Area we serve · Miami-Dade County
Car accident lawyer in Doral
Where the county’s freight actually sits, and what that changes about a claim
A crash in Doral is a Miami-Dade County claim, and the law that decides it is the same law as anywhere in Florida: the fourteen-day deadline for initial care, the injury threshold, two years to sue. What is different here is the traffic. Doral is the warehouse and distribution district that sits against the western edge of Miami International Airport, wrapped by three limited-access highways, so a much larger share of what moves through it is commercial than in any residential part of the county. That changes who the defendant is, what evidence exists, and how quickly that evidence disappears. The statutes are on the Florida car accident page. What follows is about freight.
01 What a Doral crash actually looks like
Three expressways, an airport, and a street grid built for trailers
The Palmetto Expressway, State Road 826, runs down the eastern side; the Dolphin Expressway, State Road 836, cuts across the south; and Florida’s Turnpike runs along the west. Doral sits inside that triangle, which means almost every trip through it begins or ends on a limited-access road worked by the Florida Highway Patrol.
Northwest 25th Street and Northwest 36th Street are the freight spines, running east toward the airport cargo area. They carry tractor-trailers, container chassis and delivery fleets at surface-road speeds through signalized intersections, which is the combination that produces the serious ones.
Northwest 87th and 107th Avenues are the north-south pair, and Doral Boulevard, Northwest 41st Street, carries the office and retail traffic. The newer residential blocks and the golf-resort area put ordinary commuter traffic onto the same roads the trucks use.
And the airport is immediately east, which adds rental cars and drivers who have never been on these roads before to a grid where turning radii and lane widths were designed around trailers rather than around them.
A loaded trailer at forty-five miles an hour is not a car crash with a bigger vehicle in it. It is a different kind of injury.
02 The part nobody tells you about Doral
A young city, a young police department, and a company behind most of the trucks
Doral had 75,874 residents at the 2020 Census, up from 45,704 ten years earlier. It is one of the county’s newer cities, and it has run its own police department only since 2008 — the department marked its tenth anniversary in July 2018, and before it existed the city bought its policing from Miami-Dade County under contract.
That history still matters for an older claim. For anything recent, a crash inside the city limits is a Doral Police Department report. On the Palmetto, the Dolphin or the Turnpike it is the Florida Highway Patrol, and immediately outside the limits it may be the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office or another municipality.
The real difference here is who the defendant turns out to be. When the other vehicle is commercial, the claim is rarely against the driver alone. There is usually a motor carrier behind them, identified by a USDOT number painted on the door, and that company carries very different insurance limits from a private driver in a county where no driver is required to carry bodily injury coverage at all.
And commercial evidence has a clock on it. Driver logs, dispatch records, maintenance files and any onboard data are kept for a defined period under federal rules and are then lawfully destroyed. Nothing improper happens: the records simply reach the end of their retention and go. A letter asking that they be preserved has to arrive before that, which is why a commercial crash is the one kind where waiting costs something concrete.
A Doral case is filed in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, in the Miami-Dade County Circuit Court at 73 West Flagler Street. Most injury claims never get there, because they resolve with the insurer before a suit is filed.
03 The roads
Where the claims actually come from
The Palmetto Expressway, State Road 826, down the eastern side, limited-access and worked by the Florida Highway Patrol.
The Dolphin Expressway, State Road 836, across the south, the main connection to downtown and the airport.
Florida’s Turnpike, along the western edge, where the speeds are highest and the injuries worst.
Northwest 25th Street and Northwest 36th Street, the freight spines running east to the airport cargo area, carrying trailers through signalized intersections.
Doral Boulevard and the 87th and 107th Avenue pair, where office, retail and residential traffic mixes with the trucks on the same signals.
04 What to do now
The things that can only be done in the first two weeks
A checklist, not advice about a particular case, and one that matters more here than usual because of what expires.
Get seen within fourteen days
Personal Injury Protection pays nothing at all if the first treatment falls outside fourteen days — not a reduced amount, nothing. It is the deadline that expires before most people have decided what to do.
Photograph the door of the truck
The company name and the USDOT number are on it, and they are the two things that identify the motor carrier. Once the vehicle is repaired, resold or repainted, a trailer number alone can be very hard to trace back.
Note which agency responded
Doral Police inside the city limits, the Florida Highway Patrol on the Palmetto, the Dolphin and the Turnpike, and the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office or another city just outside. Record the agency and the report number.
Say so early if a commercial vehicle was involved
Driver logs, dispatch records and maintenance files have a retention period and then they are gone. A preservation letter has to reach the carrier while they still exist, and that is a matter of weeks rather than months.
Record whether it was a rental
With the airport immediately east, rental vehicles are common. It changes the coverage analysis and takes longer to establish, so the plate and the rental company are worth capturing at the scene.
Pull your own declarations page
Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, and whether it stacks. Florida does not require any driver to carry bodily injury liability, so your own policy is often the ceiling where the other vehicle is private.
Do not give the other insurer a recorded statement
You are not required to, and a commercial carrier’s insurer will usually ask within days. The answer given in the first week gets quoted back for the next two years.
05 The kinds of crash this covers
The same roads, five different claims
Miami-Dade County recorded roughly 60,000 traffic crashes in 2024, with 29,359 people injured, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. That is a county figure: there is no published count for Doral alone, and anyone quoting one is estimating. Which of them this district produces is what makes the page worth reading.
Truck accidents
The one that defines this area. A motor carrier behind the driver, a USDOT number, federal hours-of-service and maintenance rules, and records that exist for a defined period and then lawfully disappear.
The insurance behind a commercial vehicle is usually an order of magnitude different from a private policy, which is why establishing the carrier early matters more than it does in any other kind of crash.
