Do you need help with a serious accident involving a car? Read our car accident case expectations for guidance, then call our Utah lawyer.
Multi-Vehicle Car Accident
Many times, figuring out who caused a car crash is easy. Maybe someone ran a red light or maybe somebody slams into the back of you while you’re stopped at a stop sign. Deciding fault in those cases is usually pretty straightforward.
The question of who’s at fault for Utah car crash becomes more difficult in cases where there’s more than two vehicles involved or when people start pointing fingers at each other.
In our system, there can be multiple at fault parties for a crash. Anyone involved in an accident can share fault, even if he or she barely contributed to the accident.
Think about an intersection crash where five or six cars are involved or maybe a freeway pileup. How do you sort out who’s at fault? In the Utah car crash, anybody who contributed to the crash can have some fault assessed to them, and will have to pay for the portion of the crash that was their fault.
Car Accident Due to Icy Road Conditions
Here in Utah, we live in the mountains. We’re used to snow and ice. Sometimes car accidents due to black ice become a dangerous threat.
Every now and then, we’ll get a call from someone that was in a car crash where they were the driver, they lost control on icy road, spun out, hit a guardrail, maybe rolled, and unfortunately ended up with some pretty serious injuries. In one case like that, after looking at the particular section of the road to see if there were any defects, we determined the driver had been going too fast for weather conditions.
Because it was his fault, we couldn’t bring a claim for him, but because Utah requires no-fault insurance, he was still able to get personal injury protection, or PIP benefits under Utah law, which allows for $3,000 of medical expenses, some wage benefit, and household services.
Single car crashes are challenging cases, but it’s always worth talking through the issues with a lawyer to make sure you make the right decisions.
Choosing a Car Accident Attorney
After a car crash, it feels like chaos with everything that’s happening. In the middle of all that chaos, a really common story I hear is, people aren’t sure whether or not it makes sense for them to even call a lawyer.
Some people think that because there’s not much damage to their car, they shouldn’t call. Others don’t think their injuries seem big enough. They don’t want to bother calling the lawyer or taking the time to deal with a claim. A lot of people will wait weeks or months, some people have even called after years. People wait because they don’t think their case is big enough to call.
In one case, my client got rear-ended on a motorcycle. He was a great guy, really tough, one of those guys that could get through anything. He figured that his case wasn’t worth talking with a lawyer about. He was just going to fight through the pain on his own, wait to get better.
Unfortunately, it turned out the small pain he had didn’t go away. It actually go worse and worse until eventually he ended up having to have a surgery. By the time he got me involved, he had already made some big mistakes in his case that took us a long time—almost a year and a half—to fix and sort out.
Because things can go wrong quickly that hurt your case, if you’re dealing with pain from a crash and you’re getting any kind of medical treatment for it, it always makes sense to talk to a lawyer right away.
Think of it the way insurance is supposed to work. By hiring a lawyer, you’ll have someone there to guide you through the process, to see the problems and get you through the chaos.
Do you or your loved one need help with a serious accident involving a car and have questions about these car accident case expectations? Contact experienced Salt Lake City car accident lawyer Brad DeBry for a free consultation.
