Gaps in Florida Insurance Laws Can Hurt You
We take for granted that insurance will take care of us if we're hurt. Since more than half of us will be injured in our lifetimes, that's an important assumption, especially because it's wrong so often. Thinking that an insurance company will step in and be fair is a fallacy. It's in business to make money for its investors, not to pay money to you. Here are some interesting, and maybe startling, facts about holes in insurance laws in Florida.
Motorcycle riders beware. Rarely do your policies cover you for medical expenses and lost wages like auto policies do. Automobile policies have PIP and medical payments coverage provisions that typically pay $15,000 or more of those losses.
In the workplace, an injured employee is ordinarily completely covered by workers' compensation insurance. But the worker can be completely without that protection if the employer wasn't required to buy it. An employer who has less than 3 employees doesn't have to buy workers' compensation insurance. I see cases all the time of roofers or other construction people who thought they would be covered for injuries but weren't.
Florida, unlike many states, doesn't require car owners to buy bodily injury liability insurance to take care of people they hurt on the highways. On the other hand, it does require the purchase of property damage liability coverage. Apparently, the Florida legislature thought that damage to cars is more important than damage to people.
If you're riding in a common carrier, let's call it mass transportation, like a shuttle bus or the local trolley that has more than six seats, you're not protected by PIP coverage that pays for 80% of medical bills and 60% of lost wages. Even if you have that coverage on your car, you can't use it if you're in one of those contraptions. You could if you were riding in someone else's car and got injured.
These gaps in insurance laws can hurt you further. If you know the law, you can protect yourself by buying insurance products to eliminate the gaps.
If you or a family member has been seriously injured in an accident caused by someone else's negligence, call me for a free review of your claim.