When you get in a car accident, it can be scary and overwhelming. In those life-changing seconds, you may not know what to do. Understanding what to do after a car accident is vital for any driver in Texas, especially when it comes to protecting their legal rights.
Texas is an at-fault state, which means the driver who caused the accident will be held responsible for the damages. If you did not cause the crash, the post-accident actions you take must be done with care.
Angel Reyes & Associates, is a Texas 5-star personal injury law firm committed to providing car accident help for victims in the aftermath. This blog post discusses the steps to take after an accident and how a car accident lawyer can be of tremendous assistance in these types of legal matters.
Immediate Steps to Take After an Accident
One of the first steps to take after an accident is to ensure your safety and the safety of any passengers in your vehicle. Remain calm and take a quick look to check for injuries. If you are able to get out of your vehicle on your own, check on the occupants of all other vehicles involved.
Don’t apologize because that could be construed as an admission of fault. You can ask if everyone is okay. You’ll also want to move to a safe location, if that’s possible, while you wait for assistance.
Contact Emergency Services
In Texas, you should call 911 to notify the police of an accident and get emergency medical services to respond if there are injuries, fatalities, if any of the vehicles cannot be moved, or if property damage is more than $1,000. If the other driver flees the scene or you suspect them to be under the influence, you should not hesitate to notify the authorities.
Dispatches will likely ask questions to get more information. You should be prepared to tell them your location, how many vehicles were involved, and if there are any injuries to report.
Document the Scene
Law enforcement officers should arrive quickly to help everyone involved. When they arrive, they will create a police report to document the incident. You can also do your part by taking photos and videos with your phone if you are physically capable.
Make sure that you capture the accident scene by showing where the vehicles came to rest. Get pictures of the damages to the vehicles as well as any physical injuries. It’s also likely that other people witnessed the accident and stopped to check on everyone. You should get their contact information and record their statements, which may help your injury claim.
After a car accident, one of the vital steps you must take is exchanging contact information and insurance information with the other driver. If they refuse to provide it, let the officers on the scene know. The driver will be required by law to present this information to the authorities.
Seek Medical Attention
If you were bleeding or you broke a bone, your injuries may be obvious. However, there are many kinds of injuries that do not have any exterior signs. Traumatic brain injuries and internal bleeding are two troubling injuries after car accidents because they don’t often have any immediate outward symptoms.
For these reasons, it is imperative that you have a medical evaluation conducted to rule out these injuries. Skipping this step could mean your injuries worsen into life-threatening conditions. Additionally, when you make an insurance claim against the other driver, their insurer may try to argue that you were injured after the accident or that your injuries aren’t as serious as you claim.
When you visit the hospital, urgent care, or your physician, it creates medical records of your injuries following the accident. These serve as important evidence for proving your injuries in a personal injury case.
Report the Accident
Once you’ve completed the other steps to take after a car accident, you will need to notify your auto insurance company. This must be done even if you did not cause the accident and even after minor collisions.
Your insurer needs to be notified if a third party claim could be made by someone else. It is often a requirement of your policy to notify the insurance company after an accident, or you may face cancellation.
Since Texas is an at-fault state for car insurance, your insurer will start looking into the accident. They will do this to determine who is at fault and they may find that there is some shared fault, which could make it more difficult for you to recover maximum compensation for your injuries and damages.
Contact Angel Reyes & Associates
In some cases, it may be obvious that the other driver caused the accident. However, most of the time, it can be a challenge to prove it on your own. Since Texas follows a modified comparative fault rule, if you are found to be 51% or more at fault, you will be barred from recovering compensation for your damages.
Any percentage of fault assigned to you will reduce your compensation by that percentage. For example, if you had the green light and were proceeding through an intersection and the other car ran the red light from another direction, this may seem like you are absolved of blame. If the investigation reveals that you were going slightly above the speed limit when the accident occurred, you may be given 10% of the blame, thereby reducing your compensation award by 10%.
At Angel Reyes & Associates, we conduct a thorough investigation into every car accident case. We use our resources to help gather additional evidence using traffic cameras, surveillance footage, and expert testimony to keep you from being wrongfully blamed for this event.
Your injuries may also have been so serious that you were unable to take some or all of these post-accident actions to protect your legal rights. If you wake up in the hospital with severe injuries, you should not proceed with your car accident injury claim without legal representation.
Understanding Your Rights and Legal Options
Along with issues that could arise when filing your insurance claim, there are many mistakes that car accident victims make that you’ll want to avoid. As mentioned earlier, you should never apologize for the accident as it can be considered an admission of fault.
Another common mistake that victims make following car accidents is to post about the accident online. The other party’s insurer and attorney will be digging through your social media accounts to contradict your claims. This can seriously impact the outcome of your case and it is highly advised that you do not discuss what happened with anyone except your attorney.
Some injured victims will attempt to handle their insurance claims on their own. While you are not legally required to hire a car accident attorney to assist with your case, it is to your benefit to get this representation if you have been seriously injured. Often, the insurer will offer a quick settlement check, which may come as a relief, especially if money was tight before the wreck. Car insurance companies use this tactic to get you to sign a release for the settlement, which then prevents you from seeking additional compensation. Most of the time, the amount they offer is far less than the expenses you’ve incurred.
Car accidents can leave you with extensive medical bills from your hospital stay, surgeries, prescription medications, assistive medical devices, and physical therapy. Your injuries may hinder your ability to work for the short or long term, causing you to lose income. You may also need ongoing medical care, mental anguish, and other impacts. None of these problems will be considered when the settlement is offered. If you have been offered a settlement check by the insurer, it is wise to have an attorney look it over and make sure it is fair.
One thing to keep in mind when filing a personal injury claim is that Texas has a statute of limitations for car accidents. This is a time limit that is imposed starting from the date of the accident. While you must promptly report your car accident to your insurer, this statute is for lawsuits, and you may need to file one if you are not provided a sufficient amount for the injuries the other driver caused.
By the time you have completed all these steps, you may not be left with much time to pursue a lawsuit. When the statute of limitations runs out, you will lose your chance to seek compensation.
Essentially, it is always best to take action as soon as possible. With a car accident lawyer, you can have someone handle the communication with the insurance company and negotiate a fair settlement. If this doesn’t produce the desired results, your attorney will quickly file your car accident case before the deadline runs out. If you or a loved one were recently in a car crash, contact Angel Reyes & Associates for a free initial consultation to discuss your case.
