‘Tis the Season for Drinking and Driving Accidents in Florida

By David B. Pittman, Esq. — Founder, Pittman Law Firm, P.L. | Last updated May 12, 2026

Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, our call volume at Pittman Law Firm roughly doubles. Not because people are suddenly learning about personal injury law — because impaired drivers are on the same roads as everyone else, and Southwest Florida’s mix of holiday parties, restaurant strips, rental cars, and tourist traffic makes December one of the most dangerous months to be behind the wheel on US-41, I-75, or Bonita Beach Road.

If you were hit by a drunk driver this holiday season — or if you want to know what the law actually says before something goes wrong — this is what I would tell you on the phone.

What Florida law actually says about holiday DUI cases

A drunk driving crash is two cases at the same time. There is the criminal case the State brings against the driver, and there is the civil case the injured person brings to recover for medical bills, lost income, pain, and the rest. The criminal case does not pay your hospital bill. The civil case does. People get the two confused because the news only covers the criminal side.

On the civil side, four statutes carry most of the weight in a Florida DUI injury claim.

Personal Injury Protection — Section 627.736, Florida Statutes. Florida is a no-fault state for medical bills up to the first $10,000. That means your own auto policy’s PIP coverage pays the first round of medical bills regardless of who caused the crash. In plain English: even if a drunk driver T-boned you at an intersection in Fort Myers, your insurer still writes the first checks. PIP runs out fast in any serious case, and that is when the at-fault driver’s liability coverage comes in.

Modified comparative negligence — Section 768.81, Florida Statutes. In March 2023 Florida changed how fault is split. Before the reform, you could be 99 percent at fault and still recover one percent. Now, if a jury finds you more than 50 percent at fault, you recover nothing. If you are 50 percent or less at fault, your recovery is reduced by your share. In a clean DUI rear-end, this rarely hurts the injured person. In a holiday case where both drivers had a drink, it changes everything.

Statute of limitations — Section 95.11(4)(a), Florida Statutes. The same 2023 reform cut the deadline to sue in half. You now have two years from the date of the crash to file a negligence lawsuit, not four. Plenty of people still believe they have four years. They are wrong, and we have seen otherwise-strong cases die on that deadline.

Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist coverage — Section 627.727, Florida Statutes. Florida does not require drivers to carry bodily injury liability coverage at all. Let me say that again. The drunk driver who just hit you may legally carry zero coverage for your broken leg. UM coverage on your own policy is the backstop, and in tourist season it is often the only real source of recovery. We push every client we have to stack UM. It is one of the most undervalued pieces of an auto policy in this state.

One more for completeness. Section 316.066 requires a crash report when there is injury, death, or significant property damage. Make sure law enforcement writes one. A handshake exchange of insurance information at the scene is not enough.

Five DUI crash patterns we see every holiday season in Lee and Collier Counties

If I had to draw the calls we get between Thanksgiving and New Year’s on a chart, they sort into five buckets. The names change. The fact patterns do not.

• The office-party drive home. Someone leaves a corporate gathering in Fort Myers around 9 p.m., heads south on I-75, and crosses two lanes into someone else’s hood. They were not drunk an hour earlier. They had three more after the toast.
• The tourist rental. A visitor staying near a Naples resort drives a rental car back from dinner on Fifth Avenue South. They are not used to the road, they have had wine with dinner, and they do not see the turn lane. Out-of-state policies often have lower limits than Florida residents carry, which is why UM matters.
• The late-afternoon long lunch. Two retirees meet up around noon at a place on Bonita Beach Road, stay until four, and one of them gets behind the wheel. These are the ones witnesses describe as “he didn’t seem that drunk.” Florida juries are not impressed by that line.
• The New Year’s Eve head-on. Almost always between midnight and three in the morning. Almost always on a divided highway like US-41. Almost always involves a driver going the wrong way. These are the worst cases I handle each year, and they are the ones I dread the most.
• The repeat offender. The driver who hits your family member has three prior DUIs, a suspended license, and a borrowed car. The criminal case looks airtight. The civil case is harder than it looks because the driver has no assets and no insurance — which loops back to UM coverage on your own policy.

What makes a DUI injury claim more complicated than it looks

People assume a drunk driving case is the easiest kind of injury claim. The driver was clearly at fault. The cops arrested him. Open and shut, right.

It is not that simple, and December is when the complications stack up.

The criminal case can slow the civil case down. Defense counsel for the drunk driver often will not let their client sit for a deposition while the criminal case is pending. That can stretch a civil case by a year. We work around it, but it has to be planned for.

Insurance limits get tested fast. Florida minimums do not cover a real DUI injury. A broken femur and a week in a Fort Myers hospital can blow past the at-fault driver’s bodily injury coverage in the first surgery. That is the moment UM coverage on your own policy becomes the case.

Dram-shop liability is narrower than people think. Florida Statute 768.125 limits suits against bars and restaurants for overservice to two situations: serving someone under 21, or knowingly serving a habitual drinker. Standard adult overservice is not actionable on its own. We still investigate every vendor because the evidence — receipts, camera footage, server testimony — vanishes inside of weeks if no one preserves it.

The driver’s intoxication itself is not automatic proof of liability. The civil standard is whether the driver’s negligence caused the crash. A drunk driver who was rear-ended at a red light is still not at fault for the rear-end, even if he gets arrested for DUI at the scene. We have seen carriers try to use that to muddy clear cases.

Comparative negligence cuts both ways. If our client had two glasses of wine at dinner, the defense will argue the client contributed to the crash. Under the new 50-percent rule, that argument has more teeth than it did three years ago.

