A car accident is a unnerving experience for anyone, and it can be tough to know what to do in those moments afterward. Thinking through your legal rights in advance will help you keep in mind what you should prioritize. The most important rate you have after a car accident is to work with a car accident attorney in San Antonio to bring a claim for your damages and losses.
What Legal Rights Do I Have After a Car Accident?
The Right to Call the Police and Make an Insurance Claim
It’s not uncommon, especially with seemingly minor accidents, for the person responsible to ask you to avoid calling the police and reporting the accident to the insurance companies. They will usually do this by offering to give you cash on the spot or giving you their contact information and asking you to call them directly when your mechanic has looked at the damage.
Most people in this situation are not deliberately trying to cheat you. They genuinely just want to avoid having to pay higher insurance premiums, and since it’s possible that your insurance premiums could go up even if the accident was someone else’s fault, it might be tempting to take them up on this offer. However, even if their intentions are good, it’s not wise to do this.
Why Not?
In the first place, you don’t know the extent of your injuries. There are common injuries even after minor accidents that don’t manifest with symptoms right away. Whiplash is probably the best known of these, and whiplash is a serious injury to the neck and upper back. You may not start to feel pain for some hours, but it could take expensive medical care to help you fully recover.
Another issue is that the body panels on modern vehicles are very good at absorbing the energy of a hit, and while this is good for keeping you safe, it also means that the underlying damage to the vehicle could be much greater than it looks on the surface. It is not at all uncommon for people to think the damage to their vehicle is pretty minor, only to have their insurance company write the vehicle off as a complete loss. Until you have talked to a mechanic, you have no idea. It’s always best to call the police and report the accident to the insurance company right away.
The Right to Medical Help
You have the right to get the medical care you need after an accident, and you absolutely need to do this. As stated, you may not know what injuries you’ve suffered until you get a professional medical opinion. In a really bad accident, you will likely be taken directly to the hospital by first responders, but even in a smaller accident it is wise to visit urgent care or an emergency room as soon as you leave the scene. Make sure that you tell them you’ve been in an accident so they know what kind of injuries to look for.
Take this seriously: internal bleeding, for example, can have deadly consequences but may not show any symptoms for a little while after it begins. Beyond that, you will need all your medical records if you bring a personal injury claim to prove what your damages actually are. If there’s a long delay between the time that you were in the accident and the time that you seek medical help, the other side may argue that your injuries are not related to the accident.
The Right to Gather Evidence
You have the right to gather the evidence you need to prove your case from the accident scene. This means you have the right to take pictures of both vehicles and their license plates, pictures of the surrounding area and any marks on the road, and pictures of any injuries that were caused by the accident. It’s also a good idea to note down the location of any video cameras that may have captured the incident and to take the name and contact information of anyone who saw the accident, if they’re willing to give it to you.
The Right to Talk With a Car Accident Attorney in San Antonio
You also have the right to contact a car accident attorney to have your case evaluated. An attorney can look at the evidence you have and give you a good idea of whether you have a claim and advice on what it will take to bring it. A good car accident attorney will offer you a free consultation so that you can get an idea of the worth of your claim and will be honest with you about whether it’s worth bringing.
A car accident lawyer will also usually be paid on a contingency basis, meaning that, if they take your case, they will not take a fee until and if they win for you. A lawyer is a smart move here. Your lawyer will negotiate with the insurance companies and protect you from any attempts by them to get you to sign away your rights or say something that could minimize your suffering or allow them to blame you when you’re not at fault.
The Right to a Fair Valuation of Fault
Fault is very important in Texas. If you are 50% or less at fault for an accident, you can still claim compensation, but only in proportion to your fault. If you’re 20% at fault, for example, then you will lose 20% of your damages. This incentivizes insurance companies to blame you as much as possible to minimize what they will have to pay out.
If you have total damages of $75,000, for example, and the insurance company can put even 10% of the blame on you, then they save themselves $7,500. That is $7,500 that you now have to cover yourself. If the insurance company is not fairly a portioning blame, your lawyer can do an independent investigation to show what the evidence really says about who was at fault and to what degree.
The Right to Bring a Lawsuit
If the insurance company will not deal fairly with you in negotiations, you have the right to bring a lawsuit to cover the full cost of your damages and losses. Most of these claims are settled outside of court in negotiations, and that is typically the best outcome for everyone. A lawsuit is expensive and time-consuming, and the outcome is always less sure than in a settlement situation. But there are sometimes occasions when they are simply necessary, because an insurance company will not negotiate with you in good faith.
Always talk to your lawyer before attempting to bring a lawsuit, and bear in mind that sometimes simply getting a lawyer will be enough to push the insurance company to offer more. Once they know you’re serious and even willing to go to court if necessary, they are often willing to increase their offer to avoid that unwanted outcome.
