Drivers today are constantly surrounded by untrained, largely uninsured delivery drivers. When you’ve been hit by a Grubhub driver, you’re in for a long and difficult road to recovery that will likely include a complex legal battle.
The NJ delivery driver injury attorneys at Console & Associates, P.C. have years of experience overcoming every obstacle that car accident victims who are hit by Grubhub drivers encounter. We have fought for maximum payouts for clients who feared that they’d never get the compensation they deserved due to Grubhub’s involvement in the crash.
If you’re ready to get your questions answered and protect your legal rights, call us today at 866-778-5500 or complete our online form for a free consultation.
If you’ve been hit by a Grubhub driver, you’re far from alone. As the use of online and mobile food delivery platforms has become more widespread, collisions with their delivery drivers have also become more common.
Grubhub is an online food delivery service. The company works much like other app-based food delivery platforms, such as DoorDash and Uber Eats.
A key part of Grubhub’s business model is outsourcing the work of picking up and dropping off takeout orders to independent “delivery partners” rather than legally hiring employees to do it. Although this detail may not seem that important, it becomes critical when a Grubhub driver injures another motorist while working for the delivery service.
The safest way to drive is with your full attention on the road. Unfortunately, the numerous distractions that are part of app-based delivery work divert Grubhub drivers’ attention, often contributing to accidents.
The app Grubhub drivers use for work is full of distracting notifications that compel them to look at their phones while driving. The pressure to get to a restaurant fast and stack as many orders as possible for better earning potential can prompt Grubhub drivers to speed, follow other motorists too closely, or take other risks behind the wheel to save time.
It doesn’t help that Grubhub drivers may not be familiar with the roads and parking lots around either the assigned restaurant or the delivery destination. Looking for the right address or a space to park may distract them from paying attention to the other cars around them.
A final factor that contributes to Grubhub accidents is the company’s minimal job requirements. If all of the company’s delivery partners were experienced drivers with the maturity to tune out distractions and the judgment to make sound split-second decisions behind the wheel, Grubhub accidents might be less likely. As it is, though, Grubhub requires no formal driving training or commercial driver’s license (CDL) from its delivery partners. All someone needs to sign up as a Grubhub delivery partner is a vehicle, a smartphone, a personal driver’s license, and some form of auto insurance.
Too often, driving for Grubhub means that a brand-new driver with no real-life driving experience and a dangerously unreliable vehicle is rushing from destination to destination. The pressure to view app notifications prompts them to repeatedly take their eyes off the road—turning their vehicle into an out-of-control missile every time.
We are here to help.
An injury doesn’t have to be life-threatening to impact your life, although some Grubhub accident injuries certainly are. Any car accident injury that makes it difficult for you to move around, work, or go about your usual activities is serious enough to interfere with your life.
When that accident is the result of someone else’s negligence, you shouldn’t have to be the one facing the consequences.
The major types of harms and losses you might sustain as a result of being hit by a Grubhub driver include the following.
Although your own auto insurance should cover your medical bills under NJ’s no-fault law, you will still pay your deductible and copayments out of pocket. That amounts to over a thousand dollars even if you have the lowest deductible and potentially thousands of dollars out of your pocket if you chose a higher deductible.
You might be facing additional medical expenses if you chose a low level of PIP coverage on your auto insurance policy or if you opted to make your health insurance your primary source of medical coverage for an accident.
The medical bills you’ve already incurred are only one aspect of your financial losses in a Grubhub driver accident claim. If your injuries pose long-term consequences, you may be facing the reality of further medical costs over the course of your life. These can quickly add up to tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars in projected costs.
Future medical costs are among the losses you can seek compensation for in a Grubhub car accident claim.
Many people who suffer significant injuries in a car accident miss at least some time from work. Depending on the nature of your job and the extent of your injuries, you could be out of work for weeks, months, or even longer.
This unexpected loss of income poses a real hardship for most families. Suddenly, you can’t pay your bills or provide for your family, all because of the negligence of a careless delivery driver.
The more extensive your rehabilitation, the longer you’re likely to be out of work—recovering from surgery, regaining your range of motion, and potentially even relearning how to walk.
How long your injuries will impact your ability to work is still up in the air. For some car accident victims, it takes well over a year to recover well enough to return to work and the rest of their regular activities. Other people injured in Grubhub accidents may never fully recover. Among the other serious consequences of such severe injuries, the injured person may never be able to return to their career again.
Whether your loss of income is finite or forever, it’s unfair that someone else’s negligent actions have put this financial burden on your family.
If your injuries limit you in other ways, too, the financial cost can be even greater. Do you struggle to clean the house, mow the lawn, or look after the kids now because of your injuries? When you have to hire outside help for these and other tasks, the accident is eating into your savings even more.
Know your legal options.
No one knows better than you all the ways your injuries have affected your life. The impact isn’t just financial. You and your family have been through so much suffering, physically and emotionally, because of the accident.
