Merrillville recorded 1,335 collisions of every kind in 2023, according to the Indiana County Profiles 2023. If yours involved an Uber or Lyft, fault decides who is responsible for the crash, as it does after any collision. What the driver’s app was doing at the moment of impact decides something else: which insurance is in play once that is settled. Blackburn Romey handles those claims in Lake County, and personal injury and wrongful death law is all we do.
A Merrillville rideshare claim is a Lake County claim. It sits inside the same practice as our Merrillville car accident work, and what sets it apart is the layer of insurance rules that switch on with the app. Lake County recorded 15,694 collisions of every kind in 2024, the second-highest total of Indiana’s 92 counties, in Table 8.1 of Indiana Crash Facts 2024. Those are collisions of every kind rather than rideshare collisions, so the total tells you about the roads and nothing about your own claim.
Frank Wolferd is a member of the Lake County Bar Association, the county a Merrillville claim belongs to. His law career began in May 2013 after passing the Indiana bar exam that February.
If your crash happened in South Bend rather than Merrillville, our South Bend Uber accident lawyer page covers that city.
Fault decides who is responsible for the crash. What the app was doing decides which insurance is in the frame, and Indiana sets a different minimum for each situation. Both minimums are in IC 8-2.1-19.1-8. While a driver is logged on to the app but not engaged in a prearranged ride, Indiana requires primary motor vehicle liability insurance of at least $50,000 per person and $100,000 per incident for death and bodily injury, plus, for a crash after June 30, 2024, at least $50,000 per incident for property damage.
While a driver is engaged in a prearranged ride, Indiana requires primary motor vehicle liability insurance of at least $1,000,000 per incident for death, bodily injury and property damage. That single per-incident figure covers all three together and is not $1,000,000 for each person injured. Indiana does not say whose policy carries the required cover: it can be the driver’s insurance, the company’s, or a combination of the two.
These are minimum amounts of cover that must be carried, not a sum anyone is entitled to receive, and the per-incident figure is shared across a crash rather than paid to each person. Both tiers are liability cover, so they answer for harm the rideshare driver is responsible for. Where another driver caused the crash, the claim runs against that driver’s insurance. It may then run against your own uninsured or underinsured motorist cover, if you carry it.
The statute is exact about when the larger tier starts and stops, and IC 8-2.1-17-13.5(a) is where it says so. A prearranged ride begins when the driver accepts the rider’s request through the app, continues while the driver is transporting them, and ends when the last requesting rider gets out of the vehicle. So the drive to the pickup is already inside the ride, and the ride does not end at the first passenger’s door. A pedestrian struck while a driver was on the way to collect a passenger sits in the same tier as the passenger already in the car.
Some trips are not prearranged rides at all, and Indiana says so: a shared expense carpool or vanpool arrangement, a taxicab, limousine or other for-hire vehicle, and a regional transportation authority established under IC 36-9-3. The rideshare insurance tiers are not the rules for those, and the carve-out list is IC 8-2.1-17-13.5(b). Between log-on and acceptance the driver is in the lower tier, not the $1,000,000 one. Where the app was off altogether, Indiana’s rideshare chapter is not what governs the crash at all.
The app’s status at the moment of the crash, not the severity of your injury, decides which policy you are dealing with, and it is the first thing worth pinning down.
Before the app goes on, a crash with a rideshare driver is an ordinary car accident claim against that driver’s own policy. Our car accident practice handles it on that footing. After the app goes on, a different set of rules applies. This is why the tiers exist. Indiana lets an insurer write your ordinary personal auto policy so that it does not cover a loss from the moment the app is on. That is IC 8-2.1-19.1-10. The permission is broad: it can reach liability cover, uninsured and underinsured motorist cover, medical payments, comprehensive and collision. So the first question in a rideshare claim is what the app showed at the moment of the crash.
It is a permission, not a requirement — the same chapter says nothing here forces a personal policy to cover an app-on period, and nothing stops an insurer from providing that cover by contract or endorsement. That freedom is IC 8-2.1-19.1-10(d)(2). So whether a particular driver’s policy actually excludes the crash is a question about that policy’s wording, not something Indiana law decides for every policy.
