What to do If you are hit by a car in New Jersey?
Car accidents can occur at any time or at any place. The most common times for an accident to occur is during the morning and afternoon rush hours and on Saturday nights. Regardless of when an accident occurs, it is always a serious situation.
Accidents involving passenger vehicles generally fall into four categories.
- Accidents involving two or more passenger vehicles are the most common types of accidents.
- Truck accidents are collisions with at least one commercial vehicle
- Any accident involving a motorcycle should be handled by an attorney. These can be very complicated events.
- Pedestrian accidents include anyone using the sidewalks or roadways, not inside a vehicle. Pedestrian accidents also include people on bicycles, skateboards and other similar wheeled vehicles.
Your lawyers will investigate the accident to determine if there were other factors that led to the accident and injuries. This may include defective lighting, guardrails, or roads that caused the accident and injuries or defective manufacturing in the vehicles. Your attorney will make sure that all responsible parties are held accountable.
What To Do When You Are Involved In A Car Accident In New Jersey
The steps you take immediately after a car accident will have an effect on your claim for compensation. If you have been involved in a car accident, you are encouraged to use the following information to your best benefit.
File A Police Report
It is very important that the first thing you do when an accident occurs with injuries is to file a police report. The police report is essential to making a claim for insurance coverage. The report will also contain essential information about the event so that the cause of the accident can be determined. Your police report will also contain important information about the other driver and any witnesses to the event.
Seek Immediate Medical Care or Evaluation
If your injuries are serious, make sure that you are taken straight to the emergency room by ambulance so that you can get immediate medical care. There is nothing more important than stabilizing your health. Once you have been stabilized, you can worry about other issues surrounding the accident.
If you feel that your injuries are minor, or that you may not be injured, you are still encouraged to go to the emergency room and have a medical evaluation immediately following the accident. Many times injuries are much more serious than a person thinks, and getting medical attention prevents additional harm to the injury victim.
The adrenaline and stress that a person experiences immediately after an accident makes certain injuries harder to distinguish. You may feel that the upset stomach or headache is due to the stress from the accident, but in reality, it could be a concussion or worse. Fractures and neck injuries will also begin to become painful once the stress level in the person has decreased.
By law, you have up to seven days after an accident to seek medical care for injuries from that accident. The insurance companies, however, often deny claims for medical care after the first 24 hours. It is their belief that any medical care after that time period is for an unrelated injury.
Document Everything
As soon as you have stabilized your injuries, you will want to begin documenting everything about the accident. Start with what you remember from right before the accident and what you remember about the accident. Include things like weather conditions and what you saw the other driver doing prior to the event.
Avoid Social Media Posts Relating To Incident
Social media is a very integrated part of our lives. However, social media posts about your accident, legal interactions, or injuries can be dangerous to your case. The insurance companies will monitor your social media posts during the entire time you have a pending case.
If possible, stay very quiet on social media during the entire process. Small comments are ok, but the lack of activity will be beneficial to your case. Even the most minor thing, such as a picture of you laughing, could be interpreted wrong by the insurance company.
Speak To A new jersey Car Accident Attorney
You will want to contact a new jersey car accident attorney as soon as possible after the accident. Having legal representation from Rosengard Law Group will help you manage your interactions with the insurance company and make sure that your rights are protected as an injury victim.
Your attorney will manage everything about your case so that you can concentrate on making a recovery from your injuries.
Follow Medical Care Recommendations
You will want to make sure that you follow all medical care recommendations. Go to all of your follow up medical visits and scheduled therapy sessions. The insurance company is going to monitor your compliance with medical care closely. If you start missing or rescheduling appointments, they will view that as you no longer needing medical attention.