It’s been scary. It’s been painful. At times, it may have felt like things would never get better.
In so many ways, the accident has changed not just your life but also your quality of life—keeping you from doing the things you want to do and making every day painful and frustrating. These losses may not have an easily calculable economic price tag, but they’re no less real or important. You deserve to be compensated for them, too.
To get the money you’re entitled to for all of these damages, you need to file an insurance claim and, in many cases, a lawsuit. Your Grubhub car accident claim may involve multiple auto insurance companies—none of which are eager to pay you all the money you deserve.
In New Jersey, your own auto insurance company pays for the medical bills that result from a car crash. It may seem unfair that your insurer pays—and that you personally have to pay the deductible and copayments—when you were hit by a negligent Grubhub driver, but that’s how the system works under the state’s no-fault law.
As it turns out, it may be a good thing that your own insurer has to pay your medical bills in the event of a Grubhub accident. Getting money out of either the food delivery company or its driver may be more challenging than you would think.
For your other damages outside of your medical bills, you would typically pursue a claim with the insurance company of the at-fault party or parties. Perhaps the first question injured accident victims ask about filing a claim is, “Does Grubhub cover accidents?”
Generally, no—you can’t count on Grubhub to pay for the lost wages, pain and suffering, and other damages you sustained because of a crash with a Grubhub driver.
Remember, Grubhub’s model classifies delivery partners as independent contractors rather than employees. Through this arrangement, the delivery service has passed liability for motor vehicle collisions onto its drivers.
Some online and app-based delivery services do provide auto insurance coverage, at least for motorists injured by independent delivery drivers who are working for the platform. Unfortunately, Grubhub does not.
Let us assist you.
According to Grubhub, its driver is liable for the damages you suffered in the accident. When you attempt to actually recover compensation from the Grubhub driver’s auto insurer, though, you’re likely to run into complications.
On paper, Grubhub requires its delivery drivers to have auto insurance, but the company doesn’t specify the type or amount of insurance they should carry. Many Grubhub delivery partners are driving around with only a personal auto insurance policy, not a commercial policy that covers delivery driving.
When the driver’s insurance company discovers that their policyholder was working for Grubhub at the time of the crash, it will typically deny the claim. The insurer can claim that the Grubhub driver’s personal auto policy doesn’t cover an accident that happened while the car was being used for commercial purposes like delivery work.
That’s bad news for the Grubhub driver but even worse news for you, the injured victim who happened to be in the path of the negligent delivery driver. You need and deserve compensation for your damages, but the Grubhub driver who hit you and the delivery service company they work for are both unwilling or unable to compensate you. Now what?
There is one more place to turn for the accident injury compensation you’re entitled to: your own insurance coverage.
Most New Jersey drivers have a standard auto insurance policy that likely includes uninsured motorist (UM) coverage. UM coverage applies when the driver who is at fault for the accident is uninsured.
Although the Grubhub driver who hit you may have technically had insurance through their personal auto policy, their insurer is denying coverage for the claim through that policy—leaving the Grubhub driver with no insurance and you without coverage for your damages.
Getting compensation for accident damages through your UM insurance coverage is just as difficult as fighting for a payout from the other driver’s insurer. Just because you’re seeking a settlement from your own insurance company doesn’t mean the insurer is on your side. The insurance company still benefits from paying out as little as possible on your claim.
To get compensation through your UM coverage, you need to go through the entire legal process. This includes providing evidence that the uninsured driver was the one at fault for the crash and fully documenting all of your damages. There are legal documents to file and legal proceedings to participate in as your claim progresses.
Reaching a settlement with your insurer that fully covers your losses requires you to make compelling arguments for the money damages you deserve. It’s every bit as challenging as fighting for compensation from another driver’s insurance company.
Winning a UM claim for car accident compensation takes tenacity, a great deal of time, and knowledge of the legal process. Trying to handle a complex Grubhub accident claim on your own without extensive legal knowledge or professional representation won’t get you the best results—especially when the legal matter distracts you from your physical recovery.
There’s a better way. Put your claim in the hands of our experienced NJ Grubhub accident injury attorneys. It costs you nothing upfront to hire our legal team to represent you and fight for every dollar you deserve. From the get-go, we handle every aspect of your claim and represent your interests every step of the way. Under our No Fee Promise, all you’ll ever pay for legal representation is a fraction of the money we successfully get for you. That means you’ll never have to stress about hourly rates or ongoing retainers. You won’t end up paying for an unsuccessful case or owing more in attorneys’ fees than your case is worth. And this percentage-based fee model ensures that our goals are perfectly aligned with yours: to get you maximum compensation for your claim.
Hiring Console & Associates, P.C., to handle your Grubhub accident lawsuit means you’ll never have to go through any part of the complex legal process alone. Having us on your side gives you peace of mind. You can focus on getting better. We’ll handle everything else.
Call 866-778-5500 or contact us online today for a free, no-pressure consultation.
