What Happens if You are a Passenger in an Uber Accident?

If you are a passenger in an Uber accident, the case will most likely settle out of court. However, as outlined below, settlement is a process, not a result.

Uber passengers are inevitably hurt in accidents. In 2023, Uber drivers completed over eleven billion trips. Even the most dedicated and professional drivers cannot be on the road that much and not cause some accidents. Additionally, Uber’s compensation model encourages aggressive and unsafe driving. The company pays drivers by the ride, not by the hour. So, if they speed and take other chances behind the wheel, they squeeze in more trips and make more money. Eventually, those risky chances catch up to Uber drivers.

A Newark personal injury lawyer is an invaluable partner in the Uber passenger accident settlement process. The average lawyer-negotiated settlement is about three times higher than the average nonlawyer-negotiated settlement.

Examining the Facts

Dealing with serious injuries is the first step in the case-building process. These victims need top-notch medical help, and they need it immediately. Furthermore, medical bills are usually the largest component of economic damages. These serious injuries include:

• Internal Bleeding: Exsanguination (excessive blood loss) is usually the official cause of death in fatal car accident cases. Internal organs don’t have protective skin layers. Therefore, small cuts and abrasions bleed profusely. In fact, by the time they reach hospitals, many Uber passenger crash victims have lost close to a third of their blood and are on the edge of hypovolemic shock.
• Broken Bones: The same forces that cause internal organ cuts and abrasions also cause severe broken bones, especially in arms and legs. These injuries are usually permanent, at least to an extent. For example, if Alice breaks her shoulder in an Uber accident, she may never regain full range of motion in that joint.
• Head Injuries: Riding in Ubers is inherently stressful, due to the lack of control. An Uber crash is extremely stressful, due to the lack of control and the crash itself. Such extreme stress triggers a chemical change in the brain, causing symptoms like depression, anger, and flashbacks. This condition (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is difficult to diagnose and treat. PTSD overlaps with several other conditions and available drugs only treat the symptoms.

Because of these serious injuries, medical bills are key pieces of evidence in Uber passenger injury cases. A Somerset County personal injury lawyer often supplements these bills with a medical expert’s report.

These reports meet the reasonably necessary requirement that most courts impose. Additionally, they accurately predict the amount of future medical expenses, if any. Finally, these reports determine the victim’s pain level at certain times, an assessment that’s critical to the noneconomic damages component.

Other case-building evidence in an Uber passenger injury case includes witness statements and the official police accident report.

Determining the Law

This next step is a two-part process. First, a North Jersey personal injury lawyer must determine if the Uber driver was negligent.

Basically, negligence is a lack of care. Since the duty of care is higher in commercial driver matters, almost any driving mistake constitutes negligence, or a lack of care.

The applicable legal responsibility is a duty of utmost care. This standard is between a duty of reasonable care (lowest level) and a fiduciary duty (highest level). Electronic evidence, normally the vehicle’s Event Data Recorder, often draws the line between a wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time accident and negligence.

Speeding, one of the aggressive driving issues mentioned above, is a good example. EDRs measure and store operational data such as vehicle speed. If an Uber driver was only speeding 5mph over the limit and only in the moments before the crash, that driver may not have been negligent. But if the driver had been speeding 10mph over the limit for several blocks, the driver probably breached the duty of utmost care.

Other elements of a negligence case include causation (a connection between the breach and the crash) and damages (both economic and noneconomic).

Second, a Central Jersey personal injury lawyer must establish third-party liability, which in this case is respondeat superior (let the master answer). This legal doctrine applies if the tortfeasor (negligent driver) was:

• An Employee: Most Uber drivers are independent contractors or other non-employees for most purposes. But all Uber drivers are employees for negligence purposes. Any employer control, such as telling a driver where to pick up and drop off a passenger, makes any worker an employee.
• Acting in the Scope of Employment: Safely picking up and dropping off passengers is clearly within the scope of employment for Uber drivers. So is transporting passengers. Uber driver assault injuries are not within the scope of employment. However, another vicarious liability theory often applies in these situations. 

Vicarious liability is a very important component of an Uber passenger accident claim. Most personal auto insurance policies exclude commercial claims.

Anticipating Defenses

Usually, anticipating legal defenses is a major component of a personal injury claim. A case must be strong enough to stand up to these defenses. However, in Uber passenger injury claims, this phase is more like the icing on the cake.

Two defenses, unreasonable medical bills and assumption of the risk, may be available in Uber passenger injury cases.

We discussed the reasonably necessary requirement above. In New Jersey, most medical bills are presumptively unreasonable and therefore not subject to compensation. The aforementioned expert report rebuts this presumption.

Assumption of the risk is a voluntary assumption of a known risk. For example, a “Beware of Dog” sign could raise the assumption of the risk defense in a dog bite claim.

Most Uber passengers voluntarily get into most Uber vehicles, although voluntariness could be an issue in some cases (e.g. Sarah has no other way to get home). The second element is almost never present in Uber passenger injury cases. A car crash is a theoretical risk, not a known risk.

An Uber lawyer could argue that the driver’s reckless driving moved a crash from a theoretical to a known risk. But this argument concedes the fact that the driver breached the duty of care.

Reach Out to a Compassionate Lawyer

Injury victims are entitled to significant compensation. For a free consultation with an experienced personal injury lawyer in Newark, contact CourtLaw. The sooner you reach out to us, the sooner we start working for you.