When a person is involved in an auto accident, there are a lot of things going through their head. Is everybody okay? How am I going to get home? What are my options? There are a lot of immediate effects of a car accident and it isn’t until later that you think about the insurance side of things. Were you at fault?
Are you liable or is the other person liable? Any number of factors contribute to determining liability in an accident and our car accident attorney wants to take a look at a few of those in today’s Tolbert Beadle, LLC blog post.
What Is Liability?
Liability is auto insurance that is required by most states. This insurance helps the party responsible to pay for any bodily injury or property damage caused by the car accident in question. Determining liability in a car accident is often a messy and complicated issue, especially in crashes that don’t obviously have a responsible party.
So what are some things that help determine liability? Our car accident attorney lists a few.
1. Were There Any Traffic Laws Broken?
This is a clear-cut liability qualifier for a car accident attorney. If one of the people in a car crash was violating a traffic law, i.e., speeding or driving recklessly, they are more likely to be liable for the damages of the other party involved. This is an obvious qualifier because if a person breaks a traffic law, they are more likely to be involved in a car crash.
If a person runs a red light, they are more likely to hit cross traffic. If a person is driving drunk, they are more likely to lose control of their car. Now, there are exceptions. Speeding would be the most obvious one, as speeding isn’t necessarily excessive speeding. If a car in the right lane turns into a speeding car in the passing lane, the speeding car isn’t automatically at fault because they were speeding.
2. What Evidence Is There?
This is where liability gets tricky and where a car accident attorney is needed: in accidents without a traffic law violation and without a clear driver at fault. At this point, it is up to the evidence that is available to the police. In some situations, that evidence could be plentiful. Was the crash during a rush hour with a lot of witnesses? Was the crash in a densely populated area?
However, there are also times when that evidence is lacking, most notably when the wreck is in a rural area without a lot of witnesses. This is when you get both parties arguing that the other is at fault and it really comes down to how the cars present themselves. As car accident attorneys, it is our advice to immediately take photos of an accident and collect anything else that could be used as evidence later.
Let Our Car Accident Attorney Help
At Tolbert Beadle, LLC, we specialize in auto accidents and our car accident attorney services are the best in the area. Contact us toll-free today at 1 (800) 887-4030 or visit our website for more information.
