Car Accident Statute of Limitations in Florida

If a car accident hurt you in Florida, you generally have two years from the crash to file a lawsuit, not four. That's not a typo and it's not old advice you're misremembering: Florida cut its ordinary negligence deadline from four years to two years on March 24, 2023, under House Bill 837, the state's tort reform law¹². The two-year clock in Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(a) now covers any car accident lawsuit built on negligence, whether you're hurt, your car is totaled, or both¹. Crashes that happened before that date still get the old four-year window, since the change wasn't applied retroactively², but at this point in 2026, nearly every new Florida crash falls under the shorter rule.

When the two years actually starts

Under Fla. Stat. § 95.031, a claim accrues, and the clock starts, on the date the last element of the claim occurs, which for a car crash is the date of the wreck itself³. Florida doesn't apply a discovery rule to ordinary negligence claims the way it does for fraud or product defects³. It doesn't matter if you didn't realize how bad your back injury was until six months later, or if you spent a year in physical therapy before a surgeon got involved. The date on the police report is still the date the countdown began. Negotiating with an insurance adjuster doesn't pause it, either. Adjusters can (and sometimes do) let settlement talks drag on, and once two years have passed, the door closes regardless of how close you were to a deal.

Property damage runs on the same clock

If you're only pursuing repair costs or a totaled vehicle against the at-fault driver, the same two-year window applies. Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(a) reaches any "action founded on negligence," not just bodily injury¹. If your car's value took a hit even after a good repair, that's a separate diminished value claim, and Florida's rules for making one are covered on our diminished value page.

Your own insurer runs on a different clock

One common Florida car accident claim isn't stuck with two years: a claim against your own insurer for uninsured or underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) benefits. That claim is a dispute over an insurance contract rather than a tort against the driver who hit you, so Florida courts apply the five-year limitations period for actions on a written contract under Fla. Stat. § 95.11(2)(b), not the two-year negligence period⁴. The five years also starts later: not on the crash date, but when your insurer denies the claim or otherwise breaches the policy by refusing to pay what you're owed. That gap matters most in hit-and-run cases and crashes with an underinsured driver, where you may not know you have a UM claim until well after the standard two-year window has already closed on the driver who caused the wreck.

Wrongful death runs on its own two years, from a different start date

If a crash victim dies, Florida treats the wrongful death claim as a distinct cause of action with its own two-year limitations period under Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(e), separate from any claim the victim could have brought⁵. Under the accrual rule in § 95.031, that clock starts on the date of death, not the date of the crash³. Most of the time those dates are the same day. When they aren't, when someone survives the wreck by weeks or months before dying from their injuries, families can end up with a filing deadline that lands well after two years from the collision itself.

Suing a government driver or agency comes with a shorter runway than it looks

Plenty of Florida crashes involve a government vehicle: a county dump truck, a city bus, a school bus, a sheriff's cruiser, or a road defect maintained by FDOT or a local public works department. Suing any of them means dealing with sovereign immunity under Fla. Stat. § 768.28, and the practical deadline is tighter than the headline two years suggests. Before filing suit, you must present written notice of the claim to the agency involved, and, unless you're suing a municipality or county, to the Florida Department of Financial Services, within three years of the crash, or two years if it's a wrongful death claim⁶. The agency or the department then gets six months to respond; silence past that point counts as a final denial⁶. Here's the trap: that notice process doesn't pause the underlying two-year negligence deadline for an ordinary injury or property claim against the government. Only medical malpractice and wrongful death claims against a government defendant get the benefit of tolling while the agency sits on the claim⁶. Wait a year to send notice and you may have used up half your runway before the agency's six-month clock even starts. Recoveries against the government are capped, too: $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident, regardless of how serious the injury⁷.

Minors and incapacity get more time, within a limit

Florida tolls, meaning it pauses, the limitations period for someone who is under 18 or has been adjudicated incapacitated when the claim accrues, under Fla. Stat. § 95.051(1)(i)⁸. For a child hurt in a crash, the two-year clock generally doesn't start running until they turn 18, though the pause caps out at seven years total from when the claim first accrued⁹. One tolling category that doesn't help as much as people assume: the driver leaving the state. Florida's nonresident motorist statute, Fla. Stat. § 48.171, treats any out-of-state driver who causes a crash here as having appointed the Secretary of State as their agent for service of process¹⁰. Because they can still be served through that channel, "the other driver moved away" generally won't buy the extra time it might for someone who's genuinely unreachable.

Don't confuse this with PIP's 14-day rule

Florida's lawsuit deadline is a separate thing from the 14-day rule in its no-fault insurance law. Under Fla. Stat. § 627.736(1)(a), you have to get initial medical treatment within 14 days of the crash or you lose PIP eligibility entirely, a deadline measured in days, not years¹¹. Missing it doesn't cost you your right to sue the at-fault driver, but it can cost you the $10,000 in no-fault medical and wage coverage your own policy is supposed to provide. If you haven't pulled your official crash report yet, our Florida crash report page covers that separately.

None of these deadlines move just because you were busy healing, dealing with an insurer, or waiting on a repair estimate. If you're unsure which clock applies to your situation, especially with a government vehicle, a hit-and-run, or a death involved, it's worth getting a Florida attorney to look at the actual dates before any of them run out. Our legal directory can help you find one.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(a) - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/95.11

2. House Bill 837 (2023), ch. 2023-15, Laws of Florida - https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/837

3. Fla. Stat. § 95.031 - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/95.031

4. Fla. Stat. § 95.11(2)(b) - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/95.11

5. Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(e) - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/95.11

6. Fla. Stat. § 768.28(6)(a) - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/768.28

7. Fla. Stat. § 768.28(5)(a) - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/768.28

8. Fla. Stat. § 95.051(1)(i) - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/95.051

9. Fla. Stat. § 95.051(2) - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/95.051

10. Fla. Stat. § 48.171 - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/48.171

11. Fla. Stat. § 627.736(1)(a) - https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/627.736