A little known fact about Florida law is that cars are not required to carry bodily injury liability insurance. Under Florida's financial responsibility laws, cars are required to have no-fault coverage and property damage liability coverage. As a result of this law, there are a number of cars driving out on the roadways with only the minimum no-fault and property damage coverage—those vehicles are not covered for when the driver hits and injures another person. While Florida law does require a driver who causes personal injuries to be able to respond in damages of at least $10,000 or their driver's license get suspended, that is little consolation to someone who has suffered an injury at the hands of a driver with minimum financial responsibility limits. For these reasons, we suggest that you always carry UM (uninsured motorist's or underinsured motorist's coverage) on your own automobile policy.

 

You Should Protect Yourself Against Uninsured Drivers

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Your automobile insurance carrier is required by Florida law to offer you UM coverage in amounts up to your bodily injury liability limits. We suggest that you purchase as much bodily injury liability coverage and UM coverage as you can afford. Further, we suggest that you should not trust other drivers on the road to have sufficient bodily injury liability coverage to pay for your injuries should an accident happen. A frequent practice of insurance agents is to entice people to reject UM coverage in exchange for a small discount when they purchase their policy. We strongly advise against that.

 

UM Stacking

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Florida law also permits you to purchased “stacked” UM coverage. This means that you have the option to apply the UM benefits on all of your vehicles to a single claim. In other words, if you have $100,000/$300,000 of UM coverage on your policy and you elect to not purchase stacking, then you have $100,000/$300,000 of coverage at any given time while you are driving each vehicle (it is obvious that you can only drive one vehicle at a time). However, if you had elected to purchase stacking for that same UM coverage and you have three vehicles on your policy, then your UM coverage limits would be $300,000/$900,000 instead of just $100,000/$300,000.

 

If you have been injured due to the negligence of an uninsured driver or one who only carried a small amount of coverage, please contact a Lakeland car accident lawyer for advice on what you should do. The law regarding uninsured motorists in Florida has several pitfalls that you should be aware and may need the assistance of professional car accident counsel to deal with. A consultation with a Lakeland car accident attorney is free.