The aftermath of an auto wreck can be stressful for everyone involved. The steps you take immediately following the accident can have a significant impact on your ability to file a personal injury claim or recover damages.
If you sustained injuries in a collision that was not your fault, you may benefit from reaching out to a seasoned car crash attorney. Call The Warren Firm today to discuss the mistakes to avoid after a car accident, focusing on the dos and don’ts you must remember.
Knowing what to do after a car accident in Charlottesville can make a major difference in your recovery and any future claim. Taking the right steps immediately and avoiding mistakes can protect your health, your rights, and your ability to seek fair compensation.
If you are unable to get to your car, send a family member or friend to retrieve all your personal belongings. Unfortunately, items do get stolen from cars in storage. Your car also may be towed to another location or destroyed after the insurance company has paid you for the car, in the case it is a total loss.
Chances are, if your accident is bad and your injuries are significant, you will be taken to the emergency room by rescue squad. If you are not taken by the rescue squad, but later feel that that you need to be seen, you can go to the emergency room. Also, consider being seen by your family doctor. Remember, emergency rooms are for emergencies. They are set up to stabilize and treat trauma that needs immediate attention. If your injuries are less serious, seek treatment with your family doctor.
If you do not have health insurance, you can be seen at the emergency room; although, you will have to pay the bill for the treatment either personally, through medical expense coverage on your automobile insurance policy if available, or through the liability insurance carrier. If your injuries are not serious and you do not have health insurance, you should consider being treated at an urgent care center, which will be significantly less expensive.
Delays in seeking medical treatment will likely be used against you by the insurance company. If you wait to receive treatment they will argue that there was a “gap” in treatment. Some people think that their problems will just go away and will attempt to “wait out” the pain. Only when they do not get better, they seek treatment. While this seems reasonable, an insurance company is likely to blame something else for your injury since you did not seek treatment right away.
However, never seek medical treatment to “run up your bills” in a ploy to try to make money. Personal injury cases are not an avenue to make money, and the court system and the tort system are undermined when people try to manipulate the system.
If you are involved in a car accident, you should try to collect information when it is possible. If you are injured, there is no need for you to be taking pictures of the scene and vehicles immediately following the collision. If someone else can take photographs, that is fine. First, you should seek medical attention if needed.
If witnesses come up to you after the accident, ask them to write their name and number on a sheet of paper. Do not assume that the police officer will take down the witnesses’ information. Oftentimes, they simply fill out the accident report with the names of the drivers involved. You will want to get a copy of the accident report, which is usually available a few days after the collision.
One of the most important factors in a personal injury case in Charlottesville is establishing negligence or proving who is at fault for an accident. Though in some cases it may be easy to determine liability, in more complex cases, evidence may be able to help prove a motorist’s negligence. For instance, if two drivers involved in a crash at an intersection both claimed they had a green light, traffic cameras could determine who did not have the right of way, and therefore, was responsible for the collision.
If you report the collision to them, you may make the process of getting paid for the property damage or getting your car replaced quicker. Your insurance company may also help in locating policies for the person who caused the collision.
There are mistakes that can be made in the early stages after the collision. If you are not informed, you can make mistakes in discussing the case with the insurance companies or other parties. While not terribly likely, you do not want to take any unnecessary risks if you have significant injuries. Most attorneys offer “free consultations”, so make use of them. Interview a few attorneys and get the information you need to make informed decisions. Do not be pressured into signing with any attorney. If the lawyer makes you uncomfortable or is too pushy, keep looking. Insist on meeting with the attorney and not an assistant, case manager, or investigator.
If you go to the hospital following the collision, make sure to provide the hospital with your health insurance information. You want your bills paid by your health insurance for a few reasons. It takes time to recover money for the medical bills from the liability insurance company. In the meantime, you do not want the medical provider or collections agencies calling you for payment on the bills.
Secondly, your health insurance has a contract with the medical provider and pays less for the medical services that you receive.
Third, in Virginia, you may not have to reimburse your health insurance company if you make a recovery for the injuries, but even if you do, you will have to reimburse them at the reduced rate they get from the medical provider. When you receive bills at home, check to make sure they have billed your health insurance.
After a car accident, what you avoid doing can be just as important as what you do. In Charlottesville, some missteps, like admitting fault or skipping medical care, can seriously affect your claim and recovery.
