How to Get the What You Deserve From a Car Accident

Serious car accident injuries can be expensive. Car accident victims might find themselves burdened with medical bills for an ambulance ride and emergency room visit. Some victims might stay hospitalized for days or weeks. Others might need X-rays, pain prescriptions, surgery, physical therapy, and follow-up physician visits.

The car accident victims may recover these monetary damages when another party causes an accident. Settlements and court-awarded damages can differ vastly. Victims have little say over some factors that influence the economic outcome of a car accident claim, such as the seriousness of their injuries.

At the same time, other decisions car accident victims make in the minutes, days, and weeks after a wreck can alter the value of their claims.

Hire a Car Accident Attorney

The greatest misunderstanding about hiring a car accident lawyer is that you will have less money. However, this is not true. Oftentimes, the single best thing you can do after a car accident is to hire an attorney. Claims representatives use a variety of unique tactics to reduce the value of your claim. If a lawyer does not represent you, the insurance adjusters will try to take advantage of your lack of understanding. Their objective is to get you to settle for as cheap and as fast as possible by asking you to sign away on deals that are not in your best interest.

The most crucial thing you can do to enhance the strength of your claim and eventually get the most cash from your car accident is likely to hire an experienced car accident attorney.

Stay at the Car Accident Scene

Stay at the scene of an accident in which you are involved. Call the police to the scene if the accident caused injuries, deaths, or damage that makes a vehicle undrivable. Give basic contact and vehicle registration info to other drivers and responding police officers.

Instead of determining which type of accident you were in, call 911 and summon police to any car accident scene. Please do not leave the scene until they arrive, conduct their formal investigation, and tell you it is okay for you to go.

Failing to stop at the scene of an accident or leaving before supplying information to authorities can be a crime, depending on your state.

Collect Info at the Scene

If you can do it safely and without getting in the way of first responders, you are unrestricted to gather information on your own at the crash scene. Get the contact details of other drivers and occupants involved in the accident. This will help to stop any potential errors in the official crash report.

Furthermore, take photos or videos with your cell phone of every conceivable vantage point of the wreck to record precisely what the crash looked like.

Suppose someone commits a hit and run, and you fail to obtain their details. In that case, the only payment you may get for the collision and your damages might come from your medical benefits coverage and your uninsured motorist coverage under your auto insurance. Write down names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, insurance details, and car information as soon as possible.

In gathering details, please do not talk to others about fault for the car crash or confess to having contributed to causing it. Even blameless statements you make can work to lower the value of a possible legal claim later on.

Obtaining Witness Information After a Crash

Do not restrict the details you gather at the accident scene to the parties directly concerned. Eyewitnesses to the wreck may also have useful knowledge to communicate. If feasible, gather their contact details so that you (or your lawyer) can follow up with them about their memories.

Look for video witnesses-traffic or security cameras that might have caught the wreck on film and take measures to determine who uses those cameras. You may have a fixed amount of time to conserve any video footage of the wreck before it gets deleted, so act fast.

Seeking Medical Treatment After a Crash

Suppose you are involved in a serious car crash. In that case, you will likely go to the closest emergency room via ambulance to obtain medical treatment beyond paramedics’ first aid and field medicine. However, you might choose to forgo medical treatment in less extreme crashes or those you are fortunate enough to stay conscious and walk away from. That is almost always a misstep.

Getting the most payment for your car crash case requires establishing that the wreck caused your injuries. Medical documentation of your injuries furnishes this evidence. You might feel enticed to avoid the physician because you are only a little sore or only have a few lumps and scrapes.

Nevertheless, many everyday, life-threatening car crash injuries do not exhibit symptoms for hours or days after a wreck. Let a physician check you for these damages right away to defend your health and your legal privileges.

Reporting the Crash to Your Insurer

Even if you didn’t cause the car wreck, you will still likely need to report the collision to your car insurance company, if only to notify them about the harm to your car and your damages. Most insurance policies instruct you to make this type of report; neglecting to do so might cancel your policy or other losses of legal privileges.

In informing your insurer, openness is always the best policy. However, keep in mind that even your own insurance company will look for ways to bypass having to expend your benefits. Be cautious when talking to insurance adjusters about the particulars of the wreck.

Do not make offhand remarks about who was at fault or how you feel. Cling only to the essential facts, leave any conversation of “fault” to your lawyer’s conversations with your (or any other individual’s) insurer.

