CAR ACCIDENTS

WHAT TO DO AFTER A CAR ACCIDENT

What to do after a car accident. One thing that you should not do is move your car or drive it anywhere before you take accurate photographs of the scene of the accident. Take photographs of the scene of the road and streets and all the cars involved in the accident. Make sure you take photographs of all four sides of every car involved in the accident and the car license plate numbers. Then call 911 and try to get the police to come out and do a police report (police usually will not do a police report if nobody is hurt enough for the ambulance or the fire department trucks to arrive or the cars do not need towing). Then, ask the other drivers of the other cars for a copy of their driver's license and insurance information and take photographs of those documents with your cell phone or write them down on a piece of paper, and call our office for an appointment.

HOW CAN I GET INTO A RENTAL CAR WHILE MY CAR IS BEING FIXED

How can I get into a rental car while my car is being fixed. After the car accident, the first thing on almost everyone's mind are their cars. Before taking your car to a body shop, please call our office first and let us recommend some body shops. You have to know that some body shops do poor work in repairing your car, and to make matters worse, those body shops will not put your car on their priority list, meaning that your car might take one or two months to be repaired. What makes this so horrible for you, is that the insurance carrier will give you a car rental only for the reasonable amount of time it usually takes to repair your car (usually two weeks or so). That means that you will be have to pay for your car rental beyond the reasonable time it take to repair your car out of your pocket! This has happened to a few of our unfortunate clients because their cars were in the body shop being repaired before they came into our law office. You should also keep in mind that some dealerships that do car repairs do not repair your car themselves but refer your car to other body shops. Most of the dealerships, like new car dealerships, do good repair and can be trusted. However, keep in mind that some of the new car dealerships also take a long time to repair your car. It is our recommendation that you come to our office to handle the repairs to your car because we can recommend body shops for you based on our experience in the car accident industry for over a decade in the Dallas, Texas area.

Once the insurance company for the other driver has accepted liability for the accident, you will be entitled to a car rental for the reasonable time it normally takes to fix your car. However, keep in mind, that if the body shop is unusualy busy with other cars, they might not get to your car until many weeks later and you will be stuck with the car rental fees. In the event that the other driver's insurance does not accept liability for the accident, you will have to go through your own insurance under your collision coverage and car rental coverage to have your car fixed and you driving a rental car while your car is being repaired. Of course, if you do not have collision and car rental coverage (sometimes referred to as "full coverage") from your own insurance, you are out of luck and will have to try to recover your fees for your car damages and loss of use of your car only by winning your case at trial.

Total Loss. If your car has been totaled, the insurance carrier can select either of the two options: 1) Pay you for the value of your vehicle minus the money that the insurance carrier would get for your car if they sold it to a salvage yard, plus the registration fees and taxes; OR 2) pay the amount of money it takes to repair your vehicle. Insurance carrier gets to choose either of the two options. You do not have that choice. If the insurance carrier has opted to pay for the estimated repair costs of your vehicle, you are also entitled to the diminshed value of your car because of the fact that the value of your car has been reduced (this applies mostly to newer cars like less than 5 years old).

WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT MY INJURIES

What can I do about my injuries after a car accident? If you have been injured from a car accident and have not been transported to the nearest hospital by the ambulance, please come to our office first before you go to the hospital. One thing that you do not want to happen to you is that you go to a hospital to receive medical treatment and then find out that the other insurance company has not accepted fault for the accident. This means that the other insurance will not pay for your medical bills. Medical bills can be extremely expensive and make you go into depression if you have to pay them out of your pocket. That is why you should consult with our law office first, so that we can make sure that your medical treatment will be paid for by the other insurance company. We can refer you to many different medical professionals, including chiropractors, general practitioners, pain management specialists, orthopedics and many others. Remember that after a car accident, you are the victim, and you deserve to be put back in the condition you were in before the car accident. Unfortunately, insurance companies will sometimes make you feel like you are doing something wrong for obtaining medical treatment. Insurance companies job is to receive as much money (premiums) as they can, while paying out as least amount of money as possible. In other words, insurance companies will be fighting hard to make sure you do not get all the medical treatment you deserve. That is why you should call our law office so that we can deal with the other insurance company while you work on getting better physically and mentally.

WHAT IS AN INSURANCE DECLARATION

Insurance declaration is usually a one or two page form with your insurance company that shows you the converages of your insurance policy. For instance, your insurance declaration will show you whether or not you have collision coverage, rental car coverage, bodily injury coverage, and medical payments and personal injury protection (PIP) coverage. Insurance declaration will tell you how much you are covered up to for each of the coverages, such as in your personal injury protection (called PIP).