Utah Car Accident Attorneys

In the state of Utah, if you’ve been involved in a car crash, you need to get the help of an attorney. When you’re trying to decide which attorney to go with, you want to go with an attorney who has vast experience in car crash claims. Picking the wrong attorney can be extremely detrimental to you case for a number of reasons. One, your attorney may or may not understand the claims process or how insurance companies evaluate and value your claim. Two, insurance companies know which attorneys practice primarily in personal injury and which ones don’t. The attorney that you pick effects the value of the claim that an insurance company is willing to give to your car crash claim.

There are several common mistakes that we see when somebody has been involved in a car crash in the state of Utah. First, talking with the insurance company and answering some of their questions that may or may not be misleading gives them ammo to use against you at a later point in the claim.

Another mistake is not seeking medical care right away for the injuries that you sustained. If you wait too long, insurance companies like to believe that your injuries were not caused by the crash.

If you’ve been in a car accident in the state of Utah, you may get a call from the insurance company of the other driver asking to take a recorded statement. I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to give the recorded statement to the other side. The insurance adjusters that take those statements are trained on how to take statements. They ask questions in a particular way to get the answers they need. The purpose of those calls is to show that you’re not injured or not as injured as you say so that they can reduce the value of the claim.

If you’ve been injured in a car accident in the state of Utah, know that medical bills are handled by a number of different types of insurance. First off, Utah requires that all automobile insurance policies have what’s called personal injury protection; sometimes that’s abbreviated at PIP. PIP will cover at a minimum the first $3,000 of medical bills for each person that was injured in a car crash. Once PIP has been used up, the next layer of defense would be your health insurance.

We would recommend that any of your medical bills be processed through your health insurance carrier. In addition, if you don’t have health insurance and your medical bills are more than what is covered by the personal injury protection, we can help communicate with the medical offices and the medical providers and explain to them that we are going to help them get compensated and help them get their money for the medical services they provided once the case has settled. The medical bills would ultimately be paid out of the injury settlement.

We’re starting to see more and more distracted drivers. This is primarily a result of everybody with cell phones, and not paying attention to the road, whether that’s through a GPS or a text message. We’ve seen things as egregious as people watching YouTube videos while they’re driving. If somebody has been involved in a car crash and the other driver was a distracted driver, that’s something that we look into. There are ways to obtain phone records and phone logs to determine if that individual indeed was distracted by their device. That is something that plays into your claim.

If you’ve been involved in a car crash that involves a drunk driver, the claim process is rather similar. However, that’s a major factor that we do consider in the claim. There’s no excuse to ever get behind the wheel of a vehicle if you’re intoxicated. If that individual has injured you and was intoxicated, we make sure that we hold that person responsible for the awful decision that they made to drive when they’re intoxicated and put everybody at risk.

If you’ve been injured in a car crash that involves a self-driving car, there are a number of factors that need to be looked at. One, you want to look at what the actions and the behavior of the person that was driving the car, what he or she did when the car crash occurred. You’d also want to look at the car itself and see if there’s a potential claim against the manufacturer of the vehicle. These self-driving cars are becoming more popular, and it’s creating some nuances in the law and in the legal analysis.

It’s becoming more and more common for vehicles to have accident avoidance technology; things that alert you if a crash is ready to occur or things that will actually control your vehicle to help you avoid a collision. If that technology failed, that’s a factor that we need to look into to see if the vehicle itself could have or should have avoided the collision and the injury, and that’s something that we need to look at to see if the manufacturer of the vehicle might have some sort of responsibility in the collision.

In the state of Utah, insurance is required on all vehicles. However, many people do drive without insurance. If you’re hit by a driver that doesn’t have insurance and it’s their fault, then the insurance companies look at your insurance and go to your uninsured motorists coverage. That’s where your insurance steps into the shoes of the driver who did not have insurance.

In the state of Utah, if you have been injured in a car crash, you can receive compensation for your lost wages through your no-fault coverage. The requirements are, first, you need to miss a consecutive three days of work. After you’ve missed those three days of work, you can recover lost wages. You can recover up to $250 per week, or 80% of your normal wages, whichever one is the lesser of the two. You can recover those if you receive a medical document from your doctor stating that you’re unable to work. You can submit that to your own insurance carrier, which will then reimburse you for those lost wages.

Several times a week, I’m asked, “What is the value of my case?” That’s a question that’s very difficult to answer early on in a case. It depends on the severity of the injury, how much work somebody has missed, and the limitations that are put on the person. In a car crash case, it also depends on the amount of insurance that’s there. If somebody hits you and you’re seriously injured, but they have the state minimum insurance of $25,000, that doesn’t go very far. You should always make sure that you have enough underinsured and uninsured motorist coverage to protect you.