You go out to dinner with a group of friends. After you finish eating, it’s roughly 8 p.m., and you decide to head home. You have to get up for work the next morning and you want to watch a movie before bed.
Unfortunately, this means you’re driving when a lot of people have just started drinking — perhaps even while having dinner. As you try to drive through an intersection, a drunk driver runs a red light and hits your car.
Clearly, the first order of business is to call the authorities and get medical assistance. Pretty quickly, though, you start thinking about your bills. They could include some of the following:
The damage to your car
Your car is totaled. You depend on it to get to work. It has to get fixed. While you do have insurance coverage on it, you did not cause the accident. You do not want to have to pay anything out of pocket or see your insurance premiums go up just because someone else hit you.
Your medical bills
It costs hundreds of dollars just taking an ambulance to the hospital. They find out you have a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and so you spend a few nights there. The bills are astronomical. You appreciate the medical care and the fact that you’re on the road to recovery, but you have to pay more than you make in a year. It’s impossible.
Your lost wages
You’re definitely not getting to work tomorrow or in the next few days. Even after you get out of the hospital, you can’t just go right back in. You’re looking at thousands of dollars in lost wages — and you still don’t know if the TBI is going to have a long-term impact on your career and your earning potential.
What can you do?
The above makes your situation sound bleak, but don’t worry: There is a solution. Since you did not cause the crash, the driver who did may be liable for all of the costs stemming from that accident. If they were intoxicated, proving fault is simple. You just need to know what legal steps to take to get the compensation you deserve.