Florida Bus Accident Lawyer

Bus accident claims are different, and the differences decide the case

Kemp Law Group represents passengers, pedestrians, cyclists and drivers hurt in bus crashes across Florida, and in Georgia through our Georgia-admitted attorney. The firm has recovered more than $400 million for injured clients since 2008 and holds a 4.9-star rating across more than 900 Google reviews. Bus cases are a distinct practice because the defendant is almost never an ordinary driver: it is a county transit agency, a school board, a private charter company, an interstate carrier like Greyhound or FlixBus, a hotel or cruise-port shuttle operator, or a contractor running a school district’s routes. Each of those comes with its own insurer, its own records, and in the public cases, its own deadlines and damage caps that do not apply to anyone else.

Call (727) 847-4878 or contact us online for a free case review. We answer 24/7, and you pay no fee unless we win.

The first question: who owns the bus

Everything about a Florida bus claim follows from the answer.

Public transit and school district buses

HART and the TECO Line streetcar in Hillsborough, PSTA in Pinellas, GoPasco, TheBus in Hernando, Citrus Connection in Polk, LYNX in Orlando, Miami-Dade Transit, Broward County Transit, Palm Tran, JTA in Jacksonville, LeeTran, SCAT, and every county school board’s yellow buses are government operators. A claim against any of them runs through section 768.28, Florida’s sovereign immunity statute. That means written notice of the claim to the agency (and, for state agencies, to the Department of Financial Services) before any lawsuit; a 180-day investigation period after notice during which suit generally cannot be filed; no punitive damages; and caps of $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident, which only the Legislature can lift through a claims bill. The notice must be presented within three years of the crash, two years for a wrongful death, and the lawsuit itself still has to meet the general deadline. The paperwork is unforgiving: a notice sent to the wrong office or missing a required element can end an otherwise valid claim.

Private carriers, charters and shuttles

Interstate carriers, charter and tour companies, airport and hotel shuttles, church buses, and private contractors that run school routes (Durham, First Student and others) have no immunity and no caps. Buses that cross state lines are federally regulated motor carriers, which gives us access to driver qualification files, hours-of-service records, maintenance logs, and the post-crash drug and alcohol testing the regulations require. Federal rules also set insurance minimums of $5 million for buses seating 16 or more and $1.5 million for smaller ones, so the coverage to pay a serious claim usually exists.

Why the ownership question also changes what you can recover

Florida’s no-fault threshold, which limits pain-and-suffering claims in ordinary car crashes to permanent injuries, applies to vehicles that are required to carry PIP coverage. Most public transit buses are exempt from that requirement, so in many claims against a transit agency the threshold does not apply, and the sovereign immunity caps become the real limit instead. Private carriers’ vehicles are generally within the no-fault system, so the permanent-injury question returns. Which rule governs your case is one of the first things we determine.

How people are hurt in bus crashes, and who is responsible

• Passengers inside the bus. Most transit buses have no seat belts. Sudden stops, hard turns, collisions, and falls while standing or moving to a seat injure riders who were doing nothing wrong. A carrier that transports passengers for hire is a common carrier, and Florida juries judge it by what a reasonably careful professional carrier would do, which is a demanding standard for a driver who pulls away before a rider is seated or brakes hard to make a light.
• Boarding and exiting. Doors closing on passengers, buses pulling away from the curb early, wheelchair lift and ramp failures, and stops placed where riders must step into traffic.
• Pedestrians and cyclists. Buses turning across crosswalks, right-hook collisions with cyclists in bike lanes, and riders struck after stepping off a bus. See our pedestrian accident page for how those claims are built.
• Drivers and passengers of other vehicles. A loaded transit bus weighs 15 to 20 tons; a collision with a car is rarely minor. These claims combine the bus rules above with the ordinary car accident analysis, including the other driver’s share of fault.
• School bus cases. Children hurt on a bus, at a stop, or by a driver who passed a stopped bus with its arm extended (a violation of section 316.172). The defendant may be the school board, a private contractor, the passing driver, or more than one of them.

Fault often divides among several parties: the bus driver, the operator that trained and dispatched him, the maintenance contractor, a second driver, a government body responsible for a stop or an intersection, or a manufacturer. Under Florida’s comparative negligence rule in section 768.81, the jury assigns each a percentage, and an injured person who is more than 50 percent at fault recovers nothing. Identifying every responsible party early is how the recovery is maximized and how your own share is kept where it belongs.

