How Fault Is Determined in a Florida Car Accident After HB 837

Florida rewrote its fault rules in March 2023, and a lot of what you'll read online is now wrong. If you crashed in Florida, three layers of law decide who pays: the no-fault PIP system that covers your first medical bills regardless of blame, the injury threshold that determines whether you can sue at all for pain and suffering, and the comparative negligence rule that can shrink — or eliminate — your recovery based on your share of the blame. Here's how each layer works, in the order you'll actually encounter them.

Florida is a no-fault state. Every registered vehicle must carry $10,000 in Personal Injury Protection (PIP) coverage, and after a crash, your own PIP pays your initial medical bills and lost wages no matter who caused the collision. PIP covers 80% of reasonable medical expenses and 60% of lost wages, up to that $10,000 cap.

Two things people consistently get wrong about PIP:

1. It doesn't mean nobody is at fault. It means fault doesn't matter for the first $10,000 of your own medical care. Fault matters enormously for everything beyond that — vehicle damage, bills above the cap, and pain and suffering.
2. $10,000 doesn't go far. A single ER visit with imaging can consume most of it. Serious injuries blow past PIP almost immediately, which is when the fault fight begins.

This one ends claims before they start. To use your PIP benefits, you must receive initial medical treatment within 14 days of the accident. Miss that window and your insurer can deny PIP coverage entirely — for an injury its own policyholder paid premiums to protect against.

There's a second trap inside the rule: unless a physician determines you had an "emergency medical condition," your PIP benefits are capped at $2,500 instead of the full $10,000. So the practical advice is blunt: get examined by a doctor promptly after any Florida crash, even if you feel okay. (For help deciding where to get examined — ER versus urgent care — see our post-accident medical guide.)

Because Florida is no-fault, you can't sue the at-fault driver for pain and suffering just because the crash was their fault. You have to clear the state's injury threshold, which generally requires one of the following:

• Significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function
• A permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability
• Significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement
• Death

Clear the threshold and the case stops being a no-fault case — you can pursue the at-fault driver for the full range of damages, economic and non-economic alike. Fall short, and you're largely limited to PIP plus a property damage claim. This threshold is why medical documentation, specialist opinions, and permanency findings matter so much in Florida cases. The phrase "permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability" is something a doctor has to be willing to put in writing.

For decades, Florida used pure comparative negligence — you could be 90% at fault and still recover 10% of your damages. House Bill 837, signed in March 2023, ended that. Florida now follows modified comparative negligence with a 51% bar: if you are found more than 50% at fault for the crash, you recover nothing. At 50% or below, your award is reduced by your fault percentage.

Run the numbers on a $200,000 case:

• You're 20% at fault: you recover $160,000.
• You're 50% at fault: you recover $100,000.
• You're 51% at fault: you recover $0.

That cliff between 50% and 51% changed how Florida cases are fought. Before HB 837, an insurer arguing you were mostly at fault could only shrink your claim. Now it can kill the claim outright, so insurers push hard to inch plaintiffs over the 50% line — and every percentage point gets litigated. (For how pure, modified, and contributory systems compare nationally, see our comparative negligence explainer.)

HB 837 made one more change worth knowing: it cut Florida's statute of limitations for negligence claims from four years to two. For crashes occurring after March 24, 2023, you generally have two years to file suit. Note that the comparative negligence change does not apply to medical malpractice claims, which keep the old pure rule.

Fault percentages aren't handed down from anywhere — they're argued, first between insurance adjusters and ultimately, if the case goes to trial, by a jury. The raw material:

• The crash report. The investigating officer's diagram, narrative, and any citations issued carry real weight with adjusters, though they don't bind a court. One Florida quirk: under the state's accident report privilege, statements you make to the investigating officer generally can't be used against you in a later trial — but they absolutely shape the insurer's initial fault assessment.
• Traffic violations. Running a light, texting, speeding, an improper lane change — a citation hands the other side a fault argument gift-wrapped.
• Physical evidence. Vehicle damage patterns, skid marks, debris fields, and final resting positions tell reconstruction experts a lot about speed and angle.
• Video. Dashcams, doorbell cameras, traffic cameras, and business security footage settle arguments that would otherwise be one driver's word against another's.
• Witnesses and event data recorders. Independent witnesses are gold. Modern vehicles also log speed, braking, and steering inputs in the seconds before impact — data that can confirm or demolish a driver's story.

In practice, the at-fault driver's insurer assigns you a fault percentage early, often based on little more than its own insured's account. That number is an opening position, not a verdict. Treat it like one.

The Florida-specific moves, in order: get medical treatment within 14 days, every time. Report the crash to your insurer to start PIP. Document the scene — photos, witnesses, the other driver's information. Don't accept the insurer's fault allocation as final, especially if they're nudging you toward that 51% cliff. And remember the clock: two years to file suit is shorter than it sounds when treatment alone can take months.

If you're staring down an insurer that's blaming you for a crash you didn't cause, DearLegal can match you with a vetted Florida personal injury attorney. File your case at dearlegal.com.