Common Mistakes After a Bus Accident

Answer:

Clients often ask us, “What are some of the things I should make sure I avoid if I’m injured in a bus accident in Florida?” As we told somebody who called me just a week ago, there are several things you should avoid right off the bat if you’re injured in a bus accident case. The first thing is you can’t wait to seek treatment. Sometimes you may not feel like you’re injured because you feel stunned and you go home and you don’t do much initially. If you’re involved in a bus accident case, you’re on that bus, you don’t have a seatbelt so there’s no way that you’re fixed in a stationary position. Your body is jostled by the forces that act on the bus itself. You have to seek treatment, either through your primary care physician, through an urgent care center, but to make sure that you know what all of your injuries are, because sure enough, if you don’t seek treatment right away, you want on that, the number one mistake, then you are going to be in a position where the at fault insurance company is going to take the position that you weren’t really injured because you didn’t seek treatment right away. The truth is that once you start moving around and you try to go back to your usual activities, that’s when you start to feel the pain. The first thing that we run into all the time is people don’t get evaluated for their injuries. The second thing and the most important thing is to call an attorney. Let an attorney guide you through the process because navigating the personal injury issues and insurance coverage issues are very involved. Let an attorney guide you through that. The other issue that we find, the other mistake that people make, is talking to the at fault insurance company. Some insurance companies will get the names of the passengers on the bus, call them right away, and get mistakes made in statements that are recorded. Some people say they don’t feel injured right away because you can’t feel your injuries. That mistake will haunt you and may preclude you from getting compensation for your injuries. The other thing that we run into is that people talk to other witnesses and then those statements get repeated to the insurance company. When you’re talking about statements and talking to insurance company, that’s all evidence. That’s testimonies. Those are statements that can be used against you. You need to get legal advice before you do any of that. Sometimes clients call and tell us they were injured in an accident due to somebody else’s fault; either they forgot, they were in a hurry, or some people are just opposed to it still. What I tell those clients is you are able to receive compensation for injuries sustained in that car accident as long as the seat belt would not have prevented them. For example, if you’re struck from the side and you break your arm against the door, you have a valid claim for that injury; however, if by wearing a seat belt you would not have struck your head on the steering wheel, for example, then you are not protected. It’s called the seat belt defense. What would happen is, although we would claim all of the injuries that were caused by the accident, the defendants are allowed to assert as a defense that because you weren’t wearing a seat belt those injuries should be either precluded or diminished because of your failure to wear that device.