Car Accident Lawyer Sandy Springs, GA
Accidents involving more than one vehicle can be incredibly chaotic, as our car accident lawyer for Sandy Springs, Georgia understands all too well. Hernan Law has helped thousands of Illinois residents who were hurt in accidents after someone else made a mistake or acted negligently.
How do I Know If My Car Accident Claim Is Valid
Liability and Negligence: In order for a car accident claim to be valid, there needs to be evidence that another party’s negligence or wrongdoing caused the accident. This could include actions like speeding, running a red light, drunk driving, or other forms of negligence that directly led to the collision.
Injuries or Damages: A valid car accident claim typically involves injuries or damages. These injuries can range from physical injuries to emotional distress, and damages can include medical bills, property damage, lost wages, and pain and suffering.
Evidence: The strength of your claim often relies on the available evidence. This could include police reports, eyewitness testimonies, photographs of the accident scene and damage, medical records, and any other documentation that supports your version of events and the extent of your injuries.
Causation: It’s important to establish a clear link between the other party’s negligence and your injuries or damages. If there’s uncertainty about whether the negligence directly caused your injuries, it might impact the validity of your claim.
Timeliness: Most jurisdictions have statutes of limitations that dictate how long you have to file a car accident claim. It’s crucial to be aware of these deadlines and file your claim within the specified time frame.
Comparative Fault: In some cases, both parties might share a degree of fault for the accident. This concept is known as comparative fault or contributory negligence. Your ability to recover compensation could be affected if you’re found partially at fault for the accident.
Insurance Coverage: Insurance coverage plays a significant role in car accident claims. If the responsible party is uninsured or underinsured, it could impact your ability to recover compensation. Similarly, your own insurance policy’s coverage limits will also come into play.
Legal Expertise: Consulting with a car accident lawyer, like those at Hernan Law Firm, can provide you with a professional assessment of your claim’s validity. Experienced lawyers can analyze the details of your case, evaluate the evidence, and provide guidance on how to proceed.
To determine the validity of your car accident claim, please consult Hernan Law Firm.
Always Call 911
After a car accident, you must always call the police for help. In this way, those who were injured can get medical attention right away or be taken to the hospital for emergency care if needed. An officer will also take a report of what happened, including factual information and contributing factors of the collision. If your injuries don’t prevent you from doing so, exchange information with the other driver. As a car accident lawyer Sandy Springs, GA residents trust from Hernan law Firm would forewarn, if you leave without getting necessary information, it can be harder to get compensation later on for your injuries and damages.
Get Copy of Police Report
A police report is going to be an influential piece of evidence when handling your claim. As stated above, the officer who arrived at the scene is going to take a report of the accident. Your lawyer can help you get a copy of this afterwards, which can usually be requested at your local law enforcement office based on the city where the accident occurred. Along with a police report, other helpful evidence can include pictures and video of the scene, witness statements, clothes you were wearing at the time, medical documentation, street camera footage, expert testimony, and more.
Notify Your Insurance
Most insurance companies require claimants to tell them about an accident a couple days after the incident. If you wait too long to tell your insurance company, then you may lose out on potential benefits. If you were not able to notify your insurance company because severe injury prevented you from doing so, you must let them know when you finally report it. You may have a relative, close friends or even your lawyer contact your insurance company for you instead. What you don’t want to do is wait so long that you are hindering your odds of receiving benefits.
Get Legal Help
Many people forget that a Sandy Springs car accident lawyer can be a really helpful person after a car accident. Victims may not realize that a lawyer can actually increase the odds of getting sufficient compensation for what happened, while also protecting you from ill-intentioned parties. For example, you will be contacted by an insurance adjuster after notifying your insurance about the accident. This representative is someone who is going to attempt to reduce or deny your claim, so you will want to be wary about what you say. It may be best to speak with your Sandy Springs lawyer car accident team from Hernan Law Firm before providing an official statement to an insurance adjuster.
