Arizona's rideshare accident law has a few features that do not exist in most other states, starting with a tiered insurance system and extending to Phoenix's unique status as the largest fully driverless rideshare market in the country. Here is what Arizona law actually says about your claim.
Arizona's Three Insurance Tiers
Under Arizona's Transportation Network Company law (A.R.S. Section 28-4038), the insurance that applies to your accident depends entirely on what the driver's app was doing at the moment of impact.
- App off: only the driver's personal auto insurance applies, at whatever limits they personally carry.
- App on, no ride accepted yet: a smaller contingent policy applies, $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident.
- Ride accepted or passenger in the vehicle: full commercial coverage applies, $1,000,000 in liability.
If you were a passenger, you were almost certainly in that third tier, meaning the full $1,000,000 commercial policy applies to your claim regardless of who caused the crash.
Arizona's Pure Comparative Negligence Rule
Arizona follows a pure comparative negligence rule under A.R.S. Section 12-2505. Like California, and unlike Nevada, there is no fault percentage that blocks your claim entirely. You can recover compensation even if you were found mostly responsible for your own injury, with your damages simply reduced by your percentage of fault. Insurance companies routinely argue shared fault to minimize a payout, but in Arizona, that argument can only reduce your recovery, not eliminate it.
How Long You Have to File
Arizona's statute of limitations for personal injury claims is two years from the date of the accident, under A.R.S. Section 12-542. The clock generally starts on the date of the crash itself, not the date you finish medical treatment. Acting early preserves evidence that will not wait two years, including any sensor or dashcam footage from an autonomous vehicle, which is not held indefinitely by the company that owns it.
Same Rules, Statewide
Arizona law preempts local rideshare regulation under A.R.S. Section 28-142, meaning cities and counties cannot create their own, different rideshare insurance rules. The coverage tiers and legal standards described here apply the same way whether your accident happened in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, or Tucson.
What If There Was No Driver? Waymo and Autonomous Vehicle Claims
Phoenix is Waymo's largest commercial market in the country, which means Arizona sees a meaningfully higher volume of fully driverless rideshare trips than almost anywhere else. When there is no human driver involved, the evidence picture changes. Instead of a driver's account of what happened, the vehicle's own sensor, camera, and telemetry data becomes the central evidence, and that data is proprietary to the company that owns the vehicle, not something you can simply request on your own. A legal hold letter demanding preservation of that data is typically needed early, before it is overwritten on the company's own schedule.
If you are unsure whether the vehicle involved in your accident was a human-driven Uber or Lyft or a fully autonomous Waymo vehicle, that distinction matters for your claim and is worth confirming as early as possible.
Independent Contractor Status
Uber and Lyft classify their Arizona drivers as independent contractors, not employees. This limits the companies' direct liability for a driver's negligence in most situations. In practice, this means your claim is generally filed against the TNC's insurance policy, the specific tier determined by the app status table above, rather than against the company itself.
What This Means for Your Claim
Arizona's rideshare insurance system is more layered than most states, but for the typical passenger hurt during an active trip, the outcome is straightforward: the full $1,000,000 policy applies, the same rules apply no matter which Arizona city you were in, and comparative negligence arguments from an insurance company can only reduce your recovery, not eliminate it.
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