BY Sarah Blazonis Tampa
UPDATED 9:41 AM ET Mar. 27, 2025 PUBLISHED 10:23 PM ET Mar. 26, 2025

GIBSONTON, Fla. — The Florida House of Representatives Civil Justice & Claims Subcommittee is scheduled to discuss HB 1181 at its meeting on Thursday.

The bill would repeal the state’s no-fault insurance law. In Florida, there is a no-fault auto insurance that means all drivers must have personal injury protection to cover their own medical expenses and lost wages if there is an accident, no matter who is at fault.

A group of about 30 motorcyclists left Showtown Bar & Grill Wednesday afternoon in Gibsonton, bound for Tallahassee.

Lee Hagood, founder of the West Coast Florida Riders motorcycle club, said they were making the more than 250-mile trip to attend that meeting in support of the bill. He told Spectrum News his group would be among about 200 bikers expected to be there.

“We’re going to make history, guys. We’ve been fighting for this for over 25 years, and you guys are going to be part of it,” Hagood told the group before they headed out.

Hagood founded West Coast Florida Riders in 2018. HB 1181 would impact all Florida drivers, but Hagood said it would bring an extra layer of protection for motorcyclists by requiring mandatory bodily injury coverage.

“We hear stories all the time about how one of our brothers or sisters go down in an accident and they were not at fault, and the person that hit them did not have any insurance coverage at all,” he said. “Our members were left to fend for themselves with medical bills and expenses.”

If passed, the bill would require $25,000 in bodily injury coverage for one person and $50,000 for two or more people, as well as $10,000 in property liability coverage. Right now, drivers have to have $10,000 in personal injury protection, or PIP.

“In my opinion, PIP never really worked. The first time that PIP started working was in 2023, thanks to Gov. (Ron) DeSantis’s reforms,” said William Large, president of the Florida Justice Reform Institute.

Large said PIP was first implemented in 1972 as a way to cut back on crash-related lawsuits. However, he said another statute on one-way attorney’s fees allowed lawyers to be paid their hourly rate when they litigated a PIP case.

“It created an incentive to fight over low dollar amounts – sometimes a penny, sometimes fifty cents, sometimes one dollar,” he said. “So, it thwarted the entire promise of PIP that there was not supposed to be any litigation.”

Large said a 2023 bill did away with the one-way attorney’s fees provision, and the number of PIP cases have declined significantly. He said he wants to see more data collected on this before additional changes are made.

“Now is not the time to undo the PIP reforms. Instead, it’s to allow a certain more time to show that this experiment is indeed working,” said Large.

The debate on whether repealing the no-fault insurance law will lower insurance premiums has been going on since that 2021 bill was proposed.

Hagood said prices will come down for drivers, but a 2021 report from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation that was released when the previous bill was being considered projected an overall increase of premiums.

https://baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2025/03/27/no-fault-insurance-bill#