What Should I Do After a Hit-and-Run Crash?
- What Should I Do After a Hit-and-Run Crash?
- Pull Over
- Attempt to Identify the Other Driver
- Seek Medical Attention for Your Injuries
- Gather Evidence
- Understand How to Recover Damages From a Hit-and-Run Accident
- Contact A Personal Injury Lawyer For Help After Your Hit-and-Run Accident
- Speak With the Experienced