What we do in the first two weeks

• Preserve the video. Transit and school buses carry multiple interior and exterior cameras, and most systems overwrite footage in 30 days or less. Our preservation letter goes out the day we are retained, and for a public agency it is paired with a Chapter 119 public records request for the video, the incident report, the driver’s record, dispatch logs and GPS data. Florida’s public records law is a tool private defendants never have to face, and we use it.
• Serve the sovereign immunity notice correctly. For a government bus, we identify the right agency and address, include every element section 768.28 requires, and calendar the 180-day period, so the claim is never lost on procedure.
• Lock down the federal records. For interstate and charter carriers, we demand the driver qualification file, hours-of-service logs, pre- and post-trip inspection reports, maintenance history, and the results of the post-accident drug and alcohol tests.
• Identify the passengers and witnesses. A transit bus may have had thirty witnesses who scattered within minutes. Fare-card data, the operator’s incident report, and the video itself let us find them.
• Protect the medical case. Bus passengers are often injured without a dramatic collision, and insurers argue the mechanism could not have caused the injury. Early imaging, consistent treatment, and physicians who document causation answer that argument before it is made.

What a Florida bus accident claim can recover

Medical bills, past and future; lost wages and lost earning capacity; the cost of care and household help; pain and suffering, disability, disfigurement and loss of enjoyment of life; and, in a fatal crash, the damages Florida’s Wrongful Death Act provides to the survivors and the estate. Against a private carrier, these have no statutory cap, and punitive damages are available under section 768.72 for conduct such as an impaired driver or a company that put a bus on the road knowing its brakes were failing. Against a government operator, the $200,000 and $300,000 limits in section 768.28 apply unless the Legislature passes a claims bill, which the firm can pursue in the cases that warrant it.

Since 2023, section 768.0427 limits the evidence of medical expenses to amounts actually paid or owed and requires disclosure of letters of protection, so we build the medical damages around the actual charges and the treating physicians’ testimony from the start.

Commercial vehicle results

Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a future outcome. These recoveries show the kinds of commercial vehicle cases the firm handles:

• $2,000,000 for a family in a wrongful death truck accident
• $1,102,000 in a commercial vehicle accident
• $1,000,000 in a commercial vehicle accident
• $977,955 in a commercial vehicle accident
• $959,421 in a commercial vehicle accident
• $870,000 in a commercial vehicle accident

See more case results.

Where we handle bus accident cases

Kemp Law Group represents bus accident victims throughout Florida and in Georgia, from our office at 11567 Trinity Boulevard in Trinity. In Tampa Bay that means HART, PSTA, GoPasco and TheBus routes, the school districts of Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties, and the charter, shuttle and intercity buses that serve Tampa International Airport and the Port of Tampa. Across the rest of the state, see our pages for South Florida, Central Florida, Southwest Florida and North Florida, and for crashes across the state line, Georgia personal injury.

Frequently asked questions about Florida bus accidents

How long do I have to file a bus accident claim in Florida?

For a negligence claim arising from a crash on or after March 24, 2023, the lawsuit deadline under section 95.11 is two years from the crash. Against a government operator, written notice under section 768.28 must also be presented to the agency, and the agency has 180 days to respond before suit can be filed, so the practical deadline is much earlier. Video is overwritten within weeks, so the useful answer is to call now.

The bus was a county or city bus. Can I still sue?

Yes. Florida has waived sovereign immunity for the negligence of its agencies and their employees, subject to the notice requirements and the $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident caps in section 768.28. Recoveries above the caps require a claims bill passed by the Legislature.

I was standing on the bus when it stopped short. Is that a case?

Often, yes. Transit operators know passengers stand and walk in the aisle, and a driver who brakes hard without reason, pulls away before a rider is seated, or takes a turn too fast can be negligent even without a collision. The bus’s own cameras and telematics usually show what happened.

I don’t own a car. Who pays my medical bills after a bus crash?

If no auto policy in your household provides PIP, your health insurance covers treatment while the claim proceeds, and the bus operator’s liability coverage pays for the injuries it caused. Because most transit buses are exempt from Florida’s no-fault requirement, your claim against a transit agency is often not limited by the permanent-injury threshold.

My child was hurt on or near a school bus. Who is responsible?

It depends on who operated the bus and what happened. A school board is a government defendant under section 768.28; a private contractor is not. A driver who passed a stopped bus with its stop arm out is liable under ordinary negligence rules. More than one party can be responsible, and we pursue each.

What does a bus accident lawyer cost?

Nothing up front. We work on a contingency fee set within the Florida Bar’s maximum percentages, paid only from a recovery. If there is no recovery, you owe no fee.

If you or someone you love was hurt in a bus accident anywhere in Florida, call (727) 847-4878 or request a free case review online. We answer 24 hours a day, and you pay nothing unless we win.