Carrollton Car Accident Lawyer

Building Your Strongest Claim

Your lawyer will gather all the available evidence and information to build your most substantial claim.

This can include:

• Gathering eyewitness testimony
• Obtaining police reports
• Accumulating the physical evidence found at the scene of the accident
• Hiring experts to testify in support of your unique claim
• Having accident recreation models produced that depict the circumstances of the injury-causing accident

Communicating With the Insurance Company

The insurance company handling your claim prioritizes keeping your settlement as low as possible. It is skilled at obtaining statements from claimants like you that it twists to its benefit. The best policy is allowing your car accident lawyer to provide the insurance company with the information it needs—eliminating the risk of you accidentally damaging your claim. There is no legal requirement that you make a statement to the insurance company, and if asked to do so, you can simply refer the insurance rep to your car accident lawyer.

Negotiating a Fair Settlement

Your car accident lawyer will enter into skilled negotiations with the insurance company for a settlement that fairly covers your physical, financial, and emotional losses in their entirety. This involves ensuring that you properly calculate and fully represent your losses in your claim, including all related future expenses that you expect to experience.

Preparing for Trial

Most car accident claims settle out of court. However, accepting a low settlement to avoid going to court is unlikely to be in your best interest. Sometimes, insurance companies refuse to budge on settlement amounts because claimants tend to shy away from court. However, your car accident lawyer will be well prepared to take your case to trial if it becomes necessary. Often, this readiness to move forward toward court will prompt the insurance company to dig deeper regarding fair negotiations.

Exhaustion

When you’re tired, it can be challenging to make well-informed decisions, remain attentive, and take care of the business at hand, and things are no different for drowsy drivers. Drowsy driving is considered a formidable risk factor on our roadways. Many people underestimate fatigue’s effects on a driver or have difficulty measuring their exhaustion (other than self-reporting).

Consider the numbers reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

• In one recent year, exhaustion played a direct role in 91,000 car accidents.
• Those exhaustion-related accidents led to 50,000 injuries and 800 fatalities.
• According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), exhaustion may be responsible for up to 6,000 traffic fatalities yearly.

While exhaustion can lead to many driving challenges, falling asleep behind the wheel is by far the most alarming. To better understand how common this is, consider that one in 25 adults in the United States reports an incident of falling asleep while driving in the 30 days prior. Exhaustion is a form of impaired driving that makes our roadways far more dangerous.

Impairment

You make it your practice not to drink and drive, but not all motorists are as conscientious as you are. Alcohol causes physical, cognitive, and even sensory impairments that seriously interfere with one’s ability to operate a motor vehicle safely.

According to the CDC, in Texas:

• In a decade, 13,592 people lost their lives in accidents involving drunk drivers.
• While the national average for adults who report getting behind the wheel after drinking too much is 1.7 percent, the state average for Texas is 2.2 percent.

Almost a third of all traffic fatalities in the United States involve alcohol impairment (as reported by CDC). Drinking and driving remain a serious problem in Texas and the nation.

Distraction

The CDC also reports these sobering statistics about distracted driving:

• Every day in this country, nine people lose their lives in traffic accidents that involve distracted drivers.
• In one recent year, there were more than 3,100 distracted driving fatalities, and about 424,000 people sustained injuries in accidents involving distraction.

Like other kinds of driver negligence, distracted driving is usually preventable.

There are three basic categories of distraction, including those that involve your thoughts, your sight, and your hands. Texting manages to do all three in one tidy practice.

This is why NHTSA calls texting the most alarming distraction of all. It takes an average of about five seconds to compose a text, and in that five seconds, you travel about the length of a football field if you drive at highway speeds. This means that a texting motorist can travel a considerable distance without paying attention to the road at all, which is, indeed, alarming.

Excess Speed

The faster a motorist drives, the more dangerous the situation becomes.

Excess speed:

• Decreases the time motorists have to safely react to whatever they encounter on the road.
• Increases stopping distances.
• Increases the severity of any ensuing accidents.
• Decreases the effectiveness of the vehicle’s safety mechanisms, including airbags and seatbelts
• Decreases the effectiveness of safety devices on the road, such as guardrails

Excess speed is one of the riskiest driving practices—playing a role in about 29 percent of all fatal accidents (according to NHTSA). Further, a motorist does not have to exceed the posted speed limit to be speeding. Every driver must adjust their speed according to road conditions, including traffic and bad weather.