Follow Your Care Plan
Assuming that you went to the doctor after the accident, you will need to stick to the treatment plan. If you are found to be doing things that are against the doctor’s recommendation, it can have a negative effect on your claim. Be sure to attend all appointments, and notify your lawyer if you feel like your care plan is not appropriate. If you need support after a serious car accident, don’t hesitate to reach out to our law firm now.
Multiple Party Claims
Multi-car accidents are not unusual, particularly in larger cities during rush hour. A snowy or icy road at rush hour can result in dozens of vehicles colliding in a domino-like accident. A Sandy Springs, Georgia car accident lawyer might suggest that what makes multi-vehicle accidents especially difficult for getting fair compensation for damages is the ability to prove who was at fault. The resulting chaos of a multi-car accident can make it challenging to get proof while at the scene that provides actionable information.
Your vehicle’s skid marks may be covered over by the vehicle that crashed into the back of your car.
The accident scene may have been too unsafe to take photos of the cars involved and of the scene itself. The local law enforcement officers who responded to the accident scene may have been more focused on helping the victims than investigating the scene before the evidence was removed or destroyed.
The drivers involved may have been so traumatized or injured during the accident that they do not clearly recall the events and what led up to them. Likewise, their value as eyewitnesses may be severely diminished for witnesses who were not in any of the vehicles.
All of the participants’ insurance companies will have teams of lawyers whose primary goal is to limit their payouts to minimize their losses. Without your own Sandy Springs, Georgia car accident lawyer by your side, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to get the settlement you deserve for your damages.
Sandy Springs Car accident Law Infographic
How a Car Accident Lawyer in Sandy Springs, Georgia Can Help
A Sandy Springs, Georgia car accident lawyer who knows the laws relevant to your case can advise you of any procedural issues and time limits that need to be adhered to. There is a statute of limitations in each state concerning car accidents. If you do not file a lawsuit during that time frame, you may be prevented from filing a lawsuit. The statute of limitation does have exceptions, and your Sandy Springs car accident lawyer can advise you of those as well.
What if an Insurance Company is Trying to Blame Me?
Even if you are not at-fault, an insurance company may place blame on you for many reasons. Remember that the primary motivation of insurance companies is to make money, and unfairly placing blame may be one of those strategies to save money. It’s a sad truth that insurance companies, despite being relied on in the worst of times, sometimes just don’t show up for victims in the way they need to the most. If an insurer is placing blame on you when you were not responsible, then it’s time to have a lawyer intervene.
Who Can I Rely on to Have my Best Interests?
As your car accident lawyer Sandy Springs, GA residents trust at Hernan Law Firm would suggest, after a serious accident like a car wreck, you may have loved ones offering words of wisdom about what to do and what not to do. Some of this information may be factual and actually be applicable for your situation, but other advice may not be. Your friends and family probably have your best interest at heart, but a lawyer is the only person who can give you guidance that is based on your individual circumstances. You can rely on a lawyer to advocate for your recovery and use the law strategically to accomplish this.
How Can Evidence be Influential to My Case?
Evidence is going to be the most impactful element of your case. So when you are reporting the accident to your insurance company, you have to follow up with evidence. Visual evidence is most influential, such as pictures of your injuries, damage to both vehicles, the overall area where the crash happened, and anything else representative of the accident scene. Other examples of evidence can be copies of the police report, medical documentation for your injuries, witness statements, and more. After consulting with you, your lawyer can let you know which elements of proof will be most helpful to the outcome of your case.
When Should I Consider Getting a Lawyer to Help Me?
Ideally, you won’t have waited until the situation became problematic to reach out to a Sandy Springs car accident lawyer. Many people don’t realize just how helpful a lawyer can be in the aftermath of a personal injury accident, such as a car crash. Too many victims in car accidents accept settlement offers that are much too low and barely cover their out of pocket expenses. But as your lawyer would offer, you shouldn’t have to pay from your own funds for property damage and medical bills that resulted from another’s negligence.
