Fort Wayne Rideshare Accident Lawyer

Allen County recorded 12,878 collisions of every kind in 2024, the third-highest total of Indiana’s 92 counties, according to Indiana Crash Facts 2024. When one of those crashes involves an Uber or a Lyft, an Indiana statute sets the insurance that has to be carried, and which of its requirements applies turns on what the driver’s app was doing at the moment of impact. This page walks through the three positions the law recognizes and what each one changes for a Fort Wayne injury claim.

Why Fort Wayne Crash Victims Choose Blackburn Romey After a Rideshare Crash

Personal injury and wrongful death law is all we do. A rideshare case carries a question an ordinary crash does not: which of three insurance positions the driver was in, which turns on policy language and app records. We handle car accident claims across Indiana, and we handle rideshare claims in Allen County.

David A. Singleton is a member of the Allen County Bar Association. He also handles Blackburn Romey‘s motion practice and oral arguments in the trial and appellate courts.

A Free Confidential Consultation is the place to start; we will look at what happened and give you a straight answer about whether there is a claim worth bringing. We also handle Uber and Lyft claims in South Bend.

Who Pays After an Uber or Lyft Crash in Fort Wayne?

Which insurance requirement is engaged depends on what the driver’s app was doing when the crash happened. IC 8-2.1-19.1-10 lets an insurer write a driver’s own auto policy so that it does not cover a loss once the app is on. The permission is broad. It can reach liability coverage, uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, medical payments, comprehensive and collision.

But it is a permission, not a requirement. Nothing in the chapter forces a personal policy to cover an app-on period. And nothing stops an insurer from selling that cover as an add-on. So whether a driver’s policy really does exclude the crash is a question about the wording of that policy. It is not something Indiana law decides for every policy.

Where a policy does expressly exclude the claim, IC 8-2.1-19.1-11 means the insurer that excluded it has no duty to defend or to pay the claim. And it need not be a rideshare exclusion to bite. Indiana’s rideshare chapter leaves an ordinary policy exclusion in place where the vehicle was used to carry people or property for a charge, or was available for hire by the public. A crash with the app off is an ordinary Fort Wayne car accident claim against the driver’s own policy.

The Three Coverage Positions, in Order

Two of the three carry dollar figures set by statute — minimums that must be carried, not sums anyone is entitled to receive.

• First, the app is off. No rideshare requirement is engaged, and the claim runs against the driver’s own liability policy in the ordinary way.
• Second, the driver is logged in to the app but is not on a ride. That covers a driver waiting for a request and one between fares. IC 8-2.1-19.1-8 then requires primary motor vehicle liability insurance of at least $50,000 per person and $100,000 per incident for death and bodily injury. For a crash after June 30, 2024 it also requires at least $50,000 per incident for property damage. The $100,000 is shared across the crash, not paid to each person hurt.
• Third, a ride is underway. This runs from the moment a ride is accepted until the last requesting rider gets out. Here IC 8-2.1-19.1-8 requires primary motor vehicle liability insurance of at least $1,000,000 per incident for death, bodily injury and property damage together. That is one figure for the whole incident, not $1,000,000 for each person hurt. The driver, the company, or the two together may carry it.

Both tiers are liability coverage. That means they answer for harm the rideshare driver is responsible for. Being a passenger does not by itself entitle you to the figure. Where another driver caused the crash, the claim runs against that driver’s insurance first, and then against your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage if you carry it.

If the driver’s own policy has lapsed or does not provide what Indiana requires, the same statute steps in. Insurance maintained by the company must then provide that coverage from the first dollar of a claim, and that insurer has a duty to defend it. Separately, the company’s coverage may not be made to depend on a personal insurer denying a claim first.

What the App’s Status Changes About Your Claim

The app’s status decides which of those requirements applies. Under IC 8-2.1-17-13.5, the ride begins when the driver accepts the request in the app. It ends when the last requesting rider gets out of the vehicle. So the $1,000,000 tier covers the drive to the pickup, not just the trip itself, and it does not end at the first passenger’s door.

Some trips are not prearranged rides at all, and the same section says so. A shared expense carpool or vanpool arrangement is out. So is a taxicab, a limousine or another for-hire vehicle. So is a regional transportation authority established under IC 36-9-3. The rideshare tiers are not the rules for those.

Who Has to Prove What the App Was Doing

The app’s own records answer the tier question. Under IC 8-2.1-19.1-8(e), 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 is a duty on the driver, and it gives you no remedy of your own if they do not comply: the chapter’s only sanction is a Class A infraction under IC 8-2.1-19.1-20, which the state enforces rather than an injured person. So it is a starting point rather than a way to compel the records.