Car accidents
Still the majority, and here the pattern is signalized intersections on roads carrying far more commercial traffic than a residential grid.
The fourteen-day deadline applies to every one of them, whoever was at fault.
Uber and Lyft accidents
The airport is next door and the pickup zones are busy at every hour, so rideshare vehicles are a constant part of the traffic here.
Which policy responds depends on the app status at the moment of the crash — off, waiting, en route or carrying a passenger — and those are three different coverage positions.
Workplace accidents
A warehouse district means loading docks, forklifts, pallet jacks and delivery drivers injured on someone else’s premises.
This office does not take workers’ compensation cases. It takes third-party injury claims — against a negligent contractor, a property owner or an equipment maker — which can run alongside a compensation claim rather than instead of it.
Uninsured drivers
Florida requires no driver to carry bodily injury liability coverage at all, so the underinsured case — limits smaller than the harm done — is the common one rather than the exception.
The claim moves to your own policy, which makes the declarations page the most important document in the file.
06 Also for Doral
The other matters this office takes from here
Injury work is most of this practice. The rest run from the same South Miami office, each with its own fee terms and its own page.
Immigration
Removal defense, bond, asylum, family petitions and citizenship. Doral’s workforce is heavily Venezuelan and Colombian, and status questions tied to employment come up here more than anywhere else in the county.
Family law
Divorce, time-sharing, support, property and protective orders in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, with the parenting course due within forty-five days where there are minor children.
Criminal defense
Bond and release conditions, DUI, drug charges, theft and domestic violence, after an arrest by the Doral Police Department or by the Florida Highway Patrol on one of the expressways.
Property insurance claims
A denied, underpaid or delayed claim on a Doral warehouse, office or home, where a roof loss and a business interruption claim are adjusted separately and often at different speeds.
07 How this works
The consultation, the documents, and what it costs
The first conversation is with Jose A. Dapena, not with an intake department. On an injury matter it is free and commits you to nothing, and it can happen by phone.
The Miami office is at 5975 Sunset Drive, Suite 102, in South Miami, with parking on site. It is the office that serves all of Miami-Dade.
Fees differ by practice and are stated before anything is signed. Injury work is contingent, normally payable only if there is a recovery, with costs governed by the written agreement. Family and immigration are hourly, with payment plans and separate government filing fees. Criminal is a flat fee set by the charges and the scope, with no payment plans. The free consultation is an injury term and does not travel to the others.
08 Who you deal with
Jose A. Dapena
Admitted to The Florida Bar in 1998, number 152358, and admitted to the United States District Courts for the Southern, Middle and Northern Districts of Florida.
Before representing injured people he was in-house counsel for a Personal Injury Protection carrier, reviewing claims on the insurer’s behalf: the same analysis a claim meets now, learned from the other side of the file.
He began in maritime law defending cargo and personal injury claims, which is where the habit of reading a carrier’s paperwork before arguing about it comes from.
09 The law behind this
- Fla. Stat. § 627.736 Personal Injury Protection
80% of medical expenses and 60% of lost wages up to $10,000, and the fourteen-day deadline for initial care.
- Fla. Stat. § 627.737 The injury threshold
What an injury has to reach before pain and suffering can be claimed from the driver at fault.
- Fla. Stat. § 768.81 Comparative fault
More than 50% at fault and the claim recovers nothing, which is how a commercial carrier defends most of these.
- Fla. Stat. § 95.11 Deadlines
Two years to sue on most negligence claims accruing on or after March 24, 2023.
10 Official resources
- FLHSMV crash portalWhere a crash report is requested, whichever agency wrote it
- City of DoralThe city whose police department works crashes inside the limits
- Eleventh Judicial CircuitThe court a Miami-Dade case is filed in
- Miami-Dade Clerk of the CourtsFiling, case search and the forms a self-represented party needs
Questions
Who writes the crash report in Doral?
The Doral Police Department, for anything inside the city limits — the city has run its own department since 2008, and bought its policing from Miami-Dade County before that. The Florida Highway Patrol works the Palmetto, the Dolphin and the Turnpike.
A truck hit me. Why is that a different case?
Because there is usually a motor carrier behind the driver, identified by the USDOT number on the door, operating under federal hours-of-service and maintenance rules. The insurance is different, the evidence is different, and driver logs and maintenance records are kept for a defined period and then lawfully destroyed, so the preservation request has to go out early.
Is there an office in Doral?
No. The office is at 5975 Sunset Drive, Suite 102, in South Miami. It is the office that serves all of Miami-Dade, and a first conversation can happen by phone.
My crash was on the Palmetto. Does that change the claim?
It changes who wrote the report — the Florida Highway Patrol rather than a city department — and the speeds there tend to make injuries worse. The claim runs under the same Florida law and is still a Miami-Dade case.
I was hurt at work in a warehouse. Can you help?
This office does not take workers’ compensation cases. It does take third-party injury claims — against a negligent contractor, a property owner or an equipment manufacturer — and those can run alongside a compensation claim rather than instead of it.
Where would my case be heard?
In the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, at the Miami-Dade County Circuit Court, 73 West Flagler Street. Most injury claims are resolved without a lawsuit.
How long do I have?
Fourteen days to get initial care for Personal Injury Protection to pay anything, and two years to sue on most negligence claims. Where a commercial vehicle is involved there is a third clock nobody mentions: the carrier’s own records reach the end of their retention period and are destroyed.
Talk to Jose A. Dapena about a Doral crash
The Miami office on Sunset Drive serves all of Miami-Dade, and the first conversation about an injury costs nothing. If a commercial vehicle was involved, it is worth having that conversation sooner rather than later, because some of the evidence has an expiry date.