The Answer Depends on One Thing: What the App Was Doing
When you are hurt in an Uber or Lyft crash in New Orleans, the insurance that pays depends almost entirely on what the driver’s app was doing at the moment of impact. Not on who owns the car. Not on whether the driver seemed professional. On the app.
Louisiana law divides rideshare driving into distinct periods, and each period carries a different amount of insurance. The same crash, on the same corner of Canal Street, can involve a $1 million policy or nothing more than a personal auto policy that may not cover commercial driving at all.
That is why rideshare cases confuse people who have handled an ordinary car accident before. The question is not simply who was careless. The question is which policy was active, and rideshare companies are the ones holding that information.
The Three Coverage Periods That Decide Your Claim
Louisiana’s Transportation Network Company law, found at Louisiana Revised Statutes 45:201.6, sets minimum insurance for each stage of rideshare driving.
Period One: The App Is Off
When the driver is not logged into the app, they are just a person driving a car. Their personal auto policy applies, and the rideshare company’s coverage does not.
This is the thinnest scenario for an injured person. Louisiana’s minimum liability requirement is $15,000 per person, which rarely covers a serious injury. If the driver bought minimum limits, that is the ceiling.
Period Two: The App Is On, Waiting for a Request
Once the driver logs in and is available for rides, Louisiana requires coverage of at least $50,000 for death and bodily injury per person, $100,000 per incident, and $25,000 for property damage.
Better than a bare personal policy, but still modest for a crash that involves surgery. This period covers a lot of real world driving, including the circling that happens around the French Quarter on a Friday night. Both companies publish their own coverage documentation, such as Lyft’s certificate of insurance, but the controlling floor in this state is the statute.
Period Three: A Ride Is Accepted or In Progress
From the moment the driver accepts a ride request until the passenger is dropped off, Louisiana requires at least $1 million in coverage for death, bodily injury, and property damage.
This is the period passengers are almost always in. If you were riding in the car, or the driver was on the way to pick you up, the $1 million layer is generally the one in play.
Louisiana also requires uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage during both the waiting period and the prearranged ride period, tied to the standards in the state’s UM statute. That matters more than it sounds, and it comes up again below.
Why App Status Is the Most Contested Fact in the Case
Everything above turns on a fact that only the rideshare company can confirm, and that fact is not always volunteered.
A driver who was between periods has an incentive to describe the timeline in the way that brings more coverage to the table. An insurer has the opposite incentive. And the actual evidence lives in server logs held by a company in California.
The gap between period two and period three can be a matter of seconds. A driver who accepts a request and then rear ends someone half a block later has crossed from $50,000 in coverage to $1 million in the time it takes to tap a screen. Insurers know exactly how much rides on that timestamp.
This data is obtainable, but it usually requires a formal preservation request early and, in disputed cases, formal discovery. Waiting several months to raise the question is how claims quietly get resolved at the lower coverage tier.
Rideshare Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees
Uber and Lyft classify their drivers as independent contractors, and that classification is the backbone of their defense strategy.
In an ordinary employment situation, an employer is generally responsible for the negligence of an employee acting within the scope of their job. Independent contractor status is designed to interrupt that chain. It is why claims usually proceed against the insurance policy the company provides rather than against the corporation itself.
For most injured people, this is a technical distinction with a practical result: the money is available through the required insurance, not through a lawsuit against a technology company. That is generally workable, because the $1 million layer during an active ride is substantial coverage by any measure.
Where it becomes a real fight is when the company’s own conduct is at issue, such as claims involving negligent screening of a driver. Those claims exist, but they are harder, and they are not the ordinary path.
What Happens When Another Driver Caused the Crash
Plenty of rideshare passengers are injured by someone other than their own driver. Someone runs a red light on Poydras and hits the Uber you happen to be sitting in.
In that situation, the at-fault driver’s liability insurance is the primary source of recovery. The problem is familiar: that driver may carry Louisiana’s minimum $15,000 in bodily injury coverage, which disappears quickly against real medical bills. Insurance Research Council figures put roughly one in three drivers nationally in the uninsured or underinsured category, so this is not an unusual outcome.
