After a serious accident involving a rideshare driver contact an experienced car accident attorney to make sure your injuries and financial hardships are taken seriously. Giant companies like Uber and Lyft will have lawyers at the ready to work to discredit your injury claim and turn the blame around on you.
Martin Gasparian, the founder of Maison Law, serves Shafter and the surrounding area and has a proven track record of protecting victims after a rideshare accident. Whether you were a passenger in a rideshare vehicle or a driver or pedestrian struck by a rideshare driver, make sure you have an attorney fighting to earn you the compensation you need to recover.
Lyft Accident Dangers in Shafter
Your day may take you down Highway 99 or Route 43 into Bakersfield or just across Lerdo Highway for lunch. You may prefer to do the driving or you may trust a Lyft driver to pick you up and drop you off.
No matter if you see a rideshare driver from the backseat or from your own car you may notice a few troubling things about the job. First, it’s completely dependent on a cell phone. Drivers are alerted to a ride request. They must tap the phone to accept a request. They use that phone for mapping and to receive any changes in the plan. They also get paid through that phone.
Cellphones are the number one distraction for today’s drivers and that driver interaction causes thousands of accidents each year. A Lyft employee may have a mounted cellphone on the windshield near eye level, but they must still interact with it for seconds at a time. It’s all time their attention is away from the road. That mounted cellphone may also be blocking part of their view even when they do return their eyes to the lanes in front of them.
Lyft drivers are often in a hurry. They want to keep a customer happy and in a good mood to get a five-star rating. These distractions and temptations to drive recklessly are bad news for anyone else on the road or in crosswalks.
What to Do If You’re in an Accident with a Lyft Driver
Lyft works hard to separate themselves from their employees by keeping them as contract workers. This is so they can shed blame easier when a driver causes an accident and hurts someone.
If you get hit you’ll need a strong case to be able to hold Lyft accountable for things like your hospital bills and your missed time at work.
If you’re feeling well enough, try to gather certain evidence from the scene immediately after a collision:
- Call the Police And Paramedics – Tell EMS crews about every pain you have. Give the police all the details on what happened so they can write up an accurate collision report. Alert them if you saw a Lyft driver using a phone or driving recklessly. The officer’s accident report will be one of the strongest pieces of evidence in your corner.
- Use Your Own Cellphone to Get Pictures – Snap photos of the damage to the vehicles. Try to visually layout what happened by getting images of street signs, lane markings, and traffic lights.
- Chat with Witnesses – Find out what they saw and get their contact info. If they want to write down their testimony make sure they sign and date it. They could also let you record a statement on your phone.
- Check for Surveillance – See if there are any security cameras or doorbell cams mounted on local homes or businesses. The footage may prove your innocence.
- Exchange information with Lyft drivers — Get pictures of their worker identification number, their driver’s license, and their insurance card. Make sure to note any Lyft signage they are wearing or they have affixed to their car.
- See your Doctor – Make an appointment and get any injury documented and be on the lookout for injuries that pop up after the shock and adrenaline of the crash wear off.
Do Lyft Drivers Carry Insurance to Cover Accident Victims
Lyft requires each driver to carry a personal car insurance policy. You will usually have to begin your accident claim with the driver’s insurance company. This may be a dead-end because insurance companies aren’t always accepting when they find out their policyholders are driving for a rideshare. They could decide not to provide coverage for the crash.
If your claim gets denied or the driver’s coverage doesn’t offer enough support, Lyft does carry supplemental insurance for accidents. Their help only applies under specific circumstances:
- If a driver is logged into the Lyft App but doesn’t have a customer request Lyft provides $100,000 total injury liability per accident, and $25,000 property damage liability for accident victims.
- If a driver has accepted a ride request or has picked up the customer, Lyft’s policy offers one million dollars in liability insurance and one million dollars in uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage until the rider is dropped off.
- If a Lyft driver hasn’t logged into the Lyft app yet or has just logged off, any victims in an accident would not be covered by Lyft insurance.
Once a claim has failed with the driver’s insurance and Lyft’s coverage, victims can face the prospect of depending on their own insurance company. A claim would ask to draw money from your uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage. Having a personal injury attorney to file this claim can protect you from a lowball offer.
You may have had a good relationship with your insurance agent for years, but that doesn’t mean you should leave the amount of your accident compensation up to them. Your own agent will be trying to minimize the amount you receive and it may not be enough to cover all of your medical bills and other hardships.
Contact a Lyft Rideshare Accident Lawyer Serving Shafter
After an accident involving a serious injury in Shafter or anywhere in Kern County, contact Maison Law for a no-obligation case evaluation that comes at no charge to you. We take a hands-on approach with every case and we don’t get paid unless we win your case.
We believe that victims and their families deserve to know about every option available to them so they can make an informed decision. Insurance companies and large corporations like Lyft can purposely confuse victims, but we won’t allow them to act in bad faith. Tells us what happened so that we can help you get the compensation you need to get your life back on track.
