Car accidents are relatively common occurrences that often leave drivers severely injured. Sometimes, car crashes are truly freak accidents where no one is to blame. However, the vast majority of the time, car accidents happen because someone, somewhere, was negligent, and now you are injured because of that fact. If you were hurt because a negligent driver hit you on the road, you can file a lawsuit to claim financial compensation. Car accidents are a significant concern on the roads and can happen in a myriad of ways. Perhaps you were T-boned in an intersection by a driver who failed to hit their brakes at a red light. Maybe you were rear-ended and wound up with a badly injured neck. Every accident is unique, and you should discuss how your collision happened with an attorney after seeing a doctor.
You also may want to talk to an attorney after a car accident and consider filing a car accident lawsuit. The purpose of a lawsuit is to claim damages. Damages represent the losses you suffered after being injured, which may be economic or non-economic. In rare cases, you may be awarded punitive damages, although these are separate and adhere to different legal procedures. Before getting any damages awards, you must prove the defendant was negligent and hold them liable. If a negligent driver caused a crash and you were injured, our Columbus, GA car accident lawyers can assist you in your subsequent lawsuit.
For a free case review, call Howe Law and have a chat with our car accident lawyers at (888) 559-8344.
Common Car Accident Examples in Columbus, GA
A big part of what makes car accidents so dangerous is their unpredictability. They might happen almost anywhere and at any time. Even when you are doing your best to stay safe on the road, other negligent drivers might still cause car crashes, and you could still get badly hurt. This also creates the possibility that multiple drivers may have been negligent and contributed to your car accident happening. Our Columbus, GA car accident lawyers can help you bring the responsible parties to justice, no matter who they are.
Intersections are extremely dangerous. Drivers passing through an intersection rely on other drivers to know when to stop. Intersections with more than just two roads or highways meet can be particularly dangerous, especially if drivers are unsure how to proceed. In some cases, drivers are T-boned by other drivers, which is when another car slams into the side of a vehicle.
Rear-ending accidents are also very serious and often leave drivers with bad whiplash injuries. Such injuries might prevent you from turning your head or standing upright if the pain is severe. Rear-ending accidents tend to happen when you stop your vehicle at a red light or stop sign, but the car behind you fails to brake in time, slamming into the rear end of your car.
A negligent driver’s failure to signal when turning, changing lanes, or coming to a stop can also lead to bad accidents. For example, you might be struck by a driver who wants to change lanes but does not use their signal. Thus, you did not know they were changing lanes and could not get out of the way in time.
Injuries in Columbus, GA Car Accidents
Car accidents can have a lot of different kinds of injuries. The unpredictable nature of car accidents makes it hard to say for certain what kind of injuries someone will get from a certain kind of accident. It also means that no two accidents will ever be the same. Your car accident is unique from anyone else’s. Our car accident lawyers take this into account when working with you on your case. We know that treating your case how someone else’s case was treated is not really going to work. We create a personalized approach just for you.
Below are some of the ways that you may get injured in a Columbus, GA Car accident.
Broken Bones
Fractures are very common injuries in car accidents. Two large vehicles colliding at high speeds can easily generate enough force to break bones. Extremities like arms and legs can be broken in car accidents as well as more centrally located bones like ribs, the skull, the spine, or the pelvis.
All broken bones will require a cast, sling, or other immobilization device to hold the affected part of the body still while you recover. Of course, this means that you will not be able to use, say, an arm or leg during this time. More complex and dangerous breaks such as compound fractures, which are when a bone pierces through the skin or breaks in multiple areas, may require surgery to heal properly and fully.
Finally, you may need to undergo strength retraining after a broken limb has healed in order to regain full use of an atrophied limb.
Traumatic Brain Injuries
Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs for short) are caused by hard blows to the head that damage the brain. TBIS of all sorts should be taken seriously. Even a “mild” TBI, which you may know as a concussion, can lead to hearing sensitivity, memory loss which may be permanent, and upsetting mood swings. Moreover, subsequent concussions have a tendency to be worse each time they happen.
More severe traumatic brain injuries can have even worse side effects, including the loss of your ability to speak, forgetting basic motor skills, or even resulting in death if the TBI is sufficiently damaging.
Cuts and Puncture Wounds
When car accidents happen, broken glass from windshields, mirrors, and items inside of a vehicle are going to fly everywhere. There is also a good chance that bits of metal will warp, shear, and come off the vehicle. Even hard plastic used in dashboards or steering wheels can become dangerous in car accidents. This is because all of these things can cause cuts or puncture wounds if they hit you.
The cuts are quite nasty. They can leave deep gashes that may result in permanent scarring. If you get a cut to the face, you could end up with permanent disfigurement. Cuts of this nature will almost always require stitching to heal properly.
Puncture wounds, while not as visually impressive, tend to be much more dangerous than cuts. This is because a puncture of only two to three inches into the body can damage vital organs and put someone in critical condition. Additionally, puncture wounds are much more difficult to close shut and stop bleeding than cuts, so the risk of complications from blood loss is greater from piercing wounds than it is for cuts.