This is where the uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage required during rideshare periods becomes valuable. When the at-fault driver’s policy runs out, the UM and UIM coverage available through the rideshare period can fill the gap. Passengers frequently have more coverage available than they assume, sometimes including their own personal UM policy as well. Our guide to uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage in Louisiana explains how that coverage works and why so many drivers do not realize they have it.
Locating every applicable policy is the real work in these claims. So is knowing who pays your medical bills while the claim is pending and who gets repaid out of the settlement. It is common to find three or four potential sources of coverage in a single rideshare crash, and equally common for an unrepresented person to learn about only one of them.
New Orleans Sees More of These Cases Than Most Cities
The local context genuinely matters here.
New Orleans runs on visitors who do not have cars. Conventions at the Morial Convention Center, festival season, Mardi Gras, and a French Quarter where driving yourself is impractical all push enormous volume onto rideshare platforms. Add the steady flow of airport runs between Louis Armstrong International in Kenner and hotels downtown, and the exposure is constant.
Late night driving concentrates the risk further. Bar close, unfamiliar visitors crossing streets mid block, narrow one way streets in the Quarter and the Marigny, and drivers navigating by GPS in areas they do not know well. Rideshare vehicles are moving through all of it.
Pedestrians are caught up in this too. Rideshare pickups and drop offs regularly happen in travel lanes because there is nowhere else to stop, which puts passengers and people on foot in the same contested space. Our discussion of pedestrian accident claims in New Orleans covers how those cases are handled.
The Evidence That Disappears First
Rideshare cases have a documentation problem that ordinary car accidents do not.
The trip record, the driver’s status timeline, the route, and the timestamps all sit on company servers subject to internal retention schedules. Dashcam footage, increasingly common among rideshare drivers, often overwrites itself within days. Surveillance video from a Bourbon Street business or a hotel entrance is typically gone within a week or two unless someone asks for it in writing.
Meanwhile the things you control are easy to preserve and easy to forget. Screenshots of your trip receipt, the driver’s name and vehicle, and the trip status in your app history are worth capturing immediately. So is the incident report submitted through the app, because it creates a dated record of the crash.
Injured people understandably focus on treatment in the first weeks. That is the right priority. But the evidence window closes on its own schedule, and it does not wait for anyone to feel better.
The Deadlines and Fault Rules That Apply
Two rules have changed recently, and both affect rideshare claims directly.
For injuries occurring on or after July 1, 2024, Louisiana’s prescriptive period for personal injury claims is two years from the date of injury. This came from Act 423 of the 2024 legislative session, which repealed the prior one year rule. Injuries before that date remain subject to the older one year period.
Louisiana also changed how fault is allocated. Act 15 of the 2025 legislative session amended Louisiana Civil Code article 2323 and adopted modified comparative fault with a 51 percent bar, effective January 1, 2026. Under the current rule, a person found 51 percent or more at fault recovers nothing. Below that line, damages are reduced by the percentage of fault assigned.
For passengers, comparative fault is rarely a serious threat, since a passenger seldom contributes to a crash. Seatbelt arguments do surface. For rideshare drivers and for pedestrians struck during a pickup, fault allocation is contested aggressively, and the difference between 45 percent and 51 percent is now the difference between a reduced recovery and no recovery at all.
Timelines also run longer than people expect once multiple insurers are involved. Our overview of how long a personal injury case typically takes explains the stages, and rideshare claims tend to sit at the longer end because coverage has to be sorted before value can be discussed.
Why the First Offer Comes So Quickly
Rideshare insurers often move fast, and speed is a strategy.
An early offer arrives before you know whether the neck pain resolves in three weeks or turns into a disc injury requiring injections. Accepting it closes the claim permanently, including for treatment you have not had yet. The tactics involved are the same ones we have described in how adjusters work to reduce a Louisiana injury claim, applied by a claims operation that handles this volume every day.
