Hit by an Uber or Lyft Driver

If a rideshare driver hit you, the first question is whether their app was active when it happened.

You were in your own car, on your bike, or on foot. You were never the passenger.

That changes nothing about your right to recover, but it changes which insurance is on the hook.

A driver does not stop being at fault because they were working for an app. The app status decides which policy pays, not whether you have a claim.

When the driver had a ride accepted or a passenger aboard, a $1 million commercial policy can apply.

When the app was off, you are usually dealing with the driver's personal auto insurance, which is often thin.

The figures vary by state, and the rideshare company controls the records that prove which window applied.

What the carrier does next is predictable. It looks for a reason to push the driver into a lower-coverage window so the big policy never opens.

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There is no honest single figure for a claim like yours, and anyone who quotes one before reading your file is guessing. The value comes from your injuries, the strength of fault, and which insurance is actually reachable.

That last piece is what makes a rideshare case different from an ordinary fender bender. The driver who hit you may have been covered by a $1 million commercial policy, or only by a personal policy carrying state-minimum limits. The same injury can support a far larger recovery under the first than the second.

So the rideshare policy may or may not apply to your crash. Whether it does is the question that sets the ceiling on what you can collect, and it is decided by one fact: what the driver's app was doing when they hit you.

For how injury claims are valued once the available coverage is known, see what an Uber or Lyft accident is worth.

You did not pick the driver, the trip, or the app. From the outside, you cannot see any of it. But the law treats the crash through whatever the driver was doing for the platform at that moment, and there are three windows.

• App off. The driver was not working. Only their personal auto insurance applies, the same as any other crash, and the rideshare company's coverage does not enter the picture.
• App on, waiting for a request. A limited contingent policy applies. Uber lists minimums around $50,000 per person and $100,000 per crash for injuries, plus about $25,000 for property damage, during this window, and the exact figures vary by state.
• Ride accepted or passenger aboard. The full $1 million third-party liability policy is in play, the window that supports the largest recoveries.

The $1 million coverage applies only once a ride was accepted or the trip was underway. It does not exist while the app is off, and it is far larger than the contingent minimums that apply during the waiting window.^[1] A handful of states set their own rules, with exceptions in places like Arizona, Nebraska, Maryland, and parts of New York, so the controlling figures depend on where the crash happened.

This is why two crashes that look identical from the curb can be worth wildly different amounts. The driver who hit you was either between fares, waiting for a ping, or carrying a passenger, and only the records know which.

When a rideshare driver hits you, you are often the last person to find out they were working. They don't want you to know, and aren't going to volunteer that information. We assume the app was on during our investigation until the records prove otherwise, because that is where the real coverage is.

Here is the hard part for someone hit from the outside. You have no login, no trip receipt, no in-app record. The proof that a ride was accepted or underway sits inside the rideshare company's systems, and the company is the party with the most reason to keep it quiet when the honest answer triggers the million-dollar policy.

That proof is reachable, but it has to be pursued deliberately and early. The records that settle app status include:

• The platform's trip and GPS logs. Uber and Lyft track each driver's status to the second, including whether a request was accepted and where the vehicle was. This data answers the coverage question directly.
• A litigation hold and preservation demand. A formal notice that tells the company to preserve the trip data before it ages out or gets overwritten, sent the moment a claim opens.
• A subpoena when the carrier stalls. When a preservation letter is met with silence or a denial, the trip records can be compelled through the company in litigation.
• The driver's own account and statements. What the driver told police at the scene, and whether they admit they were logged in or had a passenger, lines up against the platform data.
• Scene and witness evidence. A passenger in the car, a rideshare decal, an app open on the dash, or a bystander who saw a pickup all corroborate that the driver was engaged.

This is where the case is built. Insurance companies know our reputation for not taking the platform's first answer at face value, and the firm pursues the trip data the same way in every rideshare matter: demand it, preserve it, and compel it if the company drags its feet.

Expect the carrier to argue the app was off. If it can place the driver outside any active window, the rideshare policy walks away and you are left with the driver's personal insurance, which is frequently a minimum-limits policy that will not cover a serious injury.

That denial is not the end of the road. When the rideshare coverage does not apply, or applies but falls short, the layers usually run in this order:

• The driver's personal auto policy. The starting point when the app was in fact off, capped at whatever limits the driver bought.
• The contingent rideshare policy. If the driver was logged on and waiting, the smaller per-person and per-crash minimums can still apply even without an accepted ride.
• Your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. When the at-fault coverage is too thin or absent, your own UM/UIM can become the most important source of recovery on the whole claim.

That last layer is easy to forget when the at-fault driver was the one in the rideshare vehicle, but it is yours and it is built for exactly this gap. When the policy behind the driver who hit you comes up short, your uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage can be the difference between a partial recovery and a full one.

The coverage rules do not change because you were on foot or on a bike instead of in a car. If an Uber or Lyft driver struck you in a crosswalk or a bike lane, the same three windows decide which policy pays, and the same $1 million coverage applies if the driver had a ride accepted or a passenger aboard.

What does change is the stakes. A person on foot or a bicycle has no crumple zone, no airbag, and no steel cage. A crash that would leave a driver shaken can leave a pedestrian or cyclist with a fractured pelvis, a spinal injury, or a brain injury that reshapes the rest of their life.

Those are the injuries where the difference between a personal policy and the $1 million commercial policy stops being a technicality and becomes the difference between covered care and a lifetime of unpaid bills. The harder the case is fought, the more it matters that the app-status proof is locked down early.

Your deadline to file is set by your state's statute of limitations, and it varies. Some windows are as short as one or two years, and missing the deadline ends the claim no matter how clearly the rideshare driver was at fault.

On a case like this, the filing clock is not the only reason to move fast. The trip and GPS records that prove app status sit with Uber or Lyft, and they have to be demanded and preserved before they age out. That evidence is often what decides whether the million-dollar policy ever opens, so waiting can quietly shrink the case long before any legal deadline is close. Confirm your specific deadline early.