What to do if you are hit by an impaired driver

If a drunk or impaired driver hits you, here is what I tell clients to do, in order. None of this is theoretical. All of it is from cases we have handled.

1. Call 911 from the scene. Do not let the other driver talk you out of it. A driver who has been drinking has every reason to keep police away. The crash report under §316.066 and the field-sobriety observations are two of the most valuable pieces of evidence you will ever have. They cannot be recreated after the fact.
2. Get photos before anything moves. Vehicle positions, skid marks, debris field, the inside of the other car if it is safe to look. I have had cases where a single photo of a beer can on the passenger floorboard changed the trajectory of the entire claim.
3. Identify witnesses by name and phone. Not just “a guy at the gas station.” Names and numbers. Witnesses scatter within hours and most are never found again.
4. Get medical attention the same day, not the next morning. Adrenaline masks injury. Carriers use a gap between the crash and the first treatment to argue the injury came from something else. A same-day ER visit closes that door.
5. Do not give a recorded statement to the at-fault driver’s insurer. You are not required to. They will call within 48 hours and try to lock you into a description of the crash and your injuries before you know the full picture. Say you are represented and end the call.
6. Preserve the vehicle. Do not let your insurer total it out and send it to auction in the first week. The car itself can be evidence — black box data, point of impact, deployment of airbags. Once it is crushed, it is gone.
7. Call a lawyer before you call your own carrier for anything beyond reporting the crash. Your own insurer is a counterparty on the PIP and UM side. Friendly, but a counterparty.

What a $500,000 Estero DUI case looked like

I represented an Estero client who was struck by a drunk driver and needed neck surgery to treat the injuries from the crash. That case settled for $500,000. The settlement would have been far harder to reach if the client had waited to get medical care — the documented injury timeline and the police report from the scene are what made the difference in negotiation.

Key Takeaways

• Florida is a no-fault state for the first $10,000 of medical bills — your own PIP under §627.736 pays first even when a drunk driver caused the crash.
• You have two years to file a negligence lawsuit under §95.11(4)(a) as of the 2023 reform. The old four-year window is gone.
• Under §768.81, a jury that finds you more than 50 percent at fault zeros out your recovery. Even one drink before a holiday-dinner crash changes the case strategy.
• Uninsured Motorist coverage on your own policy under §627.727 is often the real source of recovery in a holiday DUI case. Stack it.
• The criminal case against the drunk driver does not pay your medical bills. The civil case does, and the two run on separate tracks.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: If a drunk driver hits me in Florida, who pays my medical bills first?
Your own PIP coverage pays first under Florida’s no-fault rules. Florida Statute 627.736 gives you $10,000 of Personal Injury Protection regardless of who caused the crash. The drunk driver’s bodily injury coverage only comes into play once you step outside PIP, which usually happens quickly in a serious holiday DUI case.

Q2: How long do I have to file a lawsuit after a Florida DUI crash?
Two years from the date of the crash for most negligence claims under Florida Statute 95.11(4)(a), as amended in March 2023. The old four-year window is gone for any crash that happened on or after March 24, 2023. Wrongful death claims have their own two-year clock running from the date of death.

Q3: Can I still recover if I had a drink before the crash?
Possibly, but Florida is now a modified comparative negligence state under Florida Statute 768.81. If a jury finds you more than 50 percent at fault, you recover nothing. If you are 50 percent or less at fault, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault. Having had a single drink does not automatically make you at fault, but it changes the case strategy.

Q4: What if the drunk driver who hit me has no insurance, or not enough?
This is exactly what Uninsured Motorist coverage is for under Florida Statute 627.727. UM coverage on your own policy steps into the at-fault driver’s shoes and pays your serious-injury damages up to your UM limits. We tell every Florida driver to carry stacked UM, because tourist-season DUI defendants are frequently underinsured.

Q5: Is the bar or restaurant that overserved the drunk driver also liable?
Sometimes, but Florida’s dram-shop law is narrow. Florida Statute 768.125 lets you sue a vendor only if they knowingly served a person who was a habitual drinker of alcohol or served someone under 21. Standard adult overservice is not enough on its own. We pull the receipts, the camera footage, and the server statements early because that evidence disappears fast.

If a holiday DUI crash has changed your life, call us

If you or someone in your family has been hurt by an impaired driver anywhere from Bonita Springs to Naples to Fort Myers, our office will sit with you and walk through the case in plain English. There is no charge for the first conversation, and there is no fee unless we recover for you. Call 239-992-8259 for a free consultation, or reach our office through the contact page.

About the Author

The case load at Pittman Law Firm, P.L. has been built over more than thirty years of personal injury practice across Southwest Florida under founder David B. Pittman, Esq. The firm represents injured clients across Lee and Collier Counties, with a particular focus on commercial-vehicle, complex-liability, and serious-injury cases. Clients come in from the firm’s main office at Windsor Place on Bonita Beach Road through Fort Myers, Naples, Estero, Cape Coral, and Lehigh Acres.

After undergraduate work at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, David earned his JD at the University of South Carolina School of Law. He is AV-Preeminent at Martindale-Hubbell and a member of the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum.

David has held a Florida real estate broker license for twenty-five years, a credential that shapes how the firm reads the property side of premises cases. The firm handles personal injury cases across Lee and Collier Counties, serving Fort Myers, Bonita Springs, Naples, Cape Coral, Estero, and Lehigh Acres, with offices at Windsor Place in Bonita Springs (main) and Fort Myers (satellite). Call 239-992-8259 for a free consultation.

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