On the road: Should Florida require bodily injury coverage?
Published March 2nd, 2021
It’s a bad day when you have to tell a seriously injured client that the other driver had no “bodily injury” insurance, and therefore, you can’t help them.
That happens all too often in Florida, where drivers are required to carry “property damage” insurance, which pays if you damage someone’s car, but not “bodily injury” coverage, which pays if you maim or kill someone. That doesn’t seem right.
Presently Florida lawmakers are considering massive changes to Florida’s system of assuring “financial responsibility” on the road, or, in other words, making sure drivers are capable of paying for the harm they cause.
Proposals presently call for doing away with No Fault Insurance also known as Personal Injury Protection (PIP), which pays up to $10,000.00 in benefits to cover your medical bills and lost wages regardless of whether or not you were at fault.
Instead, drivers would be required to maintain bodily injury coverage of at least $25,000.00 per person and $50,000.00 per accident. But then, it is asked, who pays the emergency room bill, if you don’t have PIP? And will this result in a lawsuit for every fender bender?
If passed, these changes would undo decades of law going back to the 70’s. Back then, Florida joined many other states in adopting “no fault insurance” as a means of limiting personal injury awards by restricting damages for pain and suffering only to cases where there is proof of a “permanent injury.” But as it turned out, PIP has not reduced litigation. On the contrary, it’s fostered litigation.
