DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT!
How uninsured motorist protection applies to pedestrians. You are out walking in your community, enjoying the beautiful Florida weather, and getting some fresh air. You come to a crosswalk at a busy intersection, press the button for the pedestrian crossing and wait for the crossing sign to activate. Once it lights up you proceed to walk across the intersection, when suddenly you are hit by a vehicle whose driver was checking their Facebook page and didn’t realize the light was red. The vehicle slams into your legs flipping you onto the hood of the car. You suffer a fractured patella, and fractures to your tibia and fibula. Believe it or not, you are lucky though, because according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), of the approximate 64,000 pedestrians that is struck by a vehicle every year in the United States, approximately 5,000 results in a fatality. Florida is known as the most dangerous state for walking, and of the top ten cities cited for pedestrian fatalities, five were in our sunshine state. Most all of these collisions result in serious bodily injury. Typically, pedestrian accidents involve one vehicle as well. So, if this happens to you, where will you find coverage to pay for your damages? First, if you own a vehicle then under Florida Law you’ll look to your own auto policy of insurance for payment of your medical bills and lost wages under your personal injury protection coverage, otherwise known as no-fault. If you do not own a vehicle, then you look to the personal protection coverage of a resident relative in your household who owns the vehicle. If neither of these scenarios applies to you, then you will actually look to the auto policy of the vehicle that hit you for payment toward your medical bills under their personal injury protection/no-fault coverage.
However, PIP/No-Fault is typically woefully insufficient to cover your out-of-pocket expenses as it is only in the amount of $10,000.00 paid at 80 percent of your medicals and 60 percent of your lost wages.
Therefore, we next look to the auto policy of the vehicle that hit you to see if they purchased Bodily Injury Liability coverage. This is coverage you hope they purchased to pay for the liability they owe to those that they cause bodily injury to as a result of the car accident. I say hope because in most circumstances it is not required to be purchased in Florida if they bought personal injury protection/no-fault coverage on their vehicle.
So what do you do as the injured pedestrian if the at-fault party does not have Bodily Injury Liability coverage? This is when you look to your own auto insurance policy, or the insurance policy of the resident relatives of your household to see if you/they purchased Uninsured Motorist coverage.
This is the most important coverage you can buy in Florida as it protects you if the person who hit you does not carry Bodily Injury Liability coverage on their automobile policy. Also, if they leave the scene without giving you their auto insurance information, and they cannot be located thereafter, then Uninsured Motorist coverage will protect you from your damages in this situation too. Trust me, this does happen as we actually have had quite a few cases where the at-fault party leaves the scene of an accident without stopping or giving insurance information to the injured person. If they cannot be later located or identified then we call these phantom vehicle cases. Uninsured Motorist coverage then fills in and becomes the coverage that is non-existent on the at-fault party’s side of the case.
Uninsured Motorist coverage also will cover pedestrians for the damages they suffered that aren’t fully covered by the at-fault driver’s Bodily Injury Liability coverage. In other words, a situation where the party that hit you has Bodily Injury Liability coverage, but it is not enough to pay for all of your damages. In this situation, the same Uninsured Motorist coverage that you have on your policy or a resident relative’s policy is now called Underinsured Motorist coverage and it will fill in where the at-fault party’s liability coverage is insufficient, but not nonexistent.
In comparison to other coverages on your auto policy, uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage is relatively inexpensive, so if you can afford to do so, buy as much as you can to cover yourself if you are ever hit by a careless driver while walking through your town. Don’t ever leave home without it!