Good Samaritan Law Florida: What You Should Know After Fort Myers Car Accidents

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

Florida has a Good Samaritan Act — §768.13 — and in most situations it does exactly what people hope it does: it protects someone who stops at a crash and tries to help from being sued for the outcome. Fear of lawsuits keeps far more good people on the sidelines than the law itself ever has. That fear, with thirty-plus years of injury practice in Lee and Collier Counties behind me, is largely unfounded. The protection is real, it is broad, and it is available to anyone who acts in good faith without charging for the help.

But it is not a blank check. There are limits worth understanding before you find yourself standing on the shoulder of Daniels Parkway with somebody else’s blood on your shirt. Let me lay this out plainly.

What Florida law actually says about Good Samaritan protection

The operative statute is Florida Statute §768.13, the Good Samaritan Act. The plain-English version is this: if you stop at a crash scene, render emergency care or treatment in good faith, and do not charge for it, you cannot be sued for the outcome unless your conduct was so far off the rails that it counts as reckless disregard for the person you were trying to help. The statute covers ordinary citizens and it covers medical professionals who are passing by, both. It does not turn doctors off-duty into superhumans, and it does not require you to be a paramedic to qualify.

There are three pieces of Florida law I want you to keep in your head together, because they all touch the same crash:

• §768.13 — the Good Samaritan Act. Protects the helper. Good faith, no fee, no recklessness.
• §316.062, Florida Statutes — duty after a crash. This is a duty on the drivers involved in the wreck, not on you as a witness. Drivers have to stop, exchange information, and render reasonable aid. A passing motorist does not.
• §316.066, Florida Statutes — crash report. Law enforcement files the long-form report, and if you witnessed the crash your statement may go into it. The statement is not legal advice, just facts.

Two other statutes matter if you, the helper, end up hurt yourself. §627.736 is Florida’s PIP statute, the $10,000 of no-fault medical coverage that follows you whether you caused the crash, witnessed it, or were trying to help. And §768.81 is the modified comparative negligence statute that the 2023 reform tightened, the one that says if a jury finds you more than fifty percent at fault for an injury, you recover nothing. Modified comparative negligence, in plain English: a jury slices fault into percentages between everybody involved, and your recovery gets reduced by your share, but if your share goes over half the line you walk away with zero. That fifty-percent bar is the single biggest change Tallahassee made to civil practice in the last decade, and it changes how every Florida case is worked up now, including the cases where a Good Samaritan was on scene.

Five situations where the Good Samaritan question actually comes up

The statute reads cleanly on the page. Real life on Cleveland Avenue is messier. Over the years, our office has watched the Good Samaritan question play out in roughly five patterns:

1. The passing motorist who pulls over. Most common. Sees a rollover on I-75 near Alico Road, pulls onto the shoulder, calls 911, talks to the people in the car until Lee County deputies arrive. This person is squarely inside §768.13 as long as they do not try anything they are not trained for.
2. The off-duty nurse or paramedic. Steps in because they actually can do something. Florida law gives them the same shield as anyone else at the roadside, so long as they are not billing for it and they are acting in good faith.
3. The well-meaning bystander who moves an injured person. This is where good intentions go wrong. Unless the car is on fire or the person is in active danger, do not move them. Spinal injuries can be made permanent by a well-intentioned drag from a driver’s seat. Wait for EMS.
4. The helper who is then hit by traffic. Happens on Summerlin Road and on Six Mile Cypress Parkway more often than people realize. You stop to help, secondary traffic does not slow down, and now you are the victim. Florida law lets you bring a claim against the secondary driver, and your own auto policy’s PIP and UM coverages typically come into play.
5. The witness who leaves. Legally fine. You have no duty to stay unless law enforcement asks for your statement. Practically, a quick exchange of contact information with the responding officer can make a real difference for the injured party two months later, when their insurance carrier is denying the claim and a neutral witness account changes everything.

