Car wrecks severely impact your life. Whether you are rear-ended at a stoplight or hit by a commercial vehicle on the highway, car wrecks do more than just ruin your day. They impact your pocketbook, mental well-being, and physical health. And after a crash, tasks that once seemed simple become more difficult and time-consuming.
Life After a Car Accident
A host of challenges become present:
- Without a car, how are you going to get to work?
- If you are injured, does your pain affect your job performance?
- Are you nervous about driving again?
Simply put, car wrecks are damaging to your person and your property, and you are entitled to compensation to help get your life back to normal. While insurance companies will place hurdles on your path to recovery, attorneys at Rafi Law Firm are here to help you jump those hurdles, cut through the red tape, and return your life to as normal as possible, post-crash.
So, after a wreck, when you assess the challenges that a crash created in your life, look to the following list to help categorize those challenges and reassure you that recovery is possible.
Compensation for Medical Expenses
A car crash does not just cause damage to your car, but also to your body. Many of our clients go to the Emergency Room via EMS following a wreck.
Consistently, clients break bones in an accident or suffer injuries to their head, neck, or spine. Those injuries require medical treatment, and insurance companies should reimburse you for the cost of that treatment.
Typical expenses for treatment following a crash include:
- Hospital/Emergency Room bills
- Ambulance bills
- Orthopedic Specialist bills
- Physical Therapy bills
- Psychotherapy bills
- Medication/Pharmacy bills
Compensation for Property Damage
Often, the next thing on your mind following a crash — after your personal health and safety — is the damage to your vehicle.
- How bad is the damage to your car?
- How much is it going to cost to fix?
- Is your vehicle drivable?
Insurance companies should compensate you for the damage to your car. They should pay for the total cost of repair. Or, if your car is totaled, they should pay you the fair market value of your vehicle. Usually, it is helpful to check consumer websites like Kelley Blue Book or Carvana to estimate your car’s worth.
Compensation for Lost Wages
You are also entitled to compensation for any work that you will miss due to the wreck or your injuries. To build a stronger case, make sure to preserve as much evidence of missing work as possible.
Our firm recommends that you save records from your doctors indicating the necessity of missing work, as well as notes from your employer and evidence indicating how much you would have been paid during the time missed. All help strengthen a lost wage claim.
Compensation for Incidental Costs
The financial toll is not limited to medical bills, car repair costs, or missed work. As clients soon discover, there are a whole set of new costs associated with a car crash that you can recover for.
These include:
- Transportation costs to and from medical appointments of the pharmacy
- Fees for towing from the scene of the wreck
- Costs to get your car out of the salvage yard
As previously noted, make sure to keep a record of all bills that you incur as incidental to the wreck.
Compensation for Pain and Suffering
Finally, not only are you entitled to compensation for financial expenses you have incurred due to the car crash, you are also entitled to compensation for pure pain and suffering. Pain and suffering is a broad category and encompasses many types of non-material losses.
Briefly, it includes compensation for the following:
- Interference with everyday living
- Interference with the enjoyment of life
- Loss of capacity to labor and earn money
- Impairment of bodily health and vigor
- The fear of the extent of injury
- Shock of impact
- Actual pain and suffering, past and future
- Mental anguish, past and future
- Whether the plaintiff must limit activities
A skilled attorney will ensure that an injured client receives fair compensation for their pain and suffering and all the other categories of compensation listed previously. The attorneys at Rafi Law Firm will show a jury how the injury has affected the client’s quality of life – physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, professionally, and so on.
If you have been wrongfully injured, contacting a personal injury attorney is an excellent first step toward receiving total compensation for all the harms and losses caused by your injury. Download our FREE car accident handbook here and give us a call at 404-800-9933.