Truck Accident Laws in Florida (2026): Deadlines & Liability

A wreck with a tractor-trailer is not just a larger car accident. A fully loaded commercial truck can outweigh a passenger car many times over, the injuries are often catastrophic, and the case typically involves a trucking company, federal safety regulations, and multiple potential defendants. Florida also adds a wrinkle most states do not: it is a no-fault state, so the path to suing the at-fault trucker runs through a specific injury threshold. If a commercial truck hurt you in Florida, the deadline, the fault rule, and the no-fault threshold all shape your claim from the start.

This page explains Florida's deadline, its negligence rule, and how its no-fault PIP system works, then covers the federal trucking rules that apply nationwide. It is general legal information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.

The Deadline to Sue in Florida

Florida significantly shortened its negligence deadline in 2023. Under Fla. Stat. section 95.11, as amended by House Bill 837, a negligence action must be filed within two years for causes of action that accrue after March 24, 2023. The old rule allowed four years, so older guidance you may find online can be wrong for a recent crash. For most truck collisions, the two-year clock runs from the date of the crash.

Wrongful death claims in Florida are also subject to a two-year deadline, generally measured from the date of death. Florida's deadlines are strict, and filing late almost always ends the case regardless of its strength. Some situations, such as a claim against a government entity, carry their own notice rules and timelines, so confirming the exact deadline early is important.

How Florida Divides Fault

HB 837 also changed how Florida treats a plaintiff's own fault. Florida used to follow pure comparative negligence, which let an injured person recover even if mostly at fault. Now, under the amended Fla. Stat. section 768.81, Florida applies modified comparative negligence with a 51% bar: you can recover only if your share of fault is 50% or less, and you recover nothing if you are found more than 50% at fault.

When you recover, the court reduces your damages by your percentage of fault. If your damages are $400,000 and you are 30% at fault, your recovery falls to $280,000. Because the new bar gives insurers a strong incentive to push the injured person's fault past the 50% line, how fault is documented and contested matters more than ever in Florida truck cases. (Note: medical-malpractice claims remain under the older pure comparative standard, but that exception does not apply to ordinary truck crashes.)

No-Fault and the PIP Threshold in Florida

Florida is a no-fault state. Drivers must carry personal injury protection (PIP), which pays a portion of your own medical bills and lost wages, typically up to $10,000, regardless of who caused the crash. Because the system is no-fault, you cannot automatically sue the at-fault driver for pain and suffering. You must first step outside no-fault by meeting the serious-injury threshold.

That threshold is not universal, and the limit matters in truck cases. Both subsections of Fla. Stat. section 627.737 reach only an owner, registrant, operator, or occupant of a motor vehicle "with respect to which security has been provided as required by ss. 627.730-627.7405." A nonresident owner is required to carry that security only once the vehicle has been physically present in Florida for more than 90 days during the preceding 365 days (Fla. Stat. section 627.733(2)), and section 627.737 does not apply at all to a vehicle used as a taxicab (Fla. Stat. section 627.733(1)(b)). An out-of-state rig on an interstate run is the common truck-crash fact pattern, and for it the threshold may not be the automatic gate it is for a Florida-insured car, so this is worth checking early rather than assuming.

Under Fla. Stat. section 627.737, you may recover non-economic damages such as pain, suffering, mental anguish, and inconvenience only if the injury consists in whole or in part of one of these: (a) significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function; (b) permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability, other than scarring or disfigurement; (c) significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement; or (d) death.

Because commercial trucks are so heavy, truck crashes frequently cause exactly these kinds of permanent, life-altering injuries, so many truck cases do clear the threshold. But it is a genuine legal test, not a formality. Temporary pain is not enough, and permanency generally must be established with medical evidence. Once the threshold is met, you can pursue the at-fault driver and carrier for the full range of damages.

Damage Caps in Florida

Florida does not cap compensatory damages in ordinary personal injury or wrongful death cases, so you can seek the full measure of economic and non-economic losses once you are outside the no-fault system. Punitive damages are the exception, and Florida caps those by statute today. Under Fla. Stat. section 768.73, a punitive award generally may not exceed the greater of three times the compensatory damages awarded to the claimant or $500,000. The ceiling rises to the greater of four times compensatory damages or $2 million where the factfinder determines the wrongful conduct was motivated solely by unreasonable financial gain and that the unreasonably dangerous nature of the conduct, with the high likelihood of injury from it, was actually known to the defendant's managing agent, director, officer, or other policy-making decisionmaker. There is no cap where the defendant had a specific intent to harm the claimant. Punitive claims do get made against motor carriers in serious truck cases, so this is live law rather than a historical footnote.

