Hurt in an Accident: What Injured Pedestrians Need to Know
The feeling of numbness surrounds you only moments after the accident. Did this really happen? You look at your body for a chilling moment. It seems as if an accident like this would only happen in the movies.
After the initial shock dissipates – you recognize that your life could be irreversibly altered. Whether the injury was serious or minor, you are suddenly faced with day to day expenses that you can’t pay for because you were forced to take time off of work. Or even worse, you can’t afford the medical bills for the medical treatment that you desperately need. How will you get through this?
You need to fully understand pedestrian rights so that you can correctly file for compensation. Understand that after being hurt in an accident, where you had little protection from injury, that the courts will be sympathetic to your cause. However, you and your Providence attorney still need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the driver’s negligence. Unlike bicyclist laws, pedestrians have a set of laws that disallow drivers to claim a pedestrian was negligent if he or she is a minor or to pass a car that has stopped for a crossing pedestrian. It’s also against the law to participate in reckless driving or to drive under the influence. Although some of these laws seem obvious, drivers break these laws all the time and need to be held accountable for when they do hurt someone in the process of their irresponsible behavior.
In order to ensure that you receive the most compensation possible, the documentation of the accident needs to include: your own physical state, the state of the car, the street itself, witness statements, etc. You need to show the court that not only was the driver negligent but that the impact their negligence had on you was so severe that you need ample compensation to recover.
Life happens, but with these tips, you won’t have to deal with the pain by yourself when you are hurt in an accident in Providence.