Vegas Motor Vehicle Accidents Explained by Attorney Zachary D. Clayton
Motor vehicle accidents are one of the leading causes of both serious injury and death both in Nevada and throughout the United States.
Accidents happen every day, often because drivers engage in unsafe behavior that creates dangerous risks on the road. These accidents can affect passengers, motorists in other cars, bicycle riders, pedestrians, and anyone else who must use the roads.
Motor vehicle accidents can cause permanent and lasting harm, including both economic and non-financial losses. While many accidents result only in property damage, others cause injuries, including traumatic brain injury, paralysis, broken bones, and disfigurement.
Your ability to work and enjoy your life may be impacted if you become involved in a motor vehicle accident, so you need to ensure that you take appropriate action to hold others accountable if they cause a crash to occur.
What are the Top Causes of Motor Vehicle Accidents in Nevada?
Auto accidents have many potential causes, and it’s essential to understand some of the top reasons why collisions happen. Common types of accidents include:
- Distracted driving accidents: Motorists who violate laws on using electronic devices while driving can be held responsible.
- Impaired driving accidents: Those who are above-the-limit (have a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or higher) can be held liable for causing a crash to occur while intoxicated by alcohol or drugs.
- Drowsy driving crashes: Fatigued drivers who behave recklessly behind the wheel can be liable for crash losses.
- Reckless or aggressive driving collisions: When a driver fails to exercise the care, a reasonable motorist would exercise while behind the wheel, a victim of a resulting accident can pursue a claim for compensation.
- Speeding accidents: Going too fast makes a crash more likely to happen and means the crash is much more likely to be very serious when and if it does occur.
- Teen driver collisions: Young motorists often take unnecessary and dangerous risks behind the wheel. Young people must have insurance just as older drivers do, and they can be made to provide compensation to passengers in their cars or other victims of accidents they cause.
These are just a few of many top causes of motor vehicle collisions. Determining the cause of a crash is important when accidents happen because drivers who cause accidents to occur can be held responsible for the resulting damages.
It is up to victims to be able to prove that another motorist was responsible for an accident and thus should be made to provide compensation. This means it is important to be proactive after a crash in gathering evidence as well as in finding the right legal help to pursue a claim for compensation.
What to Do After a Motor Vehicle Crash in Las Vegas?
After a motor vehicle accident, you’re required to stop at the crash scene if the accident involved property damage or if injuries occurred. Staying at the scene of a collision is imperative to avoid hit-and-run charges and to exchange information with the other motorist who was involved in the collision.
Drivers who become involved in accidents also need to make sure to report the collision to the police and to gather necessary evidence from the crash scene. A victim of an accident has a burden of proving that he or she is entitled to receive compensation for the crash occurring. The evidence obtained after an accident could be invaluable in meeting this burden and recovering the compensation that is deserved.
If you are able, recovering evidence from the collision scene could include taking pictures of the vehicles and the damage that has occurred; obtaining the contact information of witnesses; and gathering details about the area where the accident happened.
Getting medical help after a collision is also of utmost importance because you want to ensure that your injuries are all carefully documented. You will need to show that the accident was the direct cause of any physical harm you hope to be compensated for, which means it is important to be able to prove with medical evidence that injuries actually resulted from the crash.
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Reporting the accident to your insurer is also necessary because if the other driver doesn’t have sufficient insurance, your insurer may step in to pay some of the costs associated with your losses under any uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage that you may have.
If you’ve waited too long to report the accident, you could lose this important coverage that protects you. Don’t let the other driver convince you not to report the crash with promises to pay the bills privately because they may not follow through or may not have the money to do so if the injuries urn out to be worse than anticipated.
You want to be careful when talking with your own insurer or with the other driver’s insurance company because insurers aren’t looking out for your best interests. Profits are their concern, and paying a big claim out to you to cover the full extent of your losses and damages eats into their profits. You don’t want to jeopardize your right to receive full compensation by inadvertently saying something that hurts your claim, so talking with an attorney to get help dealing with your insurer is important.
Zachary D. Clayton – your Las Vegas personal injury attorney – can also help you with the process of pursuing a damage claim in the aftermath of the accident. This could involve negotiating an out-of-court settlement, which means you agree with the other driver’s insurer that you will not sue provided they pay you an appropriate sum of money. You could also go to court and pursue a civil claim for damages resulting from the collision.