Where the Good Samaritan protection gets complicated

The reason these scenes are tricky is that the law’s protection is wide but it is not unconditional. I have seen the following come up in the cases that have crossed our desk:

Good faith is judged after the fact. The statute says you must act in good faith, but “good faith” gets evaluated months later by an adjuster sitting at a desk in Tampa or Atlanta who was not at the scene. The adjuster will read the police report, look at the medical records, and decide whether your actions look reasonable. The closer your behavior tracks what a calm, reasonable Floridian would do, the safer you are. Pulling a conscious adult out of a car with a possible neck injury because you watched too much television is the kind of thing that can be picked apart later.

The reckless-disregard exception is narrower than people think. Florida courts read §768.13’s “reckless disregard” language strictly. It means more than a mistake, more than a misjudgment under pressure. It means you knew the risk and did it anyway. A panicked witness who tries CPR badly is not reckless. A witness who tries to drive an injured person to the hospital in their own car, against the wishes of arriving EMS, is closer to the line.

The two-year clock is the silent killer. If you were hurt while helping, your claim against the at-fault driver runs out under §95.11(4)(a) in two years from the date of the crash for any negligence accruing after March 24, 2023. That is half the time we used to have under the old four-year rule. By the time most Good Samaritans realize their own back or shoulder is not healing the way they hoped, six or eight months have already gone by. Do not let that clock run.

The fifty-percent bar under §768.81 has changed the calculus. If you stopped to help and were then injured, the at-fault driver’s carrier is going to look hard at whether you put yourself in an unreasonable position. They will argue you should have stayed in your car, that you parked too close, that you stepped into a lane. Under the 2023 modified comparative negligence reform, if they can get a jury to put you over fifty percent on the fault pie, you recover nothing. Documentation of where you parked, where you stood, and what you saw matters more now than it did three years ago.

What we did on a Fort Myers truck claim

One we worked recently is a good illustration of how the Good Samaritan question and the underlying crash claim sit side by side. A client of ours was rear-ended on US-41 in Fort Myers by a driver who never bothered to stop. By the time our client got out of the car, the other vehicle was gone. A woman in a pickup truck who had been two cars back pulled over, walked up to the driver’s window, and stayed with our client until Fort Myers Police arrived. She gave a partial plate and a description of the vehicle, then handed over her phone number. She did exactly what §768.13 contemplates, and to her enormous credit she did not panic and try to play paramedic.

Our client had what looked, in the first twenty-four hours, like a soft whiplash. By week three the neck pain had not resolved. By month two she was in physical therapy three times a week, and by month four a pain management doctor in Fort Myers was treating her for chronic cervical strain. The fleeing driver was never identified, so the claim went where these claims almost always go: into the uninsured motorist coverage on our client’s own policy under §627.727, with the first $10,000 of medical bills handled through her PIP under §627.736.

The result was a full policy payout on the UM limits. The bystander’s contemporaneous account, in writing, was a meaningful part of why the carrier did not try to argue our client somehow caused her own rear-end collision. None of that would have existed without a witness who knew she did not have to stop, and stopped anyway.

What to do if you witness a Fort Myers crash

I have watched enough witness statements get torn apart by defense adjusters to know what helps and what hurts. If you find yourself in this situation, here is what I would do, in this order:

1. Get yourself out of harm’s way first. Park at least a hundred feet past the scene, on the shoulder, with your hazards on. On Colonial Boulevard or Cleveland Avenue, traffic does not stop just because you did. I have had two cases over the years where the Good Samaritan was the most severely injured person on the scene.
2. Call 911 before you do anything else. Tell the dispatcher exactly where you are, how many vehicles are involved, and whether anyone is unconscious or bleeding visibly. Stay on the line. They will tell you when to hang up.
3. Approach only if it is safe. Look for fuel on the ground, smoke from under the hood, a vehicle still in a travel lane. If any of that is present, wait. Your presence twenty feet away is more useful than your presence twenty feet inside a debris field.
4. Do not move an injured person unless they are in active danger. Fire, water, a vehicle that is going to be hit again. Otherwise, hold their hand, talk to them, keep them awake, and wait for EMS. I have seen well-meaning helpers turn a recoverable injury into a permanent one by trying to pull somebody out of a seat.
5. Write down what you saw before you leave. Direction of travel, vehicle colors, what the light was doing, weather, anything you saw the drivers do in the seconds before impact. Memory degrades within the first hour. A two-line text message to yourself with the time stamp is gold three months later.
6. Give your name and number to the responding officer and to the injured party. You are not signing up for a deposition. You are giving the injured person a witness they can have their attorney call if the carrier denies liability. In practice, that single act has changed the outcome of cases I have handled.
7. If you got hurt yourself, see a doctor that day. Not tomorrow. Same day. The PIP statute and the 2023 statute of limitations both reward early documentation, and adrenaline hides injuries for the first twelve to twenty-four hours.

