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Were you involved in a rear end accident and you were wondering how much your rear end accident is worth? Check out this short video to learn more.
Hey everyone Barry Zlotowicz here with the LawFull channel. I’m a Chicago personal injury attorney that tries to help victims of rear end accidents and other personal injuries.
On this channel you’ll find short videos on the legal topics that affect our lives. If you haven’t already please subscribe to our channel and if you have a legal issue reach out to me. If I can’t help you, I’ll try and find someone who can.
According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration around 29% of all auto accidents in the United States are rear end collisions. When one car hits another from behind. Considering there are around 6 million accidents in the united states every year you can see that is a lot of rear enders around 2 million per year.
With all those rear enders going on, we get asked the question a lot of how much is a rear end accident worth or how much should a rear end settlement be? The answer is not so simple and depends on a lot of different factors.
So what are the factors that go into trying to figure out how much your rear end accident is worth? FIRST, liability – who is liable for a rear end accident?
FYI – personal injury attorneys like rear end collisions. Why? Because more often that not, there is no question about liability or responsibility for the accident. Generally speaking if you get rear ended, the party who hit you from behind is at fault. Now I’ve had some cases where the car in front cut off my client and as a result, even though we rear ended the car in front of us we were still able to recover.
So back to liability – If you are responsible for the accident, chances are you are not going to recover for your pain and suffering. Now there are exceptions, if you live in a comparative negligence state. You can still recover if you are partially at fault for the accident. In my home state of Illinois, if you’re not over 50% at fault you can recover for your damages. Just your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault.
Now some states use a pure comparative negligence standard like California for example. In California, get this, if you are 90% at fault for your accident, you can still recover for 10% of your damages. Why is this a big deal? Well, if you’re in an accident and you have serious injuries, you may still be obtain a serious amount of money for your injuries. At the very least you can recover something to compensate you for your damages.
So after you address liability, next thing you want to look for is the severity of your injuries. And this brings a lot into play
So the common injuries in a rear end accident are neck and back sprains and strains and concussions and just general whiplash. But there could be more to it. You could have suffered a herniated disc or bulging disc or something even more severe like a truly traumatic brain injury for example.
When you’re trying to figure out how much your case is worth, it’s a sliding scale – sprains and strains on the left and up to wrongful death on the right. Sprains and strains don’t pay that much
Second, is your injury permanent – are you going to walk with a limp the rest of your life or did you suffer a scar on your face that people will see the rest of your life, then your recovery is going to be far greater than someone who suffered an injury and the pain went away in a couple weeks.
Another main factor in deciding how much money you’re going to recover is how much insurance is there. I’ve done a lot of videos on this channel where I talked about insurance. But if you’ve got a million dollar injury but there’s only $25k in insurance, chances are you’re going to recover $25k. Sure you can sue the driver personally but if she or he doesn’t have much insurance chances are they don’t have significant assets.
There are a couple of economic factors you should consider as well. The first is how much were your medical bills. Generally speaking, you’re going to recover for the amount of your bills. And second, how much were your lost wages? If they are verifiable you can recover for those too.
Ok, so those are the main things you’re looking for when trying to evaluate how much a rear end collision settlement should be. Now it’s time for your take on the law. Were you involved in rear ender? Were you able to recover? Tell us about it in the comments section below.
Hey everyone thanks for checking out this video. If you haven’t already please subscribe to our channel and if you are facing a legal situation, reach out to me, if I can’t help you I’ll try and find someone who can.
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