Usually not for the driver’s carelessness alone. Texas treats most Uber and Lyft drivers as independent contractors, so the claim normally runs against the driver and the rideshare insurance Texas requires, which has to be at least $1 million when a ride was in progress. A claim against the company itself is possible in narrower cases, like when it let someone drive who never should have passed its own required screening. Call (713) 664-4000 for a free consultation and we’ll tell you which applies to your crash.
The people who call us after a rideshare wreck are usually passengers, other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. They all hit the same wall: an app company that wants to point at the driver, and a driver whose personal insurance wants to point at the app. Sorting that out is the job on our Houston Uber and Lyft accident cases.
Why Uber and Lyft are hard to sue directly
Texas law says a rideshare driver is an independent contractor, and not an employee, if the company doesn’t set the driver’s hours, doesn’t stop the driver from working for other apps or other jobs, doesn’t limit where the driver can work, and the two sides agree in writing that the driver is an independent contractor (Occupations Code § 2402.114). The Insurance Code adds that the company doesn’t control or direct its drivers except as agreed by written contract (Insurance Code § 1954.102).
So the usual rule that an employer answers for an employee’s driving doesn’t reach Uber or Lyft just because their driver ran a red light. That mostly doesn’t matter, because the money doesn’t depend on suing the company.
Where the money comes from
Texas requires rideshare coverage that changes with what the driver was doing in the app when the crash happened:
- App off: only the driver’s personal auto policy applies.
- Logged in, waiting for a ride request: at least $50,000 per person and $100,000 per incident for bodily injury, plus $25,000 for property damage (§ 1954.052).
- Ride accepted or passenger in the car: at least $1 million total per incident (§ 1954.053). That window starts when the driver accepts the ride and ends when the last rider gets out (§ 1954.001).
- Driver’s own coverage lapsed or falls short: the company has to provide the required coverage from the first dollar of the claim (§ 1954.054).
The coverage can be bought by the driver or the company, or split between them (§ 1954.051(d)), and in practice the big policy usually sits with the company. The company’s insurer can’t make you wait for the driver’s personal insurer to deny the claim first (§ 1954.055), though that doesn’t stop the two insurance companies from arguing about the app status. Proving exactly when the driver logged in and when the ride was accepted is the first fight in most of these cases.
If another driver caused the crash and you were the Uber passenger, the claim may run against that other driver’s insurance, with the rideshare policy’s uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage behind it, if the policy includes it, when the at-fault driver doesn’t carry enough (§ 1954.053(2), where required by § 1952.101).
When the company itself can be on the hook
Before letting anyone log in, Texas requires the company to run a criminal background check and review the person’s driving record, and it bars people with certain records from driving: more than three moving violations in the past three years, or a DWI, fraud, theft or violent offense in the past seven years, among others (§ 2402.107). The company also has to keep a zero-tolerance policy on intoxicated drivers and suspend a driver while it investigates a passenger’s complaint that the driver was intoxicated (§ 2402.106). When a company let through a driver its own legal duties should have screened out, or ignored complaints about one, a claim against the company itself is worth looking at hard.
The company has to keep individual ride records for at least five years and driver records for at least five years after a driver is removed (§ 2402.151). We ask for them.
What to do now
Screenshot the ride in your app: the trip receipt, the driver’s name, the car and the route. If you were in the other car, write down the rideshare driver’s name and ask whether they were on a trip. Don’t give a recorded statement to anyone’s insurance company before you talk to us. When you signed up for the app, you clicked through terms of service, and those terms can affect how a claim against the company itself gets handled. We read the version you agreed to early in the case.
How we handle these cases
We pin down the app status at the moment of the crash, because that decides which policy pays and how much is available. We gather the police report, the trip data, any video and the witnesses’ names, and we get your medical care documented. Then we take on the other side’s insurance company, whichever one that turns out to be. We recovered $50,000 for an Uber passenger hurt in a crash. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. We work on a contingency fee: no fee unless we recover, and if we don’t recover, you don’t owe us for case expenses either. Once there’s a settlement, our page on how a settlement gets paid out in Texas explains what happens to the money.
Hurt in an Uber or Lyft crash? Call us first
If you were hurt in a rideshare crash in the Houston area, call (713) 664-4000 or fill out the form for a free consultation, and we’ll figure out who pays.
A Houston trial lawyer since 2009, representing injured people and their families, and defending the accused in DWI and criminal cases. Jay is an ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist, a certified practitioner and instructor of Standardized Field Sobriety Testing, a certified Drug Recognition Expert, and trained in forensic chromatography. He is a member of the National College for DUI Defense, a founding member of the DUI Defense Lawyers Association, and a commissioner on the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, appointed by Gov. Abbott in 2023.
Last reviewed July 2026 · This article is legal information, not legal advice. Read Jay’s full bio →