Pedestrians who walk on or near roadways are vulnerable to the actions of negligent drivers. While there are some steps you can take to reduce your risk—such as making yourself more visible—you can’t control all the variables, including careless driving.
If you’re hit by a vehicle, you are likely to have serious injuries—sometimes, even crashes at a lower speed can devastate a person on foot. But the car driver may see the accident as your fault, or worse, they might have a better opportunity to tell their side of the story to the police if you’re dealing with serious injuries.
Unfortunately, we meet many people who tried to get a car driver’s insurance company to pay for their accident claim, only to receive a claim denial because of a disagreement about fault.
What Can a Gwinnett County Pedestrian Accident Attorney Do to Help?
While recovering from serious injuries, you need assistance with the medical bills, lost income, and other damages you suffered.
Your lawyer will investigate the accident and gather evidence to show the car driver was at fault. Additionally, we’ll carefully calculate your damages so we can seek a reasonable settlement amount.
Finally, we’ll negotiate with the insurance company to achieve that settlement. In most cases, we can eventually work out a fair deal with the insurance carrier, but in rare situations, we may need to pursue the case in trial.
Who Is at Fault When a Car Hits a Pedestrian?
It can be complicated to determine fault in a pedestrian accident, but our investigators are experienced in finding evidence. We will also consider the applicable laws:
- Georgia law forbids walking on the side of the road when a sidewalk is available.
- In most situations, pedestrians have the right of way. If you’re driving and see a pedestrian crossing the street, you have an obligation to stop and let them pass if you’re able to do so.
- Crossing the street outside a crosswalk is legal in most places (check your local ordinances), but you still have to yield to traffic. Look both ways thoroughly before crossing, and always use a crosswalk if one is nearby.
- Motorists are required to stop and remain that way until a pedestrian crossing in front of them has reached the other side of the road or is more than one lane away. It’s also illegal to pass a car stopped at a crosswalk.
- Pedestrians are usually considered to be at fault in an accident if they cross the street without looking or step out right in front of a car. This is often a hotly debated point in a pedestrian accident case, with the driver insisting the pedestrian ran out in front of them and the pedestrian insisting they didn’t. In these cases, we look for evidence to support the pedestrian’s account of the accident, including seeking out photo or video evidence, witness testimony, or electronic data from the car’s event data recorder or EDR. The sooner you contact an attorney about your accident, the better our chances of recovering evidence will be.
- Pedestrians are required to yield to emergency vehicles.
What Should You Do if You Think You Were at Fault?
Don’t discuss your suspicions with anyone but your lawyer. You should truthfully answer any questions put to you by the responding police officer, but it’s not your job to decide who caused the accident or speculate about fault.
Remember, you may not have all the facts about what happened, and it’s possible you actually aren’t at fault. We’ve met a number of people who incorrectly assumed they were at fault in an accident.
It’s also important to know how personal injury law works in Georgia. Like many states, Georgia uses modified comparative negligence statutes for these cases.
Modified comparative negligence acknowledges that sometimes both parties are partially at fault in an accident such as a pedestrian/car collision. Although one party can be solely at fault, there are many situations where this is not the case.
If your claim went to court, a jury would have to decide a percentage of fault for each party (you and the car driver). If you were assigned less than 50 percent responsibility, you would still be able to collect damages from the driver, but your percentage of fault would be subtracted from your final award.
However, the majority of pedestrian accident cases are not decided in court. We will prepare as if we are going to trial, gathering evidence and building a solid case to show you had no or very little fault in the collision.
Once we’ve done so, we can usually negotiate a fair settlement with the driver’s insurance company. In most situations, the insurance company doesn’t want to spend time and money going to court if they know the evidence against their client is significant.
What Happens if You Don’t Have a Lawyer for Your Pedestrian Accident Case?
You can file a claim with the insurance company, and most likely, one of two things will happen:
- The insurance company rejects your claim. This can happen for a number of reasons, the most common of which is that the insurance company adjuster believes you were mostly at fault for the accident.
- The insurance company responds with an offer. You probably think that’s the ideal outcome, but be careful—the insurance company’s first offer is usually a steep undervaluation of your claim. Even if it seems like a lot of money, it may be far less than your claim is really worth. Valuing a claim is a complex process, and most people who are not insurance experts have no idea how much they should receive in damages. As a result, many people accept these early offers, only to realize later that they have more expenses. Remember that once you accept the insurance company’s offer, they have no further obligation regarding the accident.
What Can You Do if the Insurance Company Rejects Your Claim?
Call a personal injury lawyer. Please don’t call the insurance company to plead your own case.
The insurance rep will be highly knowledgeable about insurance and the loopholes in their policies. Not only are you unlikely to change their mind, but you may give them more evidence to use against you in the future.
If you’ve ever called the insurance company for any reason, you probably recall a robotic voice informing you that “all calls are recorded for quality control” or something similar. Make no mistake— the recording will be used for more than quality control if necessary.
The insurance adjuster will go over every word you say, looking for something that can be interpreted to mean you were at fault. Even if you’re very careful, you could make an innocent comment that the adjuster later uses against you.
An experienced pedestrian accident lawyer will review your rejected claim, answer your questions, and explain the options for resubmitting it. In many cases, we can provide the insurance company with evidence that you are not at fault, address their other objections, and get the claim approved.
What Should You Do When You Receive an Offer From the Insurance Company?
We understand that you might still be in pain, that you may have been out of work for some time, and that you’re probably ready to receive a settlement so you can pay your bills and move on. But we don’t want you to accept a payment that doesn’t fully cover all your damages.
If you’ve received an offer from the insurance company, we recommend asking a lawyer to review it. If it’s a fair offer, we’ll tell you, and you can get your claim finished right away.
But if we find that it only covers some of your damages and doesn’t allow for future medical costs or other expenses, we’ll tell you that, too. If you like, we can also negotiate with the insurance company for a more comprehensive deal.
What if the Driver Who Hit You Is Uninsured?
Your lawyer will consider other options to recover your damages, including suing the driver directly and using your uninsured/underinsured motorist insurance (UM/UI). UM/UI coverage can be used in pedestrian accidents even if your car had nothing to do with the accident.
It’s even possible to use UM/UI if you were the victim of a hit-and-run crash.
How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Gwinnett County Pedestrian Accident Law Firm?
Your initial consultation should not cost you anything. If you contact us, we’ll review your case and tell you the options for free.
If you decide to move forward with our help, there are no upfront costs because we understand that accidents often leave people in a difficult financial position. We won’t charge you anything until we win or settle your case; then, we’ll take an agreed-upon fee from the final settlement.
If you or a loved one have suffered a pedestrian accident, please contact the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm for a free consultation. Attorney Ali Awad founded the firm only a few years ago and has since turned it into one of the fastest-growing law firms in the country.
With the help of his experienced legal team, he has recovered millions of dollars in compensation for injured people and their families. When he’s not busy working on a case, he posts entertaining yet informative videos about legal topics for over a million followers on social media.
Call the CEO Lawyer today at (470) 323-8779.