You are also likely to be asked for a recorded statement early. Questions about what you were doing on your phone, whether you were wearing a seatbelt, and how you feel today are not casual. Answering “I’m okay” three days after a crash is a sentence that reappears later.
Understanding the coverage structure before you negotiate is the whole game. A useful starting point is knowing which policies exist, which is what an insurance claims review is for.
Talk to Someone Before You Settle
Arnona Rose represents people injured in Uber and Lyft crashes throughout the Greater New Orleans area, including New Orleans and Metairie. We work on a contingency fee basis, so you pay no attorney fee unless we recover for you.
If you have been offered a settlement, asked for a recorded statement, or told that a particular policy does not apply to your crash, it is worth having someone confirm that before you agree to it. Small firm, big difference means the person reviewing your file is the person you spoke with. Contact our office and we will walk through what coverage should be available.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I bring a claim if I was the rideshare driver, not the passenger?
Yes, and drivers often have more coverage available than they expect. If another motorist caused the crash while you were logged into the app, their liability insurance is the starting point, and the uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage required during your active rideshare period may apply above it. Your own personal policy may respond as well, though many personal policies contain livery exclusions that limit coverage during commercial use. Whether those exclusions apply depends on your specific policy language and which period you were in.
What if the rideshare driver was using a rented or borrowed vehicle?
Coverage still generally follows the rideshare period rather than the vehicle, because the platform’s required insurance attaches to the driver’s activity on the app. Additional policies may also come into play, including the vehicle owner’s insurance and any coverage sold through a rental agreement. Rideshare rental programs offered through the platforms themselves usually bundle in the required commercial coverage. These situations often produce several overlapping policies, and identifying the priority among them is a technical question worth resolving early.
Does it matter which company the driver was working for?
The Louisiana minimums under the state’s rideshare statute apply to any transportation network company operating here, so the required floor is the same. What differs is the policy language above that floor, the claims handling process, and how each company treats uninsured motorist coverage, which varies by company and by state. A driver logged into two apps at once adds another layer, because the platform with the accepted ride is typically the one whose coverage responds.
What if I was a pedestrian or cyclist hit by a rideshare vehicle?
You can pursue the same coverage a passenger would, and the applicable period still governs how much is available. If the driver was carrying a passenger or heading to a pickup, the $1 million layer generally applies to your injuries as well. These claims frequently involve a fault dispute about crosswalk use or visibility, which carries more weight now that Louisiana bars recovery at 51 percent fault. Independent witnesses and nearby business surveillance video are especially valuable, and both need to be secured quickly.
Will my health insurance have to be repaid out of a rideshare settlement?
In most cases yes, at least in part. Health insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid commonly assert reimbursement rights against injury settlements for medical costs they paid on your behalf. The amounts are frequently negotiable, and reducing them meaningfully increases what actually reaches you at the end. This is an area where the headline settlement number and the net recovery diverge substantially, which is why lien resolution should be identified early and addressed during negotiation rather than treated as paperwork to sort out afterward.
Do I need a police report for a rideshare claim?
It is not strictly required, but it helps considerably. A report from the New Orleans Police Department or the responding agency creates a contemporaneous record of the vehicles, the parties, and any citations issued, which is difficult to reconstruct later. If no report was made at the scene, you may still be able to file one afterward. Reporting the incident through the rideshare app is a separate and additional step, and doing both creates two independent dated records of the same event.
About the Author
Toni R. Arnona, Esq. is a partner at Arnona Rose, LLC, a personal injury firm in the Greater New Orleans area. A New Orleans native, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in French and Linguistics from Newcomb College at Tulane University and her Juris Doctor from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law in 2009. She was admitted to the Louisiana Bar that same year, after interning with Judge Robin M. Giarrusso and later clerking for Judge Lloyd J. Medley, Jr. in the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans. Toni joined Arnona Rose in 2014, where she focuses her practice on personal injury and related matters. She is a member of the American Bar Association, the Louisiana Bar Association, the Jefferson Parish Bar Association, and the Federal Bar Association.