Florida hit and run penalties range from a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail for property damage to a first-degree felony carrying a mandatory four-year prison sentence when someone dies. Where your case lands depends almost entirely on what happened to the people and property involved, and the jumps between tiers are steep.1Justia Law. Florida Code 316.061 – Crashes Involving Damage to Vehicle or Property2Justia Law. Florida Code 316.062 – Duty to Give Information and Render Aid
The Five Penalty Tiers
Florida law sorts hit and run offenses by outcome. Read down the list; the tier that fits your crash controls the exposure.
Property Damage to an Attended Vehicle or Property
Leaving after damaging a vehicle someone was in, or property with an owner or attendant present, is a second-degree misdemeanor. Maximum 60 days in jail, up to a $500 fine, and a mandatory $5 surcharge deposited into Florida’s Emergency Medical Services Trust Fund. The court can order restitution for the damage.
Unattended Vehicle or Property
Hitting a parked car or unoccupied property and failing to either locate the owner or leave a written note with your contact and registration information is also a second-degree misdemeanor. Same 60-day maximum, same $500 fine ceiling.
Injury Below the Serious Bodily Injury Threshold
If a person was hurt but the injuries don’t meet Florida’s definition of serious bodily injury, leaving becomes a third-degree felony. Up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000. Serious bodily injury under the statute means a physical condition creating a substantial risk of death, serious disfigurement, or long-term loss of function of a body part or organ. Anything below that line falls into this tier.
Serious Bodily Injury
When the injuries clear that threshold, the charge becomes a second-degree felony. Up to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
Death
A fatal hit and run is a first-degree felony. The prison sentence carries a mandatory minimum of four years and a maximum of 30, with fines reaching $10,000. The four-year minimum applies regardless of circumstances. If you have a prior conviction for leaving the scene of a crash, DUI, racing on highways, or felony-level driving on a suspended license, you’ll be held in custody until a judge sets bail rather than released on your own recognizance.
Habitual Offender Enhancement
Every tier above interacts with Florida’s habitual felony offender statute. If prior convictions qualify you, maximum sentences climb sharply. A second-degree felony can rise to 30 years. A third-degree felony can rise to 10.
Mandatory Restitution and the Four-Year Minimum
Two features of Florida’s sentencing scheme aren’t discretionary the way most sentencing is.
The four-year prison minimum for a fatal hit and run cannot be negotiated away by good facts. Judges can go higher; they cannot go lower.
Restitution works the same way in any hit and run involving injury or death. The court must order it unless the judge finds specific and compelling reasons not to, and payment must be a condition of probation. Restitution can cover both monetary and nonmonetary losses, and an order to pay the victim doesn’t reduce any separate obligation to pay into the state’s Crimes Compensation Trust Fund. For property-damage-only cases under Section 316.061, restitution is discretionary rather than mandatory, though the court still has authority to order it if you caused or contributed to the crash.
Insurance and Financial Fallout
Criminal exposure is one line on the bill. The rest arrives from your insurer.
According to rate data from Insurance.com, Florida drivers convicted of an at-fault hit and run see their annual premiums rise by roughly 68% on average, pushing a typical $2,694 policy to around $4,514. That increase compounds year over year and often lasts three to five years before insurers reconsider your rates.
Your carrier may also decide not to renew the policy at the end of its term. A conviction can trigger a requirement to file proof of financial responsibility, known in Florida as an SR-22 or FR-44 depending on the underlying offense, before you can reinstate or keep your driving privileges. High-risk carriers charge substantially more than standard insurers, so replacement coverage is expensive even when you can find it.
Add criminal defense attorney fees, court costs, restitution, and lost income during any jail or prison time. A misdemeanor property-damage case can run a few thousand dollars in legal fees. A felony with serious injury or death can easily cost tens of thousands before the case resolves.
Commercial Driver’s License Consequences
Federal regulations treat leaving the scene as a “major offense” for CDL holders. A first conviction disqualifies you from operating a commercial vehicle for one year, or three years if you were hauling hazardous materials. A second major offense of any kind results in a lifetime CDL disqualification.
These federal disqualification periods apply no matter what vehicle you were driving at the time. Leaving the scene in your personal car on a Saturday still puts your CDL at risk.
How Long Prosecutors Have to Charge You
The clock depends on the tier.
- Fatal hit and run: no statute of limitations. Prosecution can be brought at any time.
- First-degree felony hit and run that didn’t result in death: four years.
- Second- and third-degree felony charges: three years.
- Second-degree misdemeanor (property damage) charges: one year.
The absence of any limit on fatal cases matters. Cold-case work, dashcam footage that surfaces later, or a witness who comes forward years afterward can all produce charges with no expiration.
What Counts as Leaving the Scene
The charge turns on failing to do what the statute requires after a crash. Every category starts with the same baseline: stop your vehicle at the scene, or as close as possible without unnecessarily blocking traffic. From there, the duties depend on what you hit.
For a crash involving an attended vehicle or property, you must stay and share your name, address, and vehicle registration number with the other driver or property owner, show your driver’s license on request, and give the same information to any responding officer. For an unattended vehicle or property, you must either find the owner and share that information or leave a written note with it in a visible spot, and report the crash to the nearest police authority without unnecessary delay. When someone is injured, all of the above applies, plus a duty to provide reasonable assistance, including arranging transportation to a hospital if the injuries clearly require medical attention or the injured person asks for it.
Skipping any of those duties is what turns a crash into a hit and run charge.
Defenses That Actually Work
Florida’s statute uses the word “willfully,” and the Florida Supreme Court has read that to require proof of actual knowledge. That reading is where most viable defenses live.
Lack of Knowledge
In State v. Dorsett, the Florida Supreme Court held that the prosecution must prove the driver had actual knowledge of being involved in a crash. The case involved a driver whose truck struck a teenager on a skateboard; the driver said he never realized contact occurred. The Court held that the standard jury instruction must require the jury to find the driver knew a crash happened before returning a guilty verdict.
This defense works best where the contact was low-speed, the impact minor, or road noise plausibly masked the collision. It falls apart with significant vehicle damage, airbag deployment, or witnesses who saw the driver look back. Prosecutors will use every piece of physical evidence to argue that no reasonable person could have missed the impact.
Duress or Necessity
A driver who left because staying would have put them in immediate physical danger can raise duress or necessity. Duress means a specific person forced you to act, such as threatening violence if you stayed. Necessity means you chose between two bad options forced by circumstances rather than a specific person’s threat. Florida courts sometimes blend the two in hit and run cases.
Either version requires showing the threat was immediate and serious, that you had no reasonable alternative, and that you didn’t create the dangerous situation yourself. Driving straight to the nearest police station to report the crash strengthens the defense. Driving home and going to bed destroys it.
The Practical Limits
Both defenses face an uphill battle. Lack of knowledge becomes harder to sell as the severity of the crash climbs. Duress or necessity requires a concrete threat, not a vague feeling of unease — a crowd approaching aggressively, gunshots, a documented threat. Prosecutors see the “I felt unsafe” claim constantly and it rarely holds up without something specific. If you left because of genuine danger, reporting the crash to law enforcement immediately afterward is the single most important thing you can do. Every hour of delay weakens the defense.