Car accidents are a fact of driving, and the negligence of other drivers often causes them. If you’ve suffered an injury in this way, consulting with an experienced Carrollton car accident lawyer can help ensure you obtain the compensation you need to reach your most complete recovery.
If another driver's negligence leaves you injured, the experienced Carrollton car accident lawyers at Trust Guss Injury Lawyers, are prepared and positioned to help you recover compensation for your entire range of losses.
We are a national law firm based in Texas with multiple offices around the country. We also work with affiliate law firms in most states that share our focus and dedication to excellence. No matter where you are located, we may be able to help you, so call or contact us now. We are open, for free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at 800-898-4877, or you may contact us now by clicking here to submit your case for review.
Accidents in Carrollton, Texas
Carrollton is a manufacturing and tech hub in Texas, and as a suburb of Dallas, it shares in that city’s reputation for dangerous driving.
Two of the intersections that are most closely associated with serious car accidents include:
- Frankford Road and Josey Lane
- Hebron Parkway and Old Denton Road
Accidents are also common on Interstate 35E or any residential roads in the Carrollton area. No matter where you drive in Carrollton or the general Dallas region, you risk suffering injuries in a severe crash. When this happens, always seek medical care immediately, and then consult with a car accident attorney about your legal rights and options.
Do I Need a Carrollton Car Accident Lawyer?
You've suffered an injury in a car accident due to someone else's negligence, and you're undoubtedly focused on your recovery. However, without the compensation you deserve, you cannot regain your health and well-being to the fullest extent possible. And without a dedicated car accident lawyer in your corner, obtaining just compensation can be that much more challenging.
Having a trusted car accident lawyer on your side is essential to protect your rights and assist with the following.
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.
Your Losses
The losses you address in your car accident claim represent your legal damages, and you must calculate the value of all these losses to obtain enough compensation. In addition to property damage to your vehicle and its contents, your losses will break down into three basic categories.
Your Medical Expenses
The medical expenses associated with car accidents tend to be quite high. If your injuries require ongoing care, develop complications, or lead to secondary health concerns, they are likely to be far higher.
Common medical expenses related to car accidents include:
- Emergency treatment and care
- Surgical care
- Hospital care
- Medical treatments, procedures, and tests
- Care from doctors and medical specialists
- Pain management
- Chiropractic care
- Rehabilitation
- Occupational therapy
- Physical therapy
- Adaptive physical devices
Your Lost Wages
While receiving the medical care, you need and recovering from your physical injuries, you may lose work and earnings. If your injuries also affect your earning potential or your ability to continue developing your career, your financial losses may be even more significant. There can also be a significant emotional loss associated with career setbacks.
Your Physical and Psychological Pain and Suffering
One category of loss that often fails to receive scrutiny is the physical and emotional pain, and suffering claimants endure due to negligence on the other side. Moving beyond this emotional component can be challenging and can make your physical recovery more daunting.
Driver Negligence and Car Accidents
A better understanding of driver negligence can help you better assess the role the other driver’s negligence plays in your car accident claim.
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.
Beware of Early Settlement Offers
If the insurance company makes you an early settlement offer, it can provide you with momentary relief. You can begin to cover some of your mounting medical bills (in the face of lost income), but probably not the full scope of your losses. An early settlement offer is often an attempt to finalize a claim before the claimant recognizes the full extent of their losses. Discussing an early settlement offer with an experienced car accident lawyer who is up to speed on your claim is always the best policy.
Additional tactics that insurance companies (which are profit-based) like to spring on claimants in attempts to keep their settlements low include:
- Further complicating or prolonging the already complicated claims process
- Attempting to shift the assignment of negligence away from their shareholder and toward the claimant
- Denying the severity of the claimant’s losses
- Denying claims upfront (with little consideration)
If the insurance company refuses to negotiate a just settlement in good faith, your car accident lawyer will advise you to seek the court's intervention. Ultimately, your fair settlement is a matter of law and is not up to the insurance company's discretion.
Proving Fault
The matter of fault plays a foundational role in car accident claims. If you suffered injuries due to someone else's negligence, you would address that driver's fault in your claim. However, your word that the other driver caused your crash is not enough to obtain compensation. Instead, your car accident attorney needs to provide proof of fault.
Some evidence of fault includes:
- Eyewitness testimony
- Damage to vehicles
- Accident reconstruction
Affording a Carrollton Auto Accident Lawyer
Being injured by another driver’s negligence puts you in a precarious financial situation that may leave you doubting your ability to afford a seasoned car accident lawyer, but you needn’t worry. Most reputable car accident lawyers work on contingency, which means their pay depends on the outcome of the claims they represent. If your claim is successful, your lawyer will receive a prearranged percentage of your settlement or court award, and if it isn’t, you won’t owe anything.
Don’t Wait to Consult an Experienced Carrollton Car Accident Lawyer.
Some people may think that lawyers are expensive and that their case is fairly simple. They might consider not hiring a lawyer and making their case to the insurance company alone. This is never a good idea. The insurance company doesn't want you hiring a lawyer because if you don't, they know they have a better chance at paying you less - if anything at all. That is because the insurance companies are for-profit companies, and they will do everything they can to not pay you. The best way you can ensure that they do is by enlisting help.
The savvy Carrollton car accident lawyers at Trust Guss Injury Lawyers, are fully committed to skillfully advocating for your claim’s most advantageous outcome.
The legal team of Trust Guss Injury Lawyers, is nationally recognized for protecting the rights of injured victims for more than 20 years. If a Carrollton car accident injured you, call our office right now for a free consultation! Because we take all of our car injury cases on a contingency fee basis, you will not owe us a dime unless we win your case. We are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so call us today at 800-898-4877 or contact us now by clicking here.