road accidents
In 2007 over 30,000 people were killed or seriously injured in road traffic accidents in the UK. In fact almost a quarter of a million people in that year were injured in accidents on the road and the numbers remain pretty steady every year, despite improvements to safety in cars, mainly because of ever increasing numbers of road users.
Types of Road Traffic Accidents
There are many causes of road traffic accidents, involving every conceivable type of vehicle but most have one of these factors in common, where the driver at fault:
- Fails to keep a proper look out
- Drives too fast
- Fails to brake in time
- Fails to stop at a junction
- Changes lanes unsafely.
Most road traffic accident claims are mistakenly thought of as straightforward because of these common causes, but without expert advice, insurers all too often try to avoid paying out on claims altogether, by denying liability for the claim or seeking to blame the injured victim for some part of the accident.
Many Solicitors avoid acting in respect of accidents involving collisions on roundabouts, often because it is not clear how the vehicles came to collide or who was at fault. Evidence from an independent witness is often crucial to the success or failure of a claim.
Accidents that take place in car parks are notoriously difficult to claim for without good witness evidence and expert legal advice, because the accident will have taken place “away from the highway” so the normal road use rules and regulations will not wholly apply.
If the vehicle that you were travelling in at the time of the accident only sustained light damage or no obvious damage at all, then the insurer may try to argue that it was a “low velocity collision” and that you could not have been injured at all. Our panel solicitors have successfully dealt with many such arguments made by insurers and rely heavily on quality medical evidence to support your contention that you were injured in the collision, no matter how slight the collision appears to have been.
Whether you can identify the driver at fault, who turns out to have no insurance to cover your claim or you were a victim of a hit and run and cannot trace the driver at fault, our expert solicitors are experienced in submitting claims to the Motor Insurers Bureau (the MIB) , who are the body set up and funded by the motor insurance industry to deal with claims made by the victims of uninsured or untraced drivers.
Claims by passengers can often be made more problematic because it may not be clear whether the driver of the vehicle they were travelling in was at fault, or of the other vehicles involved, or indeed a combination of both. Our expert solicitors will steer a path through this maze and will normally seek to get one insurer to deal with your claim first, then let all the insurers argue it out amongst themselves afterwards.
Cyclists are some of the most vulnerable road users and are often very seriously injured when involved in even the lowest impact road traffic accident claims. Claims made by injured cyclists often need careful handling and focus on rehabilitation. Motorbike riders are often the first to be blamed for road traffic accidents by driver of other vehicles who fail to see them until it is too late or fail to take enough care when driving in their vicinity, so claims made by motorbike riders are often some of the most strongly defended, often only because of the high average value of the claims, so expert advice is essential.
All road users owe a duty of care to pedestrians, a duty which is all to often flouted or completely ignored, resulting in thousands of serious injuries and deaths to pedestrians every year, many of whom are children or other vulnerable or elderly people. Specific regulations exist to protect pedestrians, such as the Pedestrian Crossing Regulations and the Highway Code. It is vital that the legal advisers that are chosen to deal with your claim are fully versed in bringing claims on behalf of injured pedestrians.
