What to Do After a Car Accident in Florida: A Step-by-Step Guide
The exact steps, in order, from the moment of impact to protecting your claim.
Nobody plans to read this article. You are here because something just happened, or because you want to be ready when it does. Either way, what follows is the checklist we wish every client had in their glovebox: the ten steps, in order, that protect your health first and your claim second, plus the details about your car, the police report, and the insurance calls that most guides skip.
At the scene
1. Get safe, then call 911. Check on everyone and call 911 even if the crash seems minor. If the vehicles are drivable and nobody is seriously hurt, Florida law expects drivers to move them out of travel lanes; staying parked in a live lane risks a second crash worse than the first. Turn on hazards, and if you have them, set out triangles or flares.
In Florida, crashes involving injury, death, or significant property damage must be reported, and the police report becomes the backbone of every insurance claim that follows. Drivers who seem fine at the scene and cooperative about "handling it privately" have a way of changing their story by Monday. And if the other driver leaves the scene, that changes your checklist entirely: note everything you can about the vehicle and read our [Hit-and-Run Accidents] page, because your own coverage may become the claim.
2. Say what happened, not whose fault it was. Answer the officer's questions honestly and briefly. Do not apologize, do not say "I'm fine," and do not speculate about fault, even to be polite. "I'm sorry" feels human at the scene and reads like a confession in a claim file. If you are hurt, say so plainly; minimizing at the scene becomes a defense exhibit later.
3. Photograph everything. All vehicles from multiple angles before they are moved if it is safe, license plates, the whole intersection or roadway, skid marks, debris, traffic signals, weather, and your visible injuries. Wide shots and close-ups both. Then look up: note any businesses, homes, or buses whose cameras face the road, because that footage overwrites itself in days and someone has to ask for it fast.
4. Collect people, not just paper. Exchange license, registration, and insurance information with the other driver, and photograph their documents rather than copying by hand. Then find the independent witnesses; they are gold and they leave fast. Names and phone numbers are enough.
A note if no officer responds. For crashes an officer does not investigate, Florida requires drivers to self-report qualifying crashes to the state within 10 days using the official crash report form. Do not let "the police never came" become "there is no record this happened." Create the record.
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The first two weeks
5. See a doctor within 14 days. This one is not optional. Florida's no-fault system gives you access to up to $10,000 in Personal Injury Protection benefits, but only if you receive initial medical care within 14 days of the crash. Miss the window and that money can vanish. Adrenaline hides injuries, and some of the most serious ones, brain injuries and disc injuries among them, surface days later. Go even if you feel mostly fine, tell the provider it was a car crash so the records connect the dots, and keep your follow-up appointments, because gaps in treatment become the insurer's favorite argument that you were never really hurt. Our post on [Florida's 14-Day Accident Rule] covers exactly how PIP works, including the $2,500 trap inside it.
6. Report the claim to your own insurer, carefully. Your policy requires prompt notice, so report that the crash happened. Stick to facts: date, time, location, vehicles involved. You are not required to give a detailed account of your injuries on day two, and you should not guess at answers you do not know yet. "I am still being evaluated" is a complete sentence.
7. Do not give the other driver's insurance company a recorded statement. Their adjuster will call quickly, sounding friendly, asking for "just a quick recorded statement to process things." You are not obligated to give one, and you should not. Adjusters are trained to lock you into early statements that get used against you later, especially about injuries that have not fully shown themselves. Politely decline and refer them to your lawyer.
8. Keep everything, and stay quiet online. Medical records and bills, receipts, the crash report number, photos, and a simple pain journal noting symptoms, medications, and missed work. Then the modern rule: stop posting. Adjusters and defense lawyers review social media, and one smiling photo at a birthday party becomes "plaintiff appears uninjured" in a file. Cases are won on documentation, and lost on Instagram.
The injuries that hide
The crashes that generate the most regret are not the catastrophic ones, where everyone knows to go to the hospital. They are the moderate ones, where you feel shaken but functional. Know the pattern: whiplash and soft-tissue injuries commonly stiffen 24 to 72 hours later. Concussions announce themselves through headaches, dizziness, fogginess, irritability, and sleep changes, sometimes days out. Disc injuries start as an ache and become radiating pain or numbness down an arm or leg. Abdominal pain after a seatbelt did its job deserves immediate attention, always. The practical rule: for the two weeks after a crash, treat every new symptom as crash-related until a doctor says otherwise, write it down with a date, and report it at your next appointment. Your pain journal becomes the timeline the medical records confirm.