Key Takeaways

• Florida’s Good Samaritan Act, §768.13, shields you from civil liability for emergency aid given in good faith, without payment, and without reckless disregard for the person you are helping.
• You have no legal duty to stop as a passing motorist. The duties under §316.062 fall on the drivers involved in the crash, not on witnesses.
• The protection has limits: reckless disregard, willful misconduct, accepting payment, or continuing after a conscious victim says no will all take you outside §768.13.
• If you are hurt while helping, you keep every right an injured Floridian has — PIP under §627.736, UM under §627.727, and a tort claim against the at-fault driver under §768.81, subject to the fifty-percent bar.
• The clock under §95.11(4)(a) is now two years for post-2023 negligence claims, including yours if you were injured stepping in to help.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. Am I required by Florida law to stop and help if I witness a Fort Myers car accident?
No. Florida does not put a duty on uninvolved bystanders to stop at a crash. The drivers in the crash have duties under §316.062, but a passing motorist does not. Once you do stop and start helping, you are expected to act the way a reasonable person would in the same situation.

Q2. What does Florida Statute §768.13, the Good Samaritan Act, actually protect me from?
It shields you from civil liability if you give emergency care or treatment at the scene of a crash, in good faith, without charging for it, and without acting with reckless disregard for the person you are helping. It applies to ordinary citizens and to medical professionals who stop on the roadside outside a hospital setting.

Q3. When does the Good Samaritan protection stop applying?
If your conduct rises to reckless disregard, willful misconduct, or gross negligence, the statute will not protect you. Charging money for the help, or continuing to act on a victim who is conscious and tells you to stop, also takes you outside the statute.

Q4. If I am hurt while helping someone after a Fort Myers crash, can I still bring a claim?
Yes. Stopping to help does not waive your own right to recover. If the at-fault driver injured you while you were rendering aid, you can pursue that driver under Florida negligence law, and your own PIP under §627.736 typically covers the first $10,000 of medical bills regardless of fault.

Q5. How long do I have to file a claim under the 2023 Florida tort reform?
For most negligence claims arising after March 24, 2023, the statute of limitations under §95.11(4)(a) is two years from the date of the crash, not four. That clock can run quickly while medical treatment is still ongoing, so do not wait to talk to a lawyer.

Talk to our office

If you witnessed a Fort Myers crash and got hurt trying to help, or if you were the injured driver and a stranger stopped for you, our office will sit down with you and walk through your options. There is no charge for the first conversation, and we work on a contingency basis. There is no fee unless we recover for you. Call 239-992-8259 for a free consultation, or reach us through the contact form on the site.

About the Author

Three decades into his personal injury career in Fort Myers and across Lee County, David B. Pittman, Esq. continues to lead Pittman Law Firm, P.L., the firm he founded, with a sustained focus on serious-injury auto and complex-liability cases. The firm’s Fort Myers presence handles a steady stream of serious-injury work along the Daniels Parkway, Six Mile Cypress, McGregor Boulevard, Cleveland Avenue, and Summerlin Road corridors, and along I-75 between Estero and Bell Tower.

David completed his undergraduate degree at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, and his JD at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Martindale-Hubbell rates him AV-Preeminent; the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum counts him as a member.

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.

The information on this page is provided for general information purposes only and is not legal advice. Reading this page does not create an attorney-client relationship with Pittman Law Firm, P.L. Every case turns on its own facts. If you have been injured in a Florida crash, please contact our office directly to discuss your situation.