driver.
Florida gives you 14 days to get medical treatment, or your PIP benefits are cut or denied. Adjusters run your claim through software called Colossus and ClaimIQ, which prices your settlement from your diagnosis codes and where the claim is filed. Six common tactics are used to pay you less. Your deadline to sue is two years from the date of the crash. This guide explains how insurers actually value a claim, and how to protect yours.
Deadline | Timeframe | What Happens If You Miss It |
|---|---|---|
Seek medical treatment | Within 14 days of the crash | PIP benefits capped at $2,500 or denied |
Notify your insurer | Within 14 days | PIP claim delayed or denied |
Report to law enforcement | Immediately (injury, death, or $500+ damage) | Required by F.S. 316.065 |
File a personal injury lawsuit | 2 years from the crash (on/after March 24, 2023) | Right to sue is permanently lost (F.S. 95.11) |
File a property damage lawsuit | 4 years from the crash | Vehicle damage claim expires |
Wrongful death lawsuit | 2 years from the date of death | Surviving family is barred |
The 14-day rule is the one accident victims miss most. Florida pays PIP medical benefits only if a qualified provider sees you within 14 days of the crash. Wait longer and your $10,000 in coverage can drop to $2,500, or vanish. Call 911 at the scene, then see a doctor within the two weeks that follow.
Florida is a no-fault state. Every driver must carry $10,000 in PIP, and after a crash your own PIP pays first, regardless of fault. It covers 80% of your medical bills and 60% of lost wages, up to that $10,000 limit.
There is a catch built into the rule. PIP pays the full $10,000 only if a doctor finds you have an “emergency medical condition.” Without that finding, your benefit is capped at $2,500, which a single hospital visit can exhaust in an afternoon.
You can step outside the no-fault system when your injuries are serious. Florida law allows a claim against the at-fault driver for permanent injury, significant scarring, or loss of an important bodily function. That is where the real compensation lives, because PIP was never built to cover a serious injury in full.
The order you do things in changes what your claim is worth. Follow this sequence.
Call 911 from the scene. A police report documents fault while the evidence is fresh.
See a qualified provider to protect your PIP benefits, even if you feel fine. Soft-tissue and head injuries often surface days later.
Open your PIP claim, but keep it factual. You are not required to give a recorded statement.
Photos of the scene and vehicles, the other driver’s information, witness names, and every medical visit. Gaps in treatment are the first thing an adjuster uses to discount your claim.
Do not sign a blanket medical authorization, and stay off social media while your claim is open. Both get used against you.
Settling before your doctors know your final prognosis means signing away the cost of future care, and you cannot take that back.
Florida law allows recovery in five categories. What you actually receive depends on how well each one is documented, not on how clearly the statute lists it.
Cover emergency care, surgery, physical therapy, and future treatment. Future care is the category most often underdocumented. We work with treating physicians and life-care planners to project costs across your lifetime, not just through today.
Take more than a recent pay stub. A 35-year-old with a brain injury loses decades of compounding income, not a few missed weeks, and that trajectory has to be proven.
Covers repair or replacement of your vehicle. Routine.
Pain, suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life. They are available through a serious-injury claim outside PIP, and their value rises or falls on how clearly your daily life-change is shown.
Apply only to extreme recklessness, such as a drunk driver. They are rare, and we tell you up front whether your case supports them.
Your own Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist coverage is what pays when the at-fault driver cannot. Florida requires drivers to carry just $10,000 in bodily injury liability, and the state has one of the highest rates of uninsured drivers in the country. That combination is why UM/UIM is one of the most valuable protections a Florida driver can buy.
If you carry it, your insurer steps into the at-fault driver’s shoes and pays your damages up to your policy limit. In many cases that coverage can be stacked across the vehicles on your policy, which multiplies what is available. Check your declarations page today, before you ever need it.
Adjusters do not price your claim by hand. They feed it into software called Colossus and ClaimIQ, which generates a settlement range from your diagnosis codes, treatment records, injury type, location, and whether you have a lawyer. The number that software produces is what your adjuster is authorized to negotiate toward.
That is why your diagnosis code can matter as much as your injury. A “cervical strain” and a “cervical disc herniation” (ICD-10 code M50.13) produce very different numbers, even for similar symptoms. Getting the right specialist and the right diagnosis on the record is a legal strategy decision, not only a medical one.
Venue matters too. Palm Beach County carries a higher geographic multiplier in the software than rural markets, because the litigation risk to the insurer is greater here. The same injury can be worth more simply because of where the claim is filed.
Six tactics show up again and again to drive that number down:
A friendly call meant to lock in words they can use later. You can decline it.
A fast check before you know how badly you are hurt.
Waiting you out until the bills pile up and you accept less.
Your own posts used to dispute your injuries.
Because the software pays represented claimants more, and they know it.
When an insurer refuses to pay a valid claim, Florida law gives you a remedy most guides only mention. We file a Civil Remedy Notice under F.S. 624.155, which puts the company on formal notice and starts a 60-day clock to pay. If it still refuses and is later found to have acted in bad faith, it can be liable for the entire judgment, not just the policy limit. Naming that consequence is often what moves a stalled claim.
The same software that lowballs you pays represented claimants more, and local courts reward lawyers who know them. We try cases in Palm Beach County, we know the roads where these crashes happen, and we know how the regional insurers behave.
In more than 20 years representing injured Floridians, we have recovered over $8 million for our clients, including car accident settlements of $600,000 and $215,000. The gap between a low offer and a result like these is almost always documentation: the diagnosis on the record, the future-care projection, and the venue where the claim is filed.
Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Every case is different.
In more than 20 years representing injured Floridians, we have recovered over $8 million for our clients, including car accident settlements of $600,000 and $215,000. The gap between a low offer and a result like these is almost always documentation: the diagnosis on the record, the future-care projection, and the venue where the claim is filed.
Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Every case is different.
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Yes. After a crash, your own PIP coverage pays your medical bills and lost wages first, regardless of who caused the accident. You can pursue the at-fault driver directly only when your injuries meet Florida’s serious-injury threshold.
PIP pays 80% of your medical bills and 60% of lost wages, up to a $10,000 limit, and every Florida driver must carry it. The full $10,000 applies only if a doctor documents an emergency medical condition; otherwise your benefit is capped at $2,500.
Cases with clear fault and minor injuries often settle in 3 to 6 months. Serious-injury cases that require litigation can take a year or more, because rushing a serious claim usually means leaving money on the table.
Two years from the date of the crash, for accidents on or after March 24, 2023 (F.S. 95.11). Miss it and your right to sue is gone, with very few exceptions.
Most use Colossus or ClaimIQ. The software builds a settlement range from your diagnosis codes, treatment, injury type, location, and whether you are represented.
Your own UM/UIM coverage makes up the difference. With Florida’s $10,000 liability minimum and high uninsured-driver rate, UM/UIM is often the coverage that actually pays for a serious injury.
We file a Civil Remedy Notice under F.S. 624.155, which starts a 60-day window for the insurer to pay before it faces bad-faith exposure.
Yes. PIP pays 60% of lost wages, within your $10,000 limit.
You can still recover. Florida uses modified comparative negligence, so your award is reduced by your share of fault, and you are barred only if you are more than 50% at fault.
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