It’s important to realize that when you agree to a settlement, you cannot later change your mind even when it turns out your injuries and damages were more severe than you had been aware of at the time you accepted the settlement terms. This is why it is so important to work with motor vehicle accident attorneys who know what your claim should be worth — and to ensure you understand the full extent of harm before accepting a settlement.
How Do I Claim Compensation After Motor Vehicle Accidents?
Victims of motor vehicle accidents should be entitled to be “made whole” following a collision. This means that anyone who has been hurt in a car accident caused by the negligence of others should be able to pursue a claim for full compensation for both economic and non-financial damages.
Economic damages can include actual money lost as a direct result of the motor vehicle collision. Examples include:
- Loss of wages: If you miss work because of your injuries, you lose wages. The same is true if you must take vacation days or use up your sick days at work to recover from the collision. You should be compensated for all of this actual financial damage that you endure.
- Lost earning power: If you are not able to continue to work as you did before the accident, your income could end up being reduced. When you make less after a collision, you should be entitled to receive compensation for the reduction in your wages. If your injuries are permanent and you will never be able to work again or will always experience a reduced income, you should be compensated for this permanent damage to your earning power.
- Medical expenditures: You should be fully compensated for all medical costs that are incurred due to accidental damages. This includes the cost for diagnostics, treatments, adaptive medical devices, pain therapies and medications, and other medical care that you require due to the accident. If you are going to need medical care on an ongoing basis — including having a nurse provide care if you are no longer able to do activities of daily living due to your injuries — you should be compensated for this ongoing care as well. A medical expert can estimate the ongoing costs that you will incur.
You should also be compensated for non-economic damages resulting from the accident as well. This can include payment for all pain and discomfort that you endure as a result of your car accident injuries. If your quality of life is diminished, you should be compensated for the loss of activities you enjoyed or were previously able to do.
If you experience emotional distress, such as PTSD or anxiety because of the accident or depression because of your injuries, it is also appropriate for you to receive compensation for these damages as well.
In circumstances where an accident was a fatal one, surviving family members of the victim should receive compensation for losses since the victim cannot be adequately compensated. In Nevada, wrongful death damages include, but are not limited to, loss of companionship due to the loss of the relationship with the deceased person as well as the loss of the income the deceased would have provided during the rest of his or her life if the motor vehicle accident had not resulted in an untimely death.
Obtaining full compensation for all economic and non-financial loss can be challenging, especially because it can be challenging to measure the number of noneconomic damages that have been endured by a victim of an accident or by surviving loved ones of those killed in motor vehicle accidents. Insurers often try to pay out too little to fairly compensate those who have experienced tremendous losses.
LV Personal Injury Lawyers can assist in pursuing a case to try to get the maximum compensation possible. Our compassionate and knowledgeable motor vehicle accident attorneys know how to effectively negotiate a settlement with the biggest insurance companies in the business.
We also know how to go to court to prove the extent of your losses to convince a jury to award you a fair amount of compensation, given the tremendous nature of your losses.
You deserve to be fully compensated when you are damaged, and you owe it to yourself to ensure that you fight for the money you deserve. Don’t accept a settlement that is less than what you are entitled to and be prepared to show the extent of your losses so you can get the court to award you the compensation you need to move forward after life-changing motor vehicle accidents.
Getting Help From Motor Vehicle Accident Attorneys
Auto accident attorneys at LV Personal Injury Lawyers will provide you with advice from the moment your accident occurs until your case has been resolved.
We can represent you if you were driving and another motorist caused you harm or if vehicle or road defects were the cause of your crash. If you were a passenger, a pedestrian, a bicyclist, a motorcycle rider, or otherwise injured by the carelessness of a driver or a problem with the vehicle or road, we can also provide the help and support you need.
We are passionate about fighting for the victims of accidents and committed to helping those who have been hurt to obtain full compensation for damages they have endured. While motor vehicle accidents may change the course of your life, you can still protect your future and have the best quality of life possible if you are proactive about fighting for monetary damages to cover economic and financial loss.
Our firm will be there every step of the way. To find out more about how we can help you to negotiate a car accident settlement in Las Vegas or pursue appropriate compensation for motor vehicle accidents, give us a call today.
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