Nobody tells you this when you climb into the back of an Uber: the driver’s own car insurance, the policy with his name on it, is allowed to walk away from your crash entirely.
That’s on purpose. Minnesota wrote the permission into the statute. Section 65B.472 lets any auto insurer in the state exclude “any and all coverage” for anything that happens while a driver is working for Uber or Lyft. In trade, it requires a different stack of insurance to be there instead. How big that stack is turns on one thing you can’t see from the back seat: what the driver’s app was doing at the moment of impact.
Same car. Same driver. Same intersection. The liability floor can be $50,000 at 9:14 and $1,500,000 at 9:15. The only thing that changed is that he tapped “accept”.
That’s a lot of money riding on one thumb.
The law chops a driver’s day into periods
Since January 1, 2025, Minnesota’s rideshare insurance statute has used three labels for a driver’s working time. They live in the driver-pay chapter, § 181C.01, subdivision 4, and § 65B.472 borrows them. The Legislature calls them, a little grandly, “three exclusive segments”:
(1) “period 1” or “P1” means the time when a driver is logged into a TNC application, but has not accepted a ride offer;
(2) “period 2” or “P2” means the time when a driver is proceeding to pick up a rider after choosing to accept a ride offer; and
(3) “period 3” or “P3” means the time when a driver is transporting a rider from a pickup location to a drop-off location.
There’s a fourth period the statute doesn’t bother naming, because it isn’t rideshare at all: app off. Then he’s just somebody driving his own car, and his personal policy works the way it always does.
“TNC” is the statute’s term for the app company, a “transportation network company”. Uber, Lyft, and anyone else matching riders to drivers through an app.
So what does each period actually require?
Three periods. You’d figure three dollar floors. Nope. Two. P2 and P3 share one set of requirements, and P1 gets a much smaller one.
| App status at impact | Liability coverage required | Driver’s own injuries |
|---|---|---|
| App off | Ordinary personal policy; the Minnesota minimum under § 65B.49 is $30,000 / $60,000 / $10,000 | Driver’s own no-fault |
| P1: logged in, no ride accepted | At least $50,000 per person, $100,000 per accident, $30,000 property damage | No-fault benefits; the TNC’s injury policy doesn’t apply |
| P2: heading to pick you up | At least $1,500,000 for death, injury, or property damage | TNC-paid injury coverage of at least $1,000,000 per incident |
| P3: you’re in the car | At least $1,500,000 | Same $1,000,000 coverage |
Every period with the app on also requires primary no-fault security and primary uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage “where required by section 65B.49, subdivisions 3a and 4a”. Section 65B.472 doesn’t set its own, higher dollar figure for that UM/UIM layer. The general Minnesota floor in § 65B.49 is $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident.
The coverage can come from the driver, the app company, or a mix. The statute lets either one carry it. That’s one reason a single rideshare claim can put several insurers in the room at once.
Your own policy isn’t first in line
This trips up people who know a little about no-fault.
Normally, if you’re hurt in a Minnesota crash and have your own auto policy, your own insurer pays your basic economic loss benefits. The statute requires a minimum of $20,000 for medical expense and $20,000 combined for wage loss, replacement services, and the rest, with wage loss paid at 85 percent of gross income subject to a $500 weekly maximum. I walked through how those benefits and the priority rules work at /news/minnesota-no-fault-auto-basics/.
Then § 65B.47 carves out vehicles “being used in the business of transporting persons”. When that applies, the security covering the vehicle pays an occupant first. And § 65B.472 says, for P1, P2, and P3, that the app company and the driver are “deemed to be in the business of transporting persons” for exactly that subdivision.
So a rideshare passenger’s no-fault claim generally starts with the rideshare insurance, not with her own carrier. Now compare a cab. Section 65B.47 carves out “a passenger in a taxi” from the business-use rule, so a taxi passenger who has her own policy usually starts there. The Legislature treated the two rides differently, in so many words.
Can the driver’s insurer really refuse everything?
Yes, if its policy says so. Here it is, § 65B.472, subdivision 4(a):
Insurers that write automobile insurance in Minnesota may exclude any and all coverage afforded under the owner’s insurance policy for any loss or injury that occurs during P1, P2, and P3.
Then it lists what can go out the window: liability, UM and UIM, basic economic loss benefits, medical payments, comprehensive, and collision. It says those exclusions apply “notwithstanding any requirement” of the no-fault act, and then, in case anybody missed it: “Nothing in this section implies or requires that a personal automobile insurance policy provide coverage during P1, P2, or P3, or while the driver otherwise uses a vehicle to transport passengers for compensation.” An insurer that excludes has no duty to defend or indemnify a claim its policy expressly excludes.
But look at the word “may”. The statute permits the exclusion. It doesn’t force one. An insurer can still choose to cover a rideshare driver “by contract or endorsement.” Whether a given driver’s policy excludes, and how far, comes down to that policy’s actual wording.
The statute also makes the app company tell its drivers, in writing and before their first ride, that their own policy “might not provide any coverage” while they’re logged on. Nobody reads the fine print.
Two rules that stop the finger-pointing
The Legislature saw this coming: two insurers pointing at each other, and a hurt person in the middle waiting for somebody to cut a check. Two provisions deal with it.
The app company’s coverage “shall not be dependent on a personal automobile insurer first denying a claim”. You don’t have to wait for the driver’s carrier to say no before the rideshare insurance has to get in the game.
And if the driver’s insurance lapsed, or doesn’t provide what the statute requires, the app company’s insurance has to provide the required coverage “beginning with the first dollar of a claim and have the duty to defend the claim.” A driver who let his policy go doesn’t take your coverage down with him.
The one question worth asking at the scene
Was the app on, and had he accepted a ride?