Minimum Insurance in Florida

Florida's baseline requirements for ordinary vehicles are unusually low: $10,000 in property damage liability and $10,000 in PIP, with no mandatory bodily-injury liability for most drivers. Those are car numbers, and Florida law does not apply them to trucks.

Florida sets its own commercial-vehicle floor in Fla. Stat. section 627.7415. A commercial motor vehicle operated on Florida roads must carry combined bodily injury and property damage liability coverage of at least $50,000 per occurrence at a gross vehicle weight of 26,000 to 34,999 pounds, $100,000 per occurrence at 35,000 to 43,999 pounds, and $300,000 per occurrence at 44,000 pounds or more, in addition to any other applicable requirement. A vehicle subject to U.S. Department of Transportation regulation must instead meet the federal minimum levels of financial responsibility in 49 CFR part 387, discussed below. So an intrastate Florida truck that never comes under the federal rule still carries far more coverage than a car, and that is state law doing the work.

Federal FMCSA Rules That Shape Truck Cases

Most commercial trucks are governed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations enforced by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). These rules apply in every state, and a violation is often strong evidence of negligence. Florida also adopts them for purely intrastate trucking, but not word for word: under Fla. Stat. section 316.302(1)(b), owners and drivers of commercial vehicles engaged in intrastate commerce are subject to 49 CFR parts 382-386 and 390-397 as those rules existed on December 31, 2023, and Florida substitutes its own driving-hour limits, described in the first bullet below.

• Hours of service (49 CFR Part 395): A property-carrying driver may drive a maximum of 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty, may not drive beyond the 14th hour after coming on duty, must take a 30-minute break after 8 hours of driving, and is capped at 60 hours in 7 days or 70 hours in 8 days. Fatigue and falsified logs are recurring problems. A driver operating solely in intrastate commerce in Florida, and not carrying hazardous materials in placardable amounts, follows different numbers: no driving more than 12 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty, none after the 16th hour on duty, and none after 70 hours on duty in any 7 consecutive days or 80 hours in any 8 consecutive days if the carrier runs every day of the week (Fla. Stat. 316.302(2)(b) and (c)).
• Electronic logging devices (ELDs): Most drivers must run an ELD that automatically records driving time, duty status, and location, which makes hours-of-service violations harder to hide.
• Driver qualification and CDL: Carriers must confirm that drivers hold the proper commercial driver's license and meet medical and qualification standards.
• Drug and alcohol testing: FMCSA requires pre-employment, random, post-accident, and reasonable-suspicion testing for safety-sensitive drivers.
• Vehicle maintenance and inspection (49 CFR Part 396): Carriers must systematically inspect, repair, and maintain their vehicles and keep records. Brake and tire failures often trace back to skipped maintenance.

Who Can Be Liable After a Truck Accident

A car crash usually means one other driver. A truck crash often involves a chain of businesses, and several of them can share responsibility:

• The driver, for negligent or reckless operation.
• The motor carrier (trucking company), both vicariously for its driver acting in the scope of employment and directly for negligent hiring, training, supervision, or retention.
• A broker or shipper, in some circumstances tied to how the load or carrier was arranged.
• A cargo loader, if an improperly secured or overloaded load contributed to the crash.
• A parts or equipment manufacturer, if a defective brake, tire, or other component failed.

Identifying every responsible party matters because it can open access to multiple insurance policies, a key difference from a typical car-accident case.

Federal Minimum Insurance for Trucks

Under 49 CFR 387.9, for-hire motor carriers operating in interstate commerce and hauling general (non-hazardous) freight in vehicles rated at 10,001 pounds or more must maintain at least $750,000 in liability coverage. Carriers transporting certain hazardous materials must carry $1,000,000 or $5,000,000. These federal floors dwarf a typical passenger-car policy, which is part of why truck cases are valued differently from car cases.

Why Preserving Evidence Early Matters

Much of the strongest evidence in a truck case sits inside the truck and the carrier's files. ELD and logbook data, the engine control module (ECM) or onboard event recorder often called the black box, dash-camera footage, and maintenance and inspection records can be overwritten, recycled, or lost on routine schedules. Sending a spoliation, or evidence preservation, letter to the carrier early can require it to hold this data before it is gone. The police report, photographs of the scene and vehicles, and your medical records are also central and should be secured promptly.

How to Evaluate a Truck Accident Claim

Most personal injury attorneys review truck cases on a contingency-fee basis, meaning the fee comes out of any recovery rather than up front, and many offer a free initial consultation. No lawyer can promise a particular outcome or dollar figure, and every case depends on its own facts and evidence. The practical steps stay the same: get medical care and follow through, keep the police report and your records, document your losses, and confirm the exact deadline for your situation, because Florida's deadlines are strict and a missed date usually forfeits the claim.