Where a policy expressly excludes the claim, the insurer that excluded it has no duty to defend or indemnify it. That is IC 8-2.1-19.1-11(a). And the exclusion does not have to be a rideshare exclusion to bite: Indiana’s rideshare chapter leaves untouched an ordinary policy exclusion for a vehicle used to carry people or property for a charge, or available for hire by the public, including exclusions in use in Indiana before July 1, 2015.
The app-off side of the line has a limit of its own. For an ordinary passenger vehicle, IC 9-25-4-5 requires a driver to carry $25,000 in bodily-injury coverage for the injury or death of one person. A serious injury can outrun that quickly. Recovery vehicles carry higher minimums under IC 9-25-4-6. With the app on, the cover Indiana requires be carried is written to the statutory tiers. Whether a compliant policy was actually in force is a separate question, which is why the chapter also deals with a driver’s insurance lapsing or falling short. With the app off, it is a personal policy that may be a fraction of your medical bills. That is why the app’s status is worth settling before anyone starts talking about settlement.
The app’s own records answer the tier question. Indiana law puts a duty on the driver, and a separate one on the rideshare company and the insurer. After a crash a rideshare driver must, on request, give proof of the required insurance and say whether they were logged on to the app or engaged in a prearranged ride at the time, to directly interested parties, insurers and investigating law enforcement officers. That duty is IC 8-2.1-19.1-8(e)(2).
Because the claim turns on what the app was doing at the moment of the crash, Indiana makes the timing part of what has to be exchanged. In a claim coverage investigation the company and an insurer whose policy might provide the required cover must cooperate to facilitate the exchange of information with directly involved parties, under IC 8-2.1-19.1-12. That includes the precise times the driver logged on and off during the twelve hours before and the twelve hours after the crash. It also includes a clear description of the coverage, exclusions and limitations that apply.
This is a duty to cooperate placed on the company and the insurer. It is not a right you can enforce to demand the records yourself. The twelve hours describe the period the records must cover, and they are not a deadline for anyone to act. It still changes your position: the times exist, the statute names them, and a driver’s recollection of what the app was doing is not the last word on it.
Being blamed for part of a crash does not end an Indiana claim. Indiana compares fault in a claim against another driver. It does not in a tort claim against a governmental entity or a public employee under Indiana’s Tort Claims Act, where the comparative fault chapter does not apply at all, as IC 34-51-2-2 provides. Where it does apply, your own share of fault reduces what you recover rather than ending the claim, under IC 34-51-2-5. Only a share greater than everyone else’s combined bars the claim entirely, under IC 34-51-2-6. In a rideshare crash the app’s own records matter to the fault question as well as to the coverage question.
A fatal crash changes who brings the claim, and Indiana answers that in two different places — IC 34-23-1-1 and IC 34-23-2-1.
Where the person who died was not a child as Indiana defines one, the wrongful death lawsuit is brought by the personal representative of the person who died, and that action has to be filed within two years. Where the person who died was a child as Indiana defines one, IC 34-23-2-1 sets out who may bring the claim: the action may be maintained by the father and mother jointly, or by either of them if they name the other parent as a codefendant to answer as to his or her interest; or, after a divorce or dissolution of marriage, by the person to whom custody of the child was awarded; or by a guardian, for a protected person. If the person who was awarded custody has since died, a personal representative is appointed to maintain the action.
Which of those two routes applies turns on how Indiana defines a child, and the definition is a set of cumulative gates rather than a simple age. The person must have been unmarried and without dependents. They must also have been either under twenty, or under twenty-three and enrolled in a postsecondary educational institution or in a career and technical education school or program that is not a postsecondary educational program. The term also includes a fetus that has attained viability. A married 17-year-old is not a child for this purpose; a 21-year-old student is. So if the person you lost was near any of those lines, which route applies is worth settling before anyone files.
A child’s claim is not one to leave sitting: Indiana’s two-year injury deadline under IC 34-11-2-4 is the one to work to, so ask a lawyer about your own dates rather than assuming you have longer. Where a government body may be involved it is not even the first deadline, as the next section explains.
Indiana’s Tort Claims Act adds a step before the lawsuit deadline, and it is a short one. A city, county, township, town, school corporation, state agency, government vehicle or road authority may have played a part in your crash. Where one did, the deadline that matters first is a notice deadline, under IC 34-13-3-8(a) and IC 34-13-3-6(a).
