Who Compensates Injured Taxi Cab Passengers?

I broke my wrist when my taxicab crashed into another car last week. How can I make sure my medical costs are covered by the cab company?

Taxi cab drivers are notorious risk-takers, reckless and aggressive. With the pressure to get passengers to their destinations as quickly as possible in order to maximize revenue, cab drivers often jeopardize passengers’ safety with dangerous, high-speed driving. The consequences are at least serious, if not disastrous taxi accidents injure over 20,000 people per year and kill about 30. Even for safety-conscious cab drivers who obey the rules of the road, accidents still happen frequently as a result of driver fatigue from long hours and relentless exposure to traffic. If you ever have the misfortune of becoming a victim in a taxi accident, you might automatically assume that the cab driver or the company will pay for any injuries you sustain. Unfortunately, the onus of compensation is not quite that clear.

If you are an injured passenger in a taxi cab accident, your health insurer will most likely end up paying for your medical expenses, at least initially. To receive compensation for your injuries, you would probably have to hire a personal injury attorney to sue the cab driver or the cab company. Taxi companies have a reputation for their reluctance to compensate injured passengers, which usually requires aggressive legal action to combat. The main problem is that taxi drivers only have to carry minimal levels of liability insurance currently, usually $25,000, which doesn’t even begin to cover the medical expenses of some injured passengers. Taxi companies also deliberately break up their assets to make it easier for cab companies to dodge liability claims.

What to Do

After a taxi accident, assuming that you’re able to do so, most lawyers advise passengers to do the following in order to make later legal action more effective:

• Write down the name and contact information of the taxi cab driver
• Take the name and contact details of any witnesses
• Get the name and contact information of any other parties involved in the collision
• Take photos of the accident scene and the injuries sustained by you and any other parties

Proving Liability

To get the cab company to compensate you for your injuries, your lawyer will need to prove their liability for your injuries. Here are some of the issues your lawyer might explore in order to determine liability:

• Did your cab driver have previous citations?
• Was the taxi company negligent in hiring your driver?
• Was the driver under the influence of drugs or alcohol?
• Did the driver have a record of traffic accidents?
• Was the cab driver uninsured or underinsured?
• Did the driver have a bad driving record?