In a claim coverage investigation, IC 8-2.1-19.1-12 requires the rideshare company, and an insurer whose policy might provide the required coverage, to cooperate in exchanging that information with the people directly involved, including the precise times the driver logged on and off during the twelve hours before and the twelve hours after the crash. Those twelve hours describe the period the records must cover; they are not a deadline for anyone to act. And it is a duty to cooperate rather than a duty to hand the records over on demand, so the request has to be made and pursued rather than assumed.

What Indiana Law Requires After a Rideshare Crash

Unless a written contract says otherwise, IC 8-2.1-19.1-4 treats the driver as an independent contractor of the rideshare company, and does not treat the company as controlling the driver or as owning or operating the driver’s vehicle. That is a statement about status, not about who can be held responsible — and it sits in the same chapter that requires the coverage described above and lets the company be the one carrying it. The rest of the claim runs on the same Indiana rules as any other crash: a filing deadline, a comparison of fault, and the coverage that answers when the at-fault policy is too small.

Who May Bring a Wrongful Death Claim

Where someone was killed, who brings the action depends on who died. If 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 under IC 34-23-1-1. That action has to be filed within two years.

Indiana defines a child narrowly, and three gates have to be met together. The person who died must have been unmarried and without dependents. They must also have been under twenty, or under twenty-three and enrolled in a postsecondary institution or a career/technical program that is not a postsecondary program. The definition is not limited to those gates — it also includes a fetus that has attained viability, as defined in IC 16-18-2-365.

Where the person who died was a child in that sense, 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. After a divorce or dissolution of marriage, it may be maintained by the person to whom custody of the child was awarded. A guardian may maintain it for a protected person. If the person who was awarded custody has since died, a personal representative is appointed to maintain the action. A child’s claim is not one to leave sitting. Indiana’s two-year injury deadline is the one to work to, so ask a lawyer about your own dates rather than assuming you have longer.

How Long There Is to Bring a Claim

IC 34-11-2-4 gives you two years from when your claim arises to file an injury lawsuit. For most crash injuries that means two years from the day of the crash. Where a government body may have played a part, those two years are not the first deadline you face; that situation carries its own, much shorter notice clock, and it is covered below.

Does the Deadline Change If a Government Body Was Involved?

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. Those notice deadlines are set by IC 34-13-3-8(a) and IC 34-13-3-6(a), and the political subdivisions they cover are listed at IC 34-6-2.1-155.

How Your Own Share of the Fault Is Treated

Indiana compares fault in a claim against another driver. It does not compare fault in a tort claim against a governmental entity or a public employee under Indiana’s Tort Claims Act. There, IC 34-51-2-2 means the comparative fault chapter does not apply at all. Where it does apply, your own share of fault reduces what you recover under IC 34-51-2-5, and only a share greater than everyone else’s combined bars the claim entirely under IC 34-51-2-6. So an insurer’s argument that you carry some of the blame is an argument about the size of what you recover, not automatically the end of it.

When the Driver’s Insurance Is Not Enough

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, so a serious injury can outrun the at-fault driver’s policy quickly. Recovery vehicles carry higher minimums under section 6.

Your own policy is the other place to look. On an ordinary Indiana auto liability policy — umbrella and excess policies are treated differently — IC 27-7-5-2 requires the insurer to make uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage available. A second and separate duty sets its size: it must be provided in limits at least equal to the bodily-injury liability limits of the insured’s own policy, unless the insured rejected the coverage in writing. Underinsured motorist coverage may never be sold or provided below $50,000. That is a floor on what an insurer may sell or provide, not a promise that every Indiana driver carries it — someone who rejected the coverage in writing has none.

Frequently Asked Questions About Fort Wayne Rideshare Accident Claims

Talk to a Fort Wayne Rideshare Accident Lawyer

What the app was doing at the moment of the crash decides which of the three positions — and so which insurance requirement — is in play. The records that settle it sit with the rideshare company and its insurer, not with you. Blackburn Romey handles rideshare injury and wrongful death claims in Allen County, and a free confidential consultation is the place to start. The two-year deadline in IC 34-11-2-4 runs from when the claim arises, whether or not the coverage question has been settled — and where a government body may be involved, the Tort Claims Act notice window is much shorter. If a family member was killed, the same conversation covers who is entitled to bring the action. Call 833-366-6595 or contact us to arrange a consultation.