Is it Okay to Accept the First Settlement Offer?
After reporting your accident to the insurance company, you may receive a speedy settlement offer within the days to follow. The insurance company likely knows what the value of your accident is, they often do, but is hoping to manipulate you into accepting an offer that doesn’t cover the entirety of your losses. Again, as stated above, an insurance company is only focused on one thing, and that is their pocketbook, not yours. We urge you to contact a Sandy Springs car accident lawyer from Hernan Law Firm now so that you are not taken advantage of by insurance companies or other involved parties.
Sandy Springs Car Accident Law Firm
Your Sandy Springs car accident lawyer residents rely on will work on your behalf to attempt to get a settlement from the insurance company. If the case does not settle and goes to trial, your attorney will represent you and investigate every aspect of your case in court.
Often, just having an attorney threaten to take legal action will prompt a better settlement from the insurance company.
Insurance companies have highly-paid, experienced attorneys at their disposal. Having a Sandy Springs, Georgia car accident lawyer on your side who is well-versed in personal injury law will put you on an even playing field with the insurance company’s legal team.
The Study’s Findings
The Utah study examined different hands-free media and communication devices that drivers can use, and rated them on a distraction scale of one to five, with one representing a baseline of distraction-free driving and five representing “severe distraction” of drivers caused by having to perform a complex mental math test. The study found that the use of hands-free car control systems ranged in distraction level from 1.7 to 3.7 based on the quality of the system’s voice recognition abilities. For reference, a prior study by the same authors found that the use of a handheld cell phone rated as 2.45, and the use of a hands-free cell phone was 2.27.
The study also examined whether specific uses of the control system were more or less distracting. It found that simple voice commands, such as changing the thermostat, were the least distracting, rating at 1.88. The most distracting was the use of an imperfect voice recognition system to navigate or send texts, which ranked a 4.14 on the scale.
Study Highlights the Dangers of Hands-Free Media Use While Driving
A car accident lawyer Sandy Springs, GA clients trust knows that, by now, almost everyone knows that using a cell phone to talk or text while driving can be dangerous. Georgia has even passed a law forbidding the use of electronic communication devices while driving. Yet, this law may be doing more harm than good since many people do not realize how dangerous driving hands-free can be. Many studies have found that hands-free media use may not be that effective at preventing distractions. In some cases, it can even be more likely to cause a traffic accident than talking on a handheld cell phone. One of those studies, conducted by the University of Utah’s Psychology Department, revealed some alarming information.
What Makes Hands-Free So Dangerous
These findings may seem counterintuitive since hands-free technology allows people to keep their eyes on the road, but the danger arises from how people’s brains process information. A Sandy Springs car accident lawyer knows that brains cannot multitask. Instead, when people try to multitask, their brain moves back and forth between the two jobs. It happens fast enough that most people do not notice and feel like they are actually multitasking. However, this rapid jumping between jobs comes with a cost. When the brain starts “multitasking” it ends up doing both jobs less effectively. For instance, when someone is trying to focus on driving and on using their hands-free media system, their ability to process visual images declines sharply. In fact, people who are using these systems can fail to process up to half of what they “see” going on around them. Consequently, the fact that hands-free media allows people to keep their eyes on the road may not actually be that much of a benefit.
Hernan Law Firm Sandy Springs Car Accident Lawyer
Zip codes: 30092, 30319, 30327, 30328, 30338, 30339, 30342, 30350
Sandy Springs Car Accident Lawyer Google Review
“It was a pleasure to work with the Hernan law firm. Jamie was very upfront and honest about my case and what would be the best outcome. I was always well informed through every step up the process. Will recommend to anyone that I know and I will return for any future endeavors.” – Cory K.
Contact Our Office
Distracted drivers can pose a danger to themselves or others around them. If you have recently been injured in a car crash with a distracted driver, call the Hernan Law Firm to speak with a dedicated Sandy Springs car accident lawyer and find out what legal options you may have.