[Transcript]
Hi, my name is Kenneth Berger, and I made this video to help folks understand what can be done if they're involved in an accident with Uber or some other rideshare vehicle in South Carolina.
When it comes to Uber and rideshare for passengers, okay, so if you're sitting in the back of an Uber and the Uber driver either causes the wreck or someone else causes the wreck, there's up to a million dollars in coverage available to you. Again, if it's the Uber driver's fault, the vehicle, if you're a passenger, will have at least a million dollars in coverage to help protect you. And even if it was someone else's fault, then Uber will have what's known as an underinsured motorist policy with a million dollars to protect passengers like you, for not who were passengers.
So let's say, you know, you're driving, an Uber driver blows a red light and hits you, or traffic hits you from behind. The amount of insurance coverage that is available to you will depend on whether or not that Uber driver had a passenger. If the Uber driver had a passenger in the car, then again, there's a million dollars in coverage available. If the Uber driver is between rides and is actively going to pick someone up, there should be a million dollars in coverage available to you. But if the Uber driver is off-duty, let's say they just made a drop and they haven't gotten a new call or new alert yet, and they're simply operating their vehicle, in essence, they would be off-duty at that moment. In those situations, you may be limited if you get hit by an Uber vehicle to that driver's personal insurance because they weren't technically working for Uber at the top of the accident.
Now, we've been in situations where the driver or Uber claimed that they weren't quote-unquote working at the time of the wreck. Sometimes that's true, sometimes it's not. There are software searches and other steps we can take to determine whether or not they're telling the truth.
For Uber drivers, let's say again, you're driving for Uber and someone in another vehicle blows a red light, hurts like we talked about earlier, there'd be a million dollars in underinsured coverage. You might also be able to get workers' comp. It depends on whether or not you're considered at that moment in time an independent contractor or what's called a statutory employee. It's very, very fact-specific. Uber is going to argue that you are an independent contractor and that you can't get workers' comp, but that's not always true. It's very, very fact-specific, and we've analyzed that issue many times.
Big picture, anytime there's a crash with a rideshare vehicle, Uber or otherwise, what we usually see is that multiple insurance companies start pointing the finger at who's responsible. And our job, one of our jobs, is to first identify who is truly responsible, second, which insurance companies are primary and which insurance company is for secondary, and third, through taking those first two steps, is to make sure that our clients are taken care of and provided everything the law says they're supposed to receive.
So if you have insurance questions, if you have legal questions about a collision with a rideshare vehicle in South Carolina or even outside South Carolina, contact us. We're glad to provide you with a free consultation. You can contact us by phone or through some of the contact forms and live chats right here on the website, and we'll work through all those issues. We'll help answer those questions, and the biggest thing is we want you to be able to focus on getting well versus trying to navigate what can be an insurance and legal maze. Let us give you some direction or potentially help you through that process. Hope you get well, and thank you for taking time to watch this video.
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