How fault actually gets decided
People assume the police report ends the fault question. It does not. The officer's opinion matters, but insurers make their own liability determinations, and if the case ever reaches a courtroom, a jury decides. Fault is built from physical evidence, vehicle damage patterns, event data recorders, camera footage, and witness accounts, which is exactly why steps 3 and 4 above exist.
Florida then applies modified comparative negligence, and the math is unforgiving. Say a case is worth $100,000. Found 20% at fault, you recover $80,000. Found 40% at fault, $60,000. Found 51% at fault, you recover nothing at all. Every percentage point the insurer pins on you is money out of your pocket, which is why adjusters work so hard to get you speculating about fault on a recorded line, and why we do not let clients near those conversations.
Two more fault facts worth knowing. In Florida rear-end crashes, the law starts from a rebuttable presumption that the rear driver was negligent, which shapes those cases from the first call. And if your crash happened in another state, the math changes with the border: most states use some form of comparative fault, but a handful still bar recovery entirely at any percentage of fault, which makes the evidence work above even more decisive there.
Your car, your money
9. Handle the property damage without hurting the injury claim. You typically have two routes to fix the car: your own collision coverage, with your deductible fronted and often recovered later, or the at-fault driver's property damage liability. Your own carrier usually moves faster. You may also be entitled to a rental during repairs and, when a newer car is significantly damaged, Florida law recognizes claims for its diminished resale value. Settle the property damage if you like, but read before signing: never sign a release that covers injuries just to get the car fixed.
Protecting the claim
10. Watch the deadlines and get counsel before accepting anything. For most Florida crashes you generally have 2 years to file a lawsuit, and if a jury finds you more than 50% at fault, Florida law bars any recovery, which is why the fault story must be built correctly from day one. Two years sounds like forever; evidence decays in weeks. In our first days on a case, Verde Law sends preservation letters for camera footage and vehicle data, sets up the PIP claim correctly, takes over all insurer contact, and starts the medical documentation that a demand is eventually built on. First offers are priced for people without lawyers. A free case review costs nothing, and there is no fee unless we win. Our [Car Accidents] page explains what a strong claim pursues.
When the crash type changes the playbook
The ten steps above fit every crash, but some crashes add chapters. If a commercial truck hit you, the evidence lives in federal-regulated logs, black boxes, and dashcams that companies only keep for a limited time, so preservation letters need to go out in days; our [Truck & Commercial Vehicle Accidents] page explains why those cases are won early. If an Uber or Lyft was involved, the insurance coverage changes with what the app was doing at impact, up to $1 million during a trip, so screenshot the ride details before anything else; the full breakdown is on our [Uber & Lyft Accidents] page. If you were on a motorcycle, know that Florida PIP does not cover riders at all, which rewrites how your medical bills get paid from day one. And if you were on foot or on a bicycle, PIP protects you more than most people believe. The checklist stays the same. The strategy on top of it does not.
The other driver had no insurance. Am I out of luck?
Not necessarily. Your own uninsured motorist coverage, if you carry it, steps into their shoes, and Florida has one of the highest uninsured-driver rates in the country. Check your policy, and read our [Uninsured & Underinsured Motorist Claims] page before assuming anything, because coverage sometimes exists that was never properly rejected in writing.
The crash seems minor and I feel okay. Do I really need all this?
The steps take an hour. Skipping them can cost a claim you do not yet know you have. Whiplash, disc injuries, and concussions routinely appear days after "minor" crashes, and by then the evidence is gone if nobody collected it.
Who pays my medical bills while everything is pending?
In Florida, PIP pays first, then health insurance, then the injury claim catches up at the end. Sequencing this correctly is half the value a lawyer adds early. We cover it in depth in a coming post on medical bills after an accident.
What if the crash happened outside Florida?
Deadlines and rules differ by state, sometimes dramatically, including filing deadlines shorter than Florida's. Verde Law represents injured clients in all 50 states and applies the law of the state where your crash happened.
Print this. Glovebox. Hopefully you never need it.
This article is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case depends on its own facts. For answers about your situation, schedule a free, confidential consultation with Verde Law, in English or Spanish, at (305) 786-3003.