Everything turns on it, and the statute makes the driver answer. Under subdivision 2(m), on request from the people involved, their insurers, or the investigating officer, a driver has to disclose “whether the driver was logged on to the transportation network company’s digital network or on a prearranged ride at the time of an accident.” He also has to carry proof of the rideshare coverage at all times while he’s using the car on the app.
During the coverage investigation, the app company and the insurers have to swap the precise times the driver logged on and off in the 12 hours before and the 12 hours after the crash. That’s the record that settles a fight over whether it was P1 or P2. One minute is the difference between a $50,000 floor and a $1,500,000 one.
Other driver, pedestrian, cyclist: same question. The period sets the liability floor behind the rideshare driver.
What drivers got from the 2024 law
Before January 1, 2025, § 65B.472 required no injury coverage for the driver beyond no-fault security. The 2024 driver-pay law changed that. For P2 and P3, the app company now has to carry injury coverage for the driver “on behalf of, and at no cost to, the driver”, at not less than $1,000,000 per incident. It pays only loss “not otherwise covered by the insurance required under paragraphs (b) and (c)” of subdivision 2, meaning the liability, no-fault, and UM/UIM layers above. It covers medical expense, disability and income loss, funeral and burial expense, replacement services, and survivors’ benefits. The wage and services pieces are capped at 130 weeks after the injury or death. And it reaches injuries “sustained while at the drop-off location immediately following the conclusion of a prearranged ride.”
Now the strings. It doesn’t apply in P1; the statute says driver injuries are covered only during P2 or P3, plus that drop-off moment. A driver claiming it has to cooperate the way any no-fault claimant does, including a physical examination by the insurer’s doctor on request under § 65B.56. And amounts paid or payable under the required UM and UIM coverages “shall be reduced by the total amount of benefits paid or payable” under this new coverage. It’s a real benefit. It also comes with an offset, because of course it does.
What the statute leaves out
Nothing in § 65B.472’s coverage requirements mentions collision or comprehensive coverage for the driver’s own car. And those are two of the coverages a personal insurer is allowed to exclude. So if a driver wrecks his own car in P3, the statute doesn’t require anyone to insure the damage to it. Whether anyone does depends on the policies actually in place. I wrote about how a total-loss claim works when there is coverage at /news/minnesota-auto-total-loss-claims/.
The rest of no-fault still applies. Rideshare insurance that satisfies § 65B.472 is “deemed to satisfy” the no-fault act’s financial-responsibility requirements, so a passenger who wants pain-and-suffering damages from an at-fault driver generally still has to get over Minnesota’s tort threshold: more than $4,000 in qualifying medical expense, or permanent injury, permanent disfigurement, death, or a disability of 60 days or more. That threshold has its own quirks, which I covered at /news/minnesota-no-fault-tort-threshold/.
And if the driver who caused the crash was somebody else, uninsured or underinsured, your own UIM may sit behind the rideshare coverage as excess. Under § 65B.49, subdivision 3a(5), an occupant who isn’t an insured on the car she’s riding in may reach her own policy’s UIM, but only to the extent her own limit exceeds the limit on the occupied vehicle. How that math goes sideways on people is at /news/minnesota-uninsured-underinsured-motorist/.
I couldn’t find a published Minnesota appellate decision applying § 65B.472. I searched CourtListener’s Minnesota appellate collection under the statute number, the statute’s own terms, and the company names, and I searched the open web. None turned up an opinion on point. For now the statute’s words are most of what anyone has.
Madgett Law, LLC
Madgett Law, LLC represents people hurt in car and truck crashes across Minnesota, including the no-fault and uninsured and underinsured motorist layers most people don’t know they’re carrying. We don’t represent insurance companies. A rideshare crash is a car crash with more policies piled in, and the period the driver was in decides which ones are on the hook. Read more about our personal injury practice, then send us a message.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 181C.01, subd. 4 (P1, P2, P3; “three exclusive segments”); Minn. Stat. § 65B.472, subd. 1(c), (d), (g), (i), (j)–(l) (definitions; driver injury limited to P2 and P3; 130-week caps), subd. 2(a) (primary coverage during P1, P2, P3), subd. 2(b)(1)–(4) (P1: $50,000/$100,000/$30,000; no-fault security; UM/UIM; driver, TNC, or combination), subd. 2(c)(1)–(4) (P2 and P3: $1,500,000), subd. 2(d) (TNC-maintained driver injury coverage, $1,000,000 per incident, drop-off location), subd. 2(h) (UM/UIM reduced by subd. 2(d) benefits), subd. 2(i) (first-dollar coverage and duty to defend on lapse), subd. 2(j) (no prior denial required), subd. 2(l) (deemed to satisfy no-fault financial responsibility), subd. 2(m) (proof of coverage; disclosure of app status), subd. 3(2) (disclosure to drivers), subd. 4(a)–(b) (personal-policy exclusions; no duty to defend or indemnify), subd. 4(d) (12-hour log-on records); Laws 2024, ch. 127, art. 17, § 1 (amending § 65B.472, effective January 1, 2025) and § 2 (enacting § 181C.01); Minn. Stat. § 65B.47, subd. 1 (business use), subd. 1a(5) (taxi passenger exemption), subd. 4(a) (insured’s own security); § 65B.44, subd. 1(a) ($20,000 medical; $20,000 other), subd. 3(a) (85 percent, $500 per week); § 65B.49, subd. 3(1) ($30,000/$60,000/$10,000), subd. 3a(1) ($25,000/$50,000), subd. 3a(5) (excess UIM for occupants); § 65B.51, subd. 3 (tort threshold); § 65B.56, subd. 1 (medical examination). This article is general information about Minnesota law, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and no outcome is promised or implied.