Immediately after a car crash, you will experience a range of effects. You might feel pain and emotional shock. The impact may have damaged or disabled your car. And the police officers who respond to the crash might cite or even arrest you.
Depending on the causes and severity of the crash, you may need months or even years to recover. In some situations, you might never fully recover, experiencing permanent disabilities that affect your ability to work. Fortunately, you can pursue financial compensation for some of these effects when someone else caused the crash. Allen Law Firm, P.A. discusses your options in more detail below.
The Scope Of The Car Crash Problem
Over 5 million traffic crashes happen across the U.S. each year. These crashes include:
- Collisions between two or more motor vehicles
- Crashes into fixed objects, commonly called single-vehicle crashes
- Collisions between motor vehicles and pedestrians
- Collisions between motor vehicles and bicycles
These crashes caused over 42,000 deaths in 2022. Millions of drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists suffered injuries ranging from bruises to permanent brain damage. These crashes cost the national economy over $340 billion every year. These costs include obvious expenses, like medical care, and less obvious losses, like a drop in worker productivity due to absences.
The losses from car accidents are staggering even when you look at them on a local scale. According to the Florida Crash Dashboard, in 2022, the state had 397,500 traffic crashes, which caused 3,574 deaths and injured 252,123 road users. The U.S. government estimates the annual economic cost of traffic crashes in Florida at nearly $10.8 billion.
How Car Crashes Affect Victims
Those enormous numbers show the societal costs of traffic collisions. But millions of road users sit behind these statistics. Some ways that car crashes affect accident victims include the following:
Physical Effects
The likelihood of suffering an injury depends on your role in the crash. According to Florida’s Crash Facts Report for 2021, you can calculate the injury rate as:
- 25% for automobile drivers
- 27% for automobile passengers
- 76% for motorcyclists
- 80% for pedestrians
- 95% for bicyclists
The U.S. Department of Transportation uses the KABCO scale to categorize traffic crash injuries. KABCO stands for the following classes of injuries:
- K means a fatal injury
- A means incapacitating injuries like spinal cord injuries, brain damage, or major fractures
- B means a visible, non-incapacitating injury like a bruise, abrasion, or minor cut
- C means a possible but non-visible injury like a sprain or herniated disc
- O means no injury
After suffering an injury, you will incur financial costs. But injuries from car accidents bring more than financial costs. The pain from your injuries can deprive you of sleep and erode your ability to enjoy life.
Your injuries might cause physical disabilities that impair your functioning. As a result, you might need to cut your hours, change jobs, or even quit working altogether. Even if you recover from your injuries, you may have lingering effects such as fatigue, weakness, or limits on your range of motion.
Mental Effects
Research suggests that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in civilians. PTSD results from the runaway effects of a natural response to a stressful event.
After your car accident, your brain will look for ways to prevent a repeat occurrence. It may become hypersensitive to signs it associates with the crash to help you avoid another one. The symptoms of PTSD result from this hypersensitivity.
PTSD can produce a range of symptoms that affect your mood and ability to function emotionally as you did before your accident. Some common effects of PTSD include:
- Reliving the accident through nightmares or flashbacks
- Overreaction to triggers
- Emotional outbursts
- Short attention span
- Difficulty concentrating
- Paranoia
- Anxiety
- Depression
These symptoms can produce physical effects. For example, anxiety can cause stress-related symptoms like high blood pressure. And nightmares can produce sleep disorders. As a result, your quality of life and health will suffer even if you have no physical injuries from the crash.
Financial Costs
Depending on your role in the accident and your preparedness for a crash, you may suffer several financial costs. Vehicle owners in 49 states must either carry liability insurance or prove that they have the financial assets to cover third parties’ losses in an accident.
When a driver causes an accident that produces injury or death, their liability insurance or assets pay for the resulting losses. Similarly, liability insurance pays for any damage they cause to other people’s property. Thus, when the other driver causes your crash, their insurance will cover your costs. When you cause crashes, their costs fall on you.
If you have no insurance, you are responsible for all those losses. But even if you have insurance, you still have costs. Your insurance premiums will go up. And your policy only covers a preset amount of the losses you caused, called your policy limit. You will bear the liability for any losses over that limit.
Most importantly, liability insurance only covers third-party losses. Liability insurance does not cover your losses. Some states, like Florida, require drivers to carry personal injury protection (PIP) coverage. This coverage pays for a portion of your medical bills and lost income.
However, most states do not require you to buy coverage for your losses. If you do not have coverage for these losses, you must pay for your medical expenses, and you bear the burden of any income losses.
Legal Costs
If you bear no blame for your crash, you should not have any legal costs. But if you contributed to the cause of your car collision, even just a bit, you have two costs. First, you might have to pay for at least a portion of the other driver’s losses. Second, you could lose a portion of the compensation you could otherwise seek from the other driver.
Dealing With The Effects Of A Car Crash
You can pursue compensation for the effects of your crash from any driver whose negligent or intentional actions caused it. Your compensation can cover economic losses, such as lost wages and medical bills, and non-economic losses, such as pain and suffering. Between insurance and the legal system, you can seek full compensation to help you overcome the effects of a car crash.
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This post brought to you by Kristina Rodopska
Photo iStock