Make Sure to Keep All of Your Bills

To get satisfactory compensation for the economic costs associated with your car wreck and damages, you must supply documents to support your claim. The more evidence you deliver, the higher the likelihood of obtaining every penny of repayment you deserve.

Save all bills and insurance documentation connecting to your medical care from your wreck onward. This includes documents conveying ambulance and emergency assistance, physician visits, hospitalization, diagnostic testing, prescriptions, and therapy. All of the expenses reflected in these records may comprise elements of damages owed to you by the at-fault party in a car crash.

Further, if a car crash stops you from working temporarily or permanently, keep any payroll data you have that demonstrates your wage or salary and any paid time off you used due to the crash. These expenses, too, show possible elements of damages due to you.

Ultimately, keep documentation of any other costs that stream directly from your crash and injuries. For example, some car crash injuries leave you with disabilities needing you to adjust your home or workspace, such as establishing handrails and wheelchair ramps. Other damages may leave you unfit to take care of daily chores and needing to employ someone to do them for you. These expenses may constitute recoverable damages, too.

How to Keep a Record of Your Injuries and Recovery?

A considerable part of the uncertainty of the amount of payment you might obtain for a car crash lies in calculating the damage done to you that does not come with a price tag connected to it. You deserve the money to reimburse you for your pain and suffering, harm to your relationships, and emotional trauma that can chaperone enduring injuries such as disfiguring scars and bodily disabilities.

Attorneys and insurance adjusters occasionally use mathematical formulas to establish a value on these damages, but the procedure can be highly subjective. To assist them in calculating the proper amount you should obtain for these “non-economic” damages, keep a diary to record your damages and recovery.

Document how you feel emotionally and physically. This document can help convey your non-economic losses and raise the amount of payment you might acquire for your car crash claim.

Keep Going to Your Physician

Occasionally, individuals skip physician visits for completely coherent reasons. Insurance companies and defense lawyers will not be forgiving. Unfairly or not, they will use the point that you missed medical appointments as proof that you are not as severely injured as you claim or that the crash did not cause your damages.

Your medical record includes some of the most crucial proof you will need to sustain any claim for damages after a car crash. To get the most cash out of your claim, you need to demonstrate that you followed your physician’s agenda for treatment to the letter.

Uphold and attend every physician appointment, lab visit, and treatment session unless and until a physician has given you a clean bill of health. Doing this will construct the constant documentation of your injury and rehab that you need to maximize the amount of cash you should obtain as payment after a car crash.

Never Take a Settlement Offer Without Speaking With Your Lawyer First

Car crash victims who accept settlement offers without speaking with an attorney leave lots of cash on the table while giving up necessary legal privileges.

Never accept a car crash settlement offer from a party with conceivable legal liability to you without talking with your attorney first. These parties hope to get themselves off the hook for as little cash as possible. If they come to you offering a settlement, saying things like “no need to get attorneys involved,” say no. That is a foolproof sign. They believe they owe you lots more cash and hope you will give up your right to obtain it in exchange for cents on the dollar.

There might be intense financial pressure on car accident victims to take the money. However, it is always a misstep to accept a settlement and give up privileges without first making sure the party proposing to write you a check is not attempting to take advantage of you. An experienced car accident attorney can help defend you from that conduct.

Don’t Speak to Others About Your Wreck

When insurance companies and defense attorneys investigate a car crash, they often try to talk with the crash victim and the victim’s friends, families, and colleagues. As a victim, you should never talk with investigators without first receiving advice from your attorney. However, you should also not consult with other individuals whom investigators may seek out.

No one wants to put their acquaintances and family in the strange position of having told an investigator about something you expressed to them that lessens the value of your case. As much as you might want to share with people close to you about your crash, the soundest thing you can do to defend yourself and them and to get the most cash from a car accident is to stay quiet. Unless and until your lawyer tells you otherwise, do not speak to them about the crash.

Don’t Post on Social Media About Your Crash

Insurance company agents and detectives will look for all the details they can find about you online, hoping something you have reported or published will give them a reason to slash the value of your case. So, stay away from social media for now. If you have to post something, run it by your lawyer first.

Hire a Skilled Car Accident Attorney

Experienced car accident attorneys play an essential role in accident victims getting the most cash from a car wreck for all of the reasons discussed above.
Call a local lawyer today to get the most out of your car accident claim.