After an auto wreck, many drivers apologize despite doing nothing wrong. While this may seem natural, it is important to note that admitting fault at the scene of the accident can hurt one’s chances of achieving a positive outcome at trial. Anything said at the scene is admissible in court.
Additionally, apologizing immediately after the crash may prompt a police officer to issue a citation. This could cause the insurance company to believe the injured party is responsible for the collision. Anyone involved in a car accident should avoid making the mistake of commenting on fault at the scene of the crash.
Anyone involved in a collision should take photographs and videos of the accident scene and any damage to the car. If a vehicle is totaled and taken to a salvage yard, the owner often has an opportunity to retrieve any personal belongings from the car before it is sold or stripped for parts. At that time, most attorneys recommend that people take pictures of the vehicle from different angles.
In some cases, the insurance company will take pictures, but they may not capture the full extent of the damage. A legal professional could inform an injured of the proper way to photograph a car accident.
Someone who has been injured in a car accident may not appreciate the full extent of their injuries until months later. For example, an injured party may have a headache immediately after the accident but think nothing of it. However, this could be a sign of a concussion or traumatic brain injury.
Damage to the neck and back could also lead to catastrophic injuries. Minor back pain after a crash could result in spinal cord injury or paralysis if left untreated. Underestimating your condition could cause you more pain in the future.
Soon after a motor vehicle collision, the at-fault driver’s insurance company may call the injured party to request a statement. Attorneys typically discourage volunteering statements to the opposing party, especially when the injured person is still shaken up from the accident. Answering questions incorrectly could make it more difficult to succeed in an injury case.
While state law specifies that any recorded statement made to an insurance company is inadmissible in court, the existence of the recording may be used to prove a plaintiff is not actually injured. If you have spoken to another person’s insurance company, a skilled car accident lawyer could help you prevent any potential negative consequences.
In uninsured-motorist cases, injured parties may negotiate with their own insurance company. Drivers tend to assume the company will make them a fair offer, but this is unlikely. These insurance agents will offer as little money as possible.
Large advertising insurance companies may also attempt to contact injured parties before they have the opportunity to talk to an attorney or do research about appropriate settlements. The company may offer an injured person a check in return for signing a release stating the claim is finished.
This ensures the insurance company with not have to pay for any damages that may appear in the future. If you have been offered a check, avoid signing documents before speaking with a local vehicle collision attorney.
After retaining an attorney, it is important to provide him or her with any information that may be relevant to the case. This may include details about prior accident claims or preexisting injuries.
Insurance companies often use information like this against the plaintiff. With adequate notice of these potential arguments, a legal professional could prepare an appropriate defense.
You need to be diligent to make sure when you get a bill from the medical provider that they are billing your health insurance, be it private insurance or Medicare. Unfortunately, sometimes medical providers do not bill your insurance. Sometimes the hospital will bill the medical insurance but the doctors’ group will not. The hospital and the doctor who treated you often send two different bills.
The insurance company may tell you they need this to resolve your claim. If you are proceeding without an attorney, you should get the medical records yourself and provide them to the insurance company. Many of the medical authorizations that insurance companies will ask you to sign allow them access to all of your medical records, or at least much more than they need to resolve the claim with you.
It is unethical for an attorney or any representative of his/her firm to contact you if you have no relationship with that attorney. If someone contacts you “out of the blue” or uses a “runner” to contact you at the hospital, report them to the Virginia State Bar.
A number of years ago this may have been true, or at least partly true. Now many of the big advertising insurance companies in Virginia have in-house counsel. By having their own law firms, they have lowered the cost of defending cases. It is not uncommon to see them have their lawyers fight cases over only one or two thousand dollars.
Insurance settlements and jury verdicts are awarded to those who have real injuries. Being in a car accident is not winning the lottery. Over the years, I have represented severely injured people and families that lost loved ones and have helped them recover significant settlements or verdicts. All of them would gladly return the money to have their health or their loved one back.
If you are unsure of the right steps to take following an auto wreck, you should consider speaking with a car accident lawyer. A member of our team can talk to you about the mistakes to avoid after a car accident in Charlottesville. Contact us today to speak with a dedicated attorney.