Burns
Burns can happen in car accidents in a couple of different ways. First, if the contents of a gas tank ignite after an accident, that fire can easily spread to the occupants of both vehicles and burn them. Second, if one of the vehicles involved in the accident was carrying something volatile, the crash may cause that thing to combust and burn the victims.
Finally, burns do not have to be from a fire or fire-like substance. Friction burns are also common in car accidents, especially when a victim skids across the ground or is ejected from the vehicle.
Amputation
It is grim, but you can lose limbs in car accidents. If a part of your body is too damaged or becomes infected after a car accident, doctors may have no choice but to remove the limb.
Alternatively, you may suffer a traumatic amputation in a car accident. This is when the accident itself rips a limb from the body. The amputation is not done in a medical, controlled setting. There is a very high risk of death from shock and blood loss when this happens, so getting medical attention right away is critically important.
Spinal Cord Injuries
The impact forces involved in car accidents can easily put a lot of pressure on the spinal column and vertebrae. That pressure can damage the central nervous system in a lot of nasty ways. You could end up with chronic pain, numbness, or tingling sensations in parts of your body or lost range of motion in your limbs. Other minor injuries can include slipped or shattered discs in the spinal column that may require lumbar fusion through surgery.
In the most serious cases, spinal injuries can lead to partial or full paralysis. You could lose the use of your legs, arms, or everything below the next. In the very worst cases, this can cause premature death.
Available Damages in Columbus, GA Car Accident Lawsuits
The main focus of a lawsuit is having the plaintiff be awarded damages. Damages represent the plaintiff’s numerous and considerable losses from their accident, including economic and non-economic losses. In more unusual cases, plaintiffs might be awarded punitive damages, although there are different legal procedures and restrictions surrounding these kinds of damages. Talk to our Columbus, GA car accident attorneys about the damages available in your case.
Special Damages
Special damages come at a real financial cost to the plaintiff and are often reflected by bills and actual money spent. These damages can be added up more easily because their value is already known. For example, if your vehicle was totaled in a crash and worth $25,000, you can claim the value of the destroyed car as part of your special damages. Similarly, you can claim medical expenses by adding up the numerous medical bills you have received. Even if you have health insurance, you can claim the money you spent on insurance deductibles as part of your damages.
General Damages
General damages are less concrete and subject to interpretation. General damages encompass a plaintiff’s personal experiences surrounding a car accident. Since plaintiffs might have different experiences, their general damages tend to vary. Common examples include emotional and physical pain and suffering. The greater an impact these experiences have on your life, the more they are worth as part of your general damages. You can also claim things like humiliation or damage to your reputation.
Punitive Damages
Punitive damages differ from those discussed before because they are not meant to compensate injured plaintiffs. Instead, these damages are meant to serve as a punishment for defendants and a deterrent for future bad behavior. These damages can be quite great and are subject to different rules and regulations.
The law regarding punitive damages can be found under Georgia Code § 51-12-5.1 and it states that punitive damages may only be awarded in cases where the defendant’s actions constituted willful misconduct, malice, fraud, oppression, wantonness, or conscious indifference to consequences. Some jurisdictions refer to this as “gross negligence,” which is a very high bar to meet.
In most cases, punitive damages are limited to $250,000, although specific types of cases might have different caps. Plaintiffs do not usually collect the full value of punitive damages, as they are required by law to pay 75% of any punitive damages awarded to the state treasury.
Proving Liability in a Car Accident Lawsuit in Columbus, GA
Liability in most car accident cases is based on negligence. To prove that the defendant was negligent when they caused the crash, we must establish four important legal elements or parts of a claim: duty, breach, causation, and injury. Our Columbus, GA car accident lawyers can help you gather the evidence you need to prove each element and hold the defendant liable.
The element of duty represents the defendant’s legal obligation they owed the plaintiff. All drivers have a legal duty on the road to drive with reasonable safety under the circumstances while obeying all traffic laws.
The breach is whatever the defendant did or failed to do that violated their duty. In other words, they are not acting as a reasonable person would under the circumstances. The breach is often a traffic violation, such as running a red light or stop sign. We might be able to prove a breach by presenting evidence of a citation issued to the defendant by the police at the crash scene.
Causation is the connection between the breach and the accident. The defendant’s breach must be the direct cause of the accident. If some other intervening force caused the accident instead of the breach, the defendant cannot be held negligent.
Finally, your injuries must be real. People often mistakenly think they can sue for damages based on injuries that almost happened, but this is not the case. You can only sue for the real injuries you experienced, not close calls or near misses.
If you were injured in a car crash you believe was caused by a negligent driver, our Columbus, GA car accident lawyers can help you get compensation for your damages.
Call Our Columbus, GA Car Accident Attorneys for Help Today
Call Howe Law at (888) 559-8344 for a free case assessment with the help of our car accident lawyers.
