Anyone can be involved in a car accident. Auto collisions happen every day in Texas and the resulting damages can be financially devastating.
Between medical expenses, property damage costs, and possibly even lost income, accident victims are often left wondering how to pay the mounting expenses. Thankfully, you can usually recover at least some compensation after a vehicle accident.
However, first, you need to establish blame. Determining fault in a Dallas car accident can be challenging even for experts and their decision can impact your personal injury claim. So, how is fault determined in an accident and who takes care of assigning blame?
Who’s Responsible for Determining Fault in Vehicle Accidents?
You may believe the police are responsible for determining fault and you’re partially correct. Some accident scenes are pretty obvious.
An example is if a driver runs a red light and hits another motorist crossing the intersection. The position of the vehicles after the accident, along with witness statements are often enough to determine who’s at fault for causing the accident.
When the authorities can determine who’s responsible for causing the accident, you can usually start moving forward with a personal injury claim. You’ll need a copy of your accident report. The report details the accident, including who’s the at-fault driver.
However, other vehicle accident scenes can be a little more challenging, and determining fault may take more than a review by the responding officers.
Insurance Companies Can Assign Blame
What happens when your accident report is missing information like who’s responsible for the car collision? When this happens, the insurance companies typically step up and work to assign fault.
Sometimes, even if an accident report clearly identifies the at-fault driver the insurance company can still step in. They may decide to adjust the responding officer’s findings and assign you some or all of the blame.
How do insurance companies assess fault in an accident? Insurance companies typically send out a claim adjuster whose primary purpose is to review the accident scene and the authorities’ findings.
The insurance adjuster will review the official accident report, examine any evidence, and collect statements from any eyewitnesses. This is why you don’t want to go into detail if you talk to any witnesses after an accident. The insurance adjuster can use your statements to try and shift some of the blame for the accident onto you.
An insurance adjuster may even try to get a statement from you. The best advice is to refer the insurance adjuster to your personal injury lawyer. If you don’t have legal representation, be polite but refuse to go into detail about the accident.
Can You Appeal the Insurance Adjuster’s Findings?
If you feel like you’re being assigned more than your fair share of the blame, you can file an appeal in civil court. A judge or jury will review your supplied evidence, including the accident report, and may decide to reduce your percentage of blame.
Sometimes the court may rule against you but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re completely out of luck just quite yet. Your attorney has the option to file another appeal in an attempt to change the lower court’s decision.
While the appeal process is going on your injury claim is effectively put on hold for the time being. So, in other words, you can’t pursue compensation for your damages until the question of blame is finally settled.
Why Is It Crucial to Determine Fault in a Texas Car Accident Claim?
You may be wondering why anyone wants to spend time determining fault in a car accident claim. After all, can’t you simply file a claim for damages with the insurance provider? The answer to this question can be either yes or no, it depends on the amount of fault you’re assigned.
Texas is an at-fault insurance state. This means you file a claim for damages against the at-fault party’s insurance provider. So far, everything seems pretty simple. You list your damages and send the paperwork off to the other driver’s insurance provider. However, the Lonestar State also follows comparative negligence guidelines and this is when determining fault can be crucial.
Comparative negligence rules allow for more than one individual or entity to be responsible for causing an accident. Each involved motorist is assigned a percentage of blame reflecting their actions or lack thereof.
As long as you’re not assigned over 50% of the accident’s fault, you can still file a compensation claim. If your percentage of blame is 51% or higher, you’ll need to rely on your insurance provider to cover your losses.
Your compensation amount is reduced by your percentage of blame. So, if you’re 25% responsible for the accident and your claim’s value is $200,000, your compensation amount is $175,000.
You may be wondering if you can file another claim for your remaining damages, the answer is no. This means you can’t turn to your insurance provider or file a lawsuit against the other driver. You can only file one claim per accident.
How Negligence Determines Fault
All types of personal injury claims with the possible exception of strict liability cases must prove negligence. In other words, negligence typically determines fault.
You must show that the other driver owes you a duty of care and breached this duty. You must also prove that the breach of duty is the direct cause of the accident that results in your injuries.
Sometimes, showing another driver is negligent is fairly easy. Referring back to the earlier example of a driver running a red light. In this scenario, showing negligence shouldn’t be complicated. The other driver owes you a duty of care to follow all traffic laws. They breached their duty by running the red light and this action is the direct cause of your accident.
When negligence is a little harder to prove, insurance adjusters often take over and assign blame to the involved parties.
Protect Your Personal Injury Claim
The last thing you want in a personal injury claim is to be unfairly assigned fault for an accident that you were involved in. You may be able to avoid this issue by partnering with an experienced Texas personal injury attorney. Your attorney can work to help ensure you’re not assigned more than your fair share of the blame.
