If you experience a car accident only a car accident attorney can provide you proper help and guidance as you pursue car accident claims.
Anywhere you live, you are at risk of getting into a car accident every time you drive your car, but different places have different laws when it comes to car accidents. So if you live in Texas, you will need a Texas car accident attorney, and not just any car accident attorney.
Car Accident Statistics
The number of road accidents are always frightening, regardless of whether the numbers fell from the last record.
Latest statistics presented by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles show that there were around 256,206 traffic accidents in Texas in one year.
If you do the math, each day accounts for around 702 car accidents. Out of this number, 2,947 accidents were fatal. And resulting from these fatal accidents, a total of 3,221 people died on Texas’s roads, and a whopping number of 212,149 people suffered injuries that ranged from major to minor caused by 135,601 car accidents that involved injuries.
Out of the given total of car accidents that occurred in Texas, 117,658 were responsible for the damage of certain property. Eye-opening, isn’t it?
The effects of car accidents in Texas vary, and so do their causes. Almost 23,000 of the accidents were traced back to alcohol, which is a far cry from the 1,252 cases that involved drugs. Alcohol use or drunk driving, therefore, is the most common cause of car accidents in Texas.
The statistics go on to identify drivers’ age group between the ages 15 and 19 to be the age group most involved in the fatal car accidents.
However, the driver age group 20 to 24 had the highest rate of accidents that involved alcohol. The numbers also showed that 21-year-old drivers had the highest rate of crashes and alcohol-related crashes alike.
Pursuing Claims On Texas Car Accidents
When you find yourself involved in a car accident in Texas, it is a must to call a Texas car accident lawyer as soon as you can.
To successfully make a claim, you would need knowledge in the laws of Texas regarding car accidents, and the guidelines set for determining liability and the damages to be settled.
A Texas car accident attorney can give you such information, saving you a lot of time and effort.
According to Texas car accident laws, every driver who chooses to operate a car within the bounds of Texas will be held accountable for their actions and the effects of these while operating the vehicle.
If a driver fails to exercise reasonable care, Texas’s laws already count this as negligence, which can be used by your Texas auto accident lawyer to build a strong case in Texas’s car accident courts.
If you are preparing a lawsuit, your Texas car accident attorney can help you establish the negligence of the other party in an accident and help you bring the matter to the correct legal conclusion.
Before your claim can be approved, you have to support the causation that links the negligence to the accident. Aside from that, in order to make a claim, you have to establish that you received considerable damages. Texas’s laws on car accidents have certain guidelines on what constitutes damages.
Damages, therefore, include economic injury such as…
repair or replacement costs of the vehicle or any damaged parts
lost income or wages due to a physical injury
medical expenses in case of injury
funeral expenses in case of death, and so on.
There are also non-economic damages which include pain, mental anxiety, suffering, and any form of inconvenience caused by the accident or by the physical injury that the accident brought on.
In Texas, you can file a car accident lawsuit and claim for damages within 2 years of the accident. After the two-year period, you can no longer file any lawsuit involving said accident. You can sue both the owner of the vehicle and/or its operator if the two are not the same individual.
According to Texas’s laws, the vehicle is accounted for not just by the person holding the legal title of the car but by the person who has actual operational control over the vehicle.
There are rules you should consider, and your Texas car accident attorney will help you understand all these so you can file a successful claim.
Dos: Get an auto accident lawyer that specializes in Texas car accidents if you happen to get into an accident in Texas; file the suit within 4 years following the accident.
Don’ts: Don’t make a hasty settlement without consulting a car accident attorney from Texas.