New Florida Car Insurance Laws: PIP Repeal, Fault Rules, Deadlines

The new Florida car insurance laws in effect right now come from two big shifts: House Bill 837, the 2023 tort reform package that rewrote the rules for accident lawsuits and insurer disputes, and House Bill 1181, which will end Florida’s no-fault system on July 1, 2026 and replace mandatory personal injury protection with mandatory bodily injury liability coverage. Between now and then, you still need PIP and property damage liability on every registered vehicle, but the rules around suing, proving damages, and holding an insurer accountable already look very different than they did two years ago.

What Coverage You Have to Carry Right Now

Through mid-2026, every registered vehicle in Florida must carry at least $10,000 in personal injury protection and $10,000 in property damage liability.1The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 627.736 – Required Personal Injury Protection Benefits; Exclusions; Priority; Claims PIP pays 80% of your own medical expenses after a crash regardless of fault, up to that $10,000 cap. There’s a catch that trips people up: you have to get initial treatment within 14 days of the accident or you lose PIP coverage entirely.

Florida does not currently require bodily injury liability coverage, which is the insurance that pays for another person’s injuries when you cause a wreck. That’s made Florida an outlier for years, and it’s about to change.

The July 2026 Switch from PIP to Bodily Injury Liability

Under HB 1181, PIP will be repealed and replaced with mandatory bodily injury liability coverage starting July 1, 2026. Watch for updated requirements from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles as the date approaches.2Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Florida Insurance Requirements

Property damage liability stays at a $10,000 minimum before and after the transition. That number hasn’t moved in decades and barely covers a fender bender on a newer vehicle. If your policy limits don’t cover the damage you cause, the difference comes out of your own pocket, so most drivers carry considerably more than the state floor.

The 51% Fault Bar on Recovery

Before HB 837, Florida let you recover something after a crash even if you were 99% at fault. Not anymore. Florida now uses a modified comparative negligence rule with a hard cutoff: if you are more than 50% responsible for your own injuries, you recover nothing.3The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 768.81 – Comparative Fault At 51% fault, your recovery drops to zero.

If you’re at or below the 50% line, your award is reduced by your share of the blame. A driver with $100,000 in losses who’s found 40% at fault would collect $60,000. That proportional reduction applies to both economic damages, like medical bills and lost wages, and non-economic damages, like pain and suffering.

The practical effect is that any realistic chance the other side can pin more than half the blame on you turns a lawsuit into an all-or-nothing bet. This changes the calculus early in a case, not at trial.

You Have Two Years to Sue, Not Four

HB 837 cut the statute of limitations for negligence claims from four years to two.4Florida Senate. Florida Code 95.11 – Limitations Other Than for the Recovery of Real Property The clock starts on the date of the accident. Once it runs out, the court will dismiss your case no matter how strong it is.

Two years sounds like a lot until you’re in the middle of it. Serious injuries often involve months of treatment before anyone knows the full extent of the damage, and settlement talks can eat up the rest. If you’ve been in a significant crash, don’t sit on the timeline.

How Medical Bills Are Valued in a Claim

Florida Statute 768.0427 changed what a jury is allowed to see when it comes to your medical expenses, and this is where many injured drivers feel the biggest hit to their potential recovery. The old approach let plaintiffs put the full billed amount in front of the jury, even when nobody actually paid that sticker price. Now, the admissible evidence is capped at what was actually paid or what the insurer was contractually obligated to pay.5The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 768.0427 – Admissibility of Evidence to Prove Medical Expenses in Personal Injury or Wrongful Death Actions

How the cap works depends on your insurance status:

  • If you have private health insurance, evidence is limited to what your insurer is obligated to pay the provider, plus your share under your policy (copays, deductibles, coinsurance).
  • If you’re uninsured or on Medicare or Medicaid, evidence is capped at 120% of the Medicare reimbursement rate for that service. Where no Medicare rate exists, the benchmark is 170% of the applicable Medicaid rate.
  • If you were treated under a letter of protection (an agreement to pay from a future settlement) and the right to that payment was later sold to a third party, the admissible evidence is what the third party actually paid for those rights.6Florida Senate. Florida Code 768.0427 – Admissibility of Evidence to Prove Medical Expenses in Personal Injury or Wrongful Death Actions

The same framework applies to future medical expenses. If you treated under a letter of protection, you also have to disclose the agreement and identify any company that bought the payment rights. The overall result: damage awards for medical costs now track what the healthcare system actually collected rather than the inflated list prices, which usually means smaller numbers in front of a jury.

Attorney Fees in Disputes with Your Insurer

Florida used to have a one-way attorney fee rule for insurance disputes. If a policyholder sued the insurance company and won, the insurer paid the policyholder’s legal fees on top of the claim. If the insurer won, the policyholder owed nothing. HB 837 eliminated that arrangement by limiting the statutes that authorized it, including Section 627.428.7Florida Senate. CS/CS/HB 837 – Civil Remedies

That one-way rule was the reason many attorneys took on smaller insurance disputes: a win meant guaranteed fees. Without it, some cases that used to be economically viable for a plaintiff’s lawyer aren’t anymore. For policyholders fighting a denied or underpaid claim, finding representation for a modest dispute is harder than it was.

Bad Faith Claims and the Civil Remedy Notice

When an insurer refuses to settle a legitimate claim or handles your case unfairly, Florida law lets you bring a bad faith action under Section 624.155. HB 837 made two changes worth knowing about.

First, negligence alone isn’t enough. Sloppy paperwork or a delayed response, standing on its own, won’t establish bad faith. The insurer’s conduct has to show a disregard for your interests, meaning it failed to settle when it could and should have, acting without fairness or honesty toward you.8The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 624.155 – Civil Remedy

Second, there’s a 90-day safe harbor for liability claims. If the insurer pays the lesser of the policy limits or your demand within 90 days of receiving notice of the claim with sufficient supporting evidence, it can’t be sued for bad faith. Miss the window, and the statute of limitations on the underlying claim is extended by an additional 90 days. If the insurer doesn’t pay in time, the existence of the safe harbor can’t be mentioned at trial, so juries aren’t invited to reason backward from it.

Filing the Civil Remedy Notice

Before you can sue for bad faith, you must file a Civil Remedy Notice through the Florida Department of Financial Services’ online portal.9Florida Department of Financial Services. Civil Remedy and Required Legal Notices Skip this step and your lawsuit gets dismissed. There is no filing fee. The notice has to state with specificity:

  • The policy number and the full legal name of the insurer.
  • The specific statutory language from the Florida Insurance Code the insurer allegedly violated, quoted rather than paraphrased.
  • A detailed account of what happened, including dates, communications, and the names of individuals involved.
  • The specific policy provisions relevant to the dispute, if available.

Vague or boilerplate allegations can get the notice deemed insufficient, which defeats the whole purpose. Once the department delivers the notice to the insurer, a 60-day cure period begins. During those 60 days, the insurer can pay the claim or fix the violation, and if it does, the bad faith action ends. If it does nothing, you can proceed with the lawsuit.

What Happens If You Let Coverage Lapse

Driving without the required insurance in Florida gets both your driver’s license and your vehicle registration suspended. Reinstatement means a nonrefundable fee that goes up with repeat offenses:

Go three full years without another lapse after your first reinstatement and the fee resets to $150 for the next occurrence. Those fees are on top of what you’ll pay for new coverage, which will almost certainly cost more after a gap because insurers treat lapses as a red flag. Keeping continuous coverage, even at minimum limits during a tight stretch, is always the cheaper path.