The two years is not the first deadline where a government defendant is involved. Where an injury claim is a tort claim against a governmental defendant under Indiana’s Tort Claims Act, notice comes first: a claim against a political subdivision (a county, township, city, town, school corporation, state educational institution, city or county hospital, or another entity in the definition at IC 34-6-2.1-155) is barred unless notice is filed with its governing body (and, in the cases the statute specifies, with the Indiana political subdivision risk management commission) within 180 days after the loss occurs, and a claim against the state is barred unless notice is filed with the attorney general or the state agency involved within 270 days after the loss occurs. The notice must be in writing and delivered in person or by registered or certified mail. Both windows are far shorter than the two-year lawsuit deadline, and the Act has narrow exceptions of its own — so if any government body may be involved, speak to a lawyer well before the notice window closes, and do not assume a missed window has ended the claim without asking.
Whether your own claim is one of those is a question for a lawyer looking at your facts, not one to settle from a page. In a rideshare crash it can arrive from an angle nobody expects: a municipal vehicle in the collision, or the condition of the road. Raise it early.
Not for the tier. Both sit in the same one: logged on to the app but not engaged in a prearranged ride. There Indiana requires primary motor vehicle liability insurance of at least $50,000 per person and $100,000 per incident for death and bodily injury. The per-incident figure is shared across a crash rather than paid to each person. The $1,000,000 tier begins only when the driver accepts a request, and it ends when the last requesting rider gets out.
No. That figure is the minimum primary liability cover that must be carried during a prearranged ride, not a sum waiting for you. It is one per-incident figure covering death, bodily injury and property damage together, not $1,000,000 for each person. Because it is liability cover, it answers for harm the rideshare driver is responsible for. Being a passenger does not by itself entitle you to it. What you recover turns on fault and on what the crash did to you.
If the driver’s own insurance has lapsed or does not provide what Indiana requires, insurance maintained by the company must provide that cover beginning with the first dollar of a claim, and that insurer has a duty to defend the claim. Separately, the company’s cover may not be made to depend on a personal insurer denying a claim first, and the personal insurer may not be required to deny first. That is IC 8-2.1-19.1-8 again, at subsections (b) and (c).
Unless a written contract says otherwise, Indiana treats a rideshare driver as an independent contractor of the company, and does not treat the company as controlling the driver or as owning or operating the driver’s vehicle. That is IC 8-2.1-19.1-4. That is a statement about status, not about who can be held responsible — and it sits in the same chapter that requires the cover described above and lets the company be the one carrying it.
Then the claim follows the fault rather than the app. The tiers Indiana requires are primary liability cover, so they answer where the rideshare driver is responsible for the crash. Where another motorist caused it, your claim runs against that motorist’s insurance the way it would after any Indiana crash.
Your own policy may be the answer. On a standard Indiana auto liability policy the insurer must make uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage available under IC 27-7-5-2. Umbrella and excess policies, and certain commercial policies, are excepted from that duty. Unless you rejected that coverage in writing, it must be provided in limits at least equal to your own bodily-injury liability limits. And underinsured motorist coverage may never be sold or provided below $50,000.
Get the app’s status on the record. After a crash a rideshare driver must, on request, give proof of the required insurance and say whether they were logged on to the app or engaged in a prearranged ride at the time, to directly interested parties, insurers and investigating law enforcement officers. Ask, and write down the answer. It is a duty on the driver rather than something you can enforce yourself, so get what you can while you are there.
Indiana gives you two years from when your claim arises to file an injury lawsuit under IC 34-11-2-4. For most crash injuries that means two years from the day of the crash. But it is not always the first deadline. Where the claim is one against a government body under the Tort Claims Act, the notice windows above come first. Where the person who died was not a child as Indiana defines one, the personal representative’s wrongful death action has its own two-year window. Check your dates early.
Blackburn Romey takes rideshare injury and wrongful death claims from Merrillville and the rest of Lake County, as part of our Merrillville personal injury practice. Personal injury and wrongful death law is all we do.
The consultation is free and confidential. We will look at what the app was doing, what the crash has cost you, and whether there is a claim worth bringing.
Call 833-366-6595 or contact us to start that conversation.
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