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If a negligent motorist has injured you, mounting medical bills, lost income from missing work, a badly damaged car, and other losses can complicate your life. The at-fault driver’s car insurance should cover your damages, but many people experience difficulty making a claim.
The insurance adjuster might blame them for the accident, undervalue their losses, or find other ways to refuse or reduce their claim. What can you do to protect your legal rights after a collision?
Contact a Stockbridge Car Accident Attorney for Help After Your Car Accident
Addressing your damages after a car crash presents its own set of challenges.
While dealing with injuries and missed time at work, you’re tasked with navigating the labyrinth of the at-fault driver’s insurance company. At the same time, their insurance adjuster dissects every detail in the policy and police report, searching for any loophole to minimize or outright deny your claim.
If they find one, you may want to call the insurance adjuster and set them straight. But before dialing the insurance company’s number, it’s better to pause and consult with legal counsel first.
Engaging with insurance adjusters often backfires for the injured person, potentially jeopardizing their case. Even if you communicate carefully, your words might be manipulated to insinuate you contributed to the accident, putting your settlement at risk of reduction or denial.
The best course of action is to reach out to a seasoned car accident attorney in Stockbridge for guidance. Here at the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm, we provide complimentary consultations to assess your case.
We’ll examine the details of your accident, address your concerns, and outline the avenues available for pursuing compensation.
What Types of Car Accidents Are the Most Difficult to Recover Damages From?
You can experience difficulties recovering damages from any type of accident. Most challenges begin with a dispute over fault, which might be due to a lack of evidence, the other driver’s recollection of what happened, or the insurance adjuster’s interpretation of the available evidence.
Occasionally, claims are also denied due to policy exclusions.
Aside from outright denying claims, insurance adjusters may also reduce your settlement based on their calculation of how much fault you had in the collision. In Georgia, parties to an accident can share responsibility, although one party could also be entirely at fault.
If you contributed to the crash, you may have a hard time collecting all of your damages, but if you’re less than 50 percent responsible, you can still recoup some of them. The insurance adjuster can deduct your percentage of fault from the final settlement, so if you were 15 percent responsible, you could recover 85 percent of your damages.
The key in these cases is to ensure your portion of the fault is estimated fairly. In some cases, the adjuster inflates the injured party’s share of responsibility.
If you don’t have a lawyer, this could result in losing thousands of dollars or more, depending on how much your damages are worth. However, an experienced attorney will fight for a reasonable estimate of your contributions (if any).
Finally, the insurance adjuster could also underestimate your claim’s total value, usually by missing or undervaluing specific damages. These include medical bills and related expenses, lost income, lost earning potential, permanent disability or disfigurement, pain and suffering, property damage, and more.
Your lawyer will carefully evaluate each of these damages and determine the approximate value of your claim, and if the insurance company’s offer doesn’t measure up, we’ll negotiate for a better deal.
Different types of car accidents can present their own challenges. Here are some types of accidents, how they happen, and what you need to know about your claim:
Intersection Accidents
The most common issue in intersection accidents is who had the right of way. Often, both drivers believe that they did, and the police report may be inconclusive if the officers don’t find enough evidence at the scene to settle the question.
We’ll search for additional evidence to prove your case, such as video from nearby cameras or witnesses who may not have been present when the police arrived.
Speeding and distracted driving can also be factors in intersection accidents. We’ll look at event data recorder or EDR data from both vehicles to determine speed and the drivers’ actions before and during the collision.
If we suspect the other driver was distracted by a phone, we can request their smartphone records as well.
Head-On and T-Bone Collisions
These are two of the most dangerous accidents between motor vehicles in terms of injury severity. When the front end of a car is damaged due to a collision, the driver and front-seat passenger have an increased risk of injury.
T-bone accidents, where the front of one car hits the side of another, are most often intersection accidents and are subject to the same questions about right-of-way. T-bone crashes may be very serious for an occupant on the affected side of the vehicle, as the collision could force the car door and frame inward.
Head-on collisions usually involve a driver who crossed the center line or somehow found themselves driving on the wrong side of the road. There may be disagreement about who swerved into the oncoming lane or why this occurred.
In wrong-way crashes where the wrong-way driver wasn’t intoxicated, we will usually check to see if there were appropriate road signs to discourage drivers from accidentally going the wrong way. Occasionally, we see situations where the driver made an honest mistake because the signs and road design were unclear or confusing, or a sign was missing or damaged.
Vehicle and Vulnerable Road User Accidents
A vulnerable road user is someone who isn’t shielded by a motor vehicle, typically a pedestrian or bicyclist. Although these road users are required to follow traffic laws and state guidelines for pedestrians or bicyclists, vehicle drivers are generally expected to yield the right of way to pedestrians if possible.
Here are some other state laws to keep in mind whether you are walking, cycling, or driving:
- Pedestrians crossing outside of a marked crosswalk or intersection should yield the right of way to vehicles unless they are already in the roadway when the vehicle approaches.
- If pedestrians choose to use a roadway when a pedestrian walkway or tunnel is provided, they should yield the right of way to vehicles.
- In between intersections with traffic-control signals, pedestrians should only cross at these intersections.
- A flashing “Don’t Walk” sign indicates that pedestrians shouldn’t start crossing, but drivers do not have the right of way. They still have to wait for walkers to finish crossing the intersection.
- Georgia considers bicycles to be vehicles, and cyclists should follow all road rules, including signaling when they turn or change lanes.
- Drivers approaching a bicycle in another lane should proceed cautiously and, if possible, move into another lane not adjacent to the bicyclist. If a lane change isn’t feasible, the motorist should slow to ten miles an hour below the speed limit or 25 MPH and allow three feet of space between the vehicle and the bike when passing.
These cases may also involve disagreements about who had the right of way. Motorists should always yield if a vulnerable road user crosses their path, regardless of right of way, but it’s not always possible for a car to stop in time to avoid a collision. For this reason, we often see cases where the driver insists that the pedestrian or bicyclist cut in front of them, leaving the motorist without enough time to react.
Another potential difficulty is that the vulnerable road user often suffers severe injuries. A head injury, or any serious injury that requires heavy pain medication or surgical anesthesia, can make it challenging to recall the accident details.
It’s not unusual for the injured person to tell us they truly don’t remember what happened.
If you’re in this situation, the best thing you can do is contact an attorney as soon as possible. We’ll go to work collecting evidence and piecing together the facts so we can fight for your right to compensation.
Vehicles and Motorcycles
These collisions often happen for many of the same reasons as other motor vehicle accidents: Speeding, distracted driving, drunk driving, drowsy driving, reckless driving, etc. However, there is also one other frequent cause of cars hitting motorcycles—an otherwise careful driver simply fails to see the bike.
For instance, they may look both ways before turning or pulling out of a parking lot, believing the road is clear and continuing.
This is a function of the motorcycle’s smaller size and profile—they’re harder to see than cars and other larger vehicles. If you ride, wearing bright or reflective colors and adding reflective tape to your bike can help improve visibility. Auxiliary lights can also make it easier for drivers to spot you.
Motorists are encouraged to “Look twice and save a life.” It’s also helpful to turn off the radio and roll down a window before turning, as it may be easier to hear a motorcycle coming than to see one in some situations.
As with pedestrian and bicycle accidents, motorcyclists are also much more likely to suffer serious injuries than the car’s occupants. Wearing a helmet and sturdy riding clothes can reduce the risk of injuries, but even so, many bikers are severely injured when hit by a car.
As a result, the vehicle driver may tell the police it was the motorcyclist’s fault while the biker is being loaded into an ambulance. Or, the car driver might claim the biker was “driving recklessly” because they think motorcycle riders are thrill seekers with little regard for safety.
The reality is that most bikers understand the risks and ride as carefully as possible, and in many cases, the vehicle driver is at fault.
If you are hurt in a motorcycle accident and the driver or their insurance company tries to blame you, your lawyer will analyze the evidence and work to show you were not at fault.
Single-Vehicle Accidents
People often assume these are the driver’s fault and there is no way to recover compensation, but that isn’t always true. In some cases, we find a single-vehicle crash was due to a malfunction in the vehicle or a problem with road design or maintenance.
If you’re confused about what happened or your vehicle responded in an unusual or unpredictable way shortly before the collision, we recommend seeking legal advice. It’s possible you may have a defective product claim.
Other accidents are due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, such as weather, wildlife, debris on the road, etc. There usually isn’t a liable party we can locate in these situations, but you might be able to recover from your own insurance if you have optional policies like Medical Payments (MedPay) and Collision.
These will pay for your medical bills and car repairs in an accident, no matter who is at fault.
Occasionally, single-vehicle crashes are caused by another driver who forces the injured party off the road in some way (often through aggressive or reckless driving) but doesn’t actually hit their vehicle.
If you were able to get a description and plate number for the vehicle and reported the incident to the police, you may have a case against the driver if we can find additional evidence to show what happened. However, these collisions often occur rapidly, and the injured party has no opportunity to capture a plate number.
We will investigate and try to identify the driver, but if this isn’t possible, the best solution may be to collect from your MedPay or Collision policies.
How Can You Get Help From a Stockbridge Car Accident Law Firm?
Please contact the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm for a free consultation. There is no obligation, and if we take your case, you won’t owe us anything until we win or settle it because there are no upfront fees.
Attorney Ali Awad created the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm just a few short years ago, and it’s now one of the fastest-growing law firms in the country. He and his team have recovered millions of dollars in damages for injured people and their families with a 99.5 percent success rate.
When he isn’t fighting for clients in the courtroom or the boardroom, you can find Mr. Awad on social media, where he has more than a million followers. Contact him today at (833) 254-2923 to work with him and his legal team.