After an accident, it is not uncommon for insurers to use uncooperative tactics through adjusters to minimize claim payouts. However, understanding these questionable practices and your rights helps when seeking fair compensation. A Texas lawyer can help make sure you are not taken advantage of by insurance adjusters.

Spotting Adjuster Stall and Delay Tactics

Beware of adjusters utilizing stall tactics that should raise red flags, including:

• Failing to properly handle or assign your claim for many weeks or months
• Repeatedly missing scheduled phone calls and appointment times
• Claiming to have lost or never received documents and records you already provided
• Requesting duplicate documents and information already supplied multiple times
• Failing to return calls and emails for extended periods of time

These tactics drain your energy and time but have no legal merit. Carefully document every interaction in writing to substantiate bad faith delays and negligence.

Whiplash is one of the most common injuries sustained in auto accidents. While its symptoms may seem minor at first, people are often surprised to learn whiplash can develop into a debilitating chronic condition if not promptly treated. Understanding the long-term impacts whiplash injuries can have and working with a Texas lawyer is crucial when experiencing a car accident.

What Exactly is Whiplash?

Whiplash is a neck injury caused when the head is suddenly jolted back and forth beyond its normal range of motion. This commonly occurs in rear-end collisions. It strains muscles, tendons, and ligaments in the neck and upper spine. Symptoms include neck stiffness, shoulder pain, headaches, and reduced mobility.

Why Whiplash Pain Worsens Over Time

The soft tissues in the neck often don’t show major damage immediately. But as inflammation sets in, significant pain develops. Damaged fibers, pinched nerves, and tears gradually manifest. Lost range of motion becomes more noticeable. Without proper rehabilitative treatment, whiplash grows more severe as structural damage and tears progress.

Dashcams are becoming increasingly popular in Texas vehicles. While drivers install them hoping to never need the footage, dashcams can provide crucial evidence if you are ever unfortunate enough to be involved in a car accident. Quality dashcam footage can significantly strengthen your ability to prove liability and recover maximum damages. This footage can help you and your Texas lawyer build a stronger case.

Capturing Accidents in Real Time

A dashcam provides an unbiased, objective record of the accident as it occurs. This can help establish crucial facts like lighting conditions, traffic flow, vehicle speeds prior to impact, and more. Unlike eyewitnesses, a dashcam never forgets critical details. The footage also refreshes the memories of the parties involved.

Corroborating Your Account of Events

In disputed accident claims, dashcam video backing up your version of events can undermine the at-fault driver’s claims. The defendant will have a harder time denying culpability or minimizing your injuries when concrete footage counters their statements.

The act of driving involves a seemingly endless checklist of decision-making. Speed up, slow down, or maintain one’s speed? Change lanes or stay put? Continue straight, turn right, turn left, or make a U-turn and go back? Every decision that a driver makes can potentially affect their safety and the safety of those around them. This is why it is both critical to pay attention when driving and to be informed about which actions are most likely to result in a car crash.

Turning Right

A motorist’s decision to turn is a perfect example of a decision that can impact their safety – and the safety of those around them – to different degrees, depending on how the turn itself is executed. Turning right is a relatively safe endeavor. When turning right, a motorist can almost always see what is happening around them and travels a very short distance to complete their maneuver.

Turning Left

By contrast, turning left is such a risky business that many delivery businesses now equip their fleets with technology designed to help their drivers avoid left turns whenever possible. To make a left turn, a vehicle operator must almost always cross at least one oncoming lane of traffic. Thus, if either they or an oncoming motorist is not paying attention, a T-bone crash can happen in the blink of an eye.

Each state has enacted negligence laws that have the potential to affect how much compensation a car crash injury victim is entitled to be awarded, in the event that they file legal action in civil court. A few states do not allow injury victims to pursue compensation from other responsible parties if they, themselves, contributed to the harm they have suffered to any degree whatsoever. Some other states allow victims to pursue compensation from other responsible parties regardless of the degree to which everyone involved – including the victim – was to blame for what happened.

Texas Law

Texas honors a legal standard that is commonly referred to as a modified approach to comparative negligence. What this means is that a car crash injury victim remains entitled to seek damages from other parties that contributed to the cause(s) of their harm, provided that the victim was not more than 50% responsible for their own harm. Their damages award is then, proportionately, reduced by the percentage of fault attributed to the victim.

For example, say that a crash victim’s total economic and non-economic harm has been valued at $500,000. It has been determined that a manufacturer of a defective auto part was 60% to blame for what happened. Both the victim and another motorist involved in the accident are each considered to be 20% at fault. This means that the victim can pursue up to $300,000 from the manufacturer and $100,000 from the other motorist. The remaining $100,000 in damages is the victim’s burden to absorb due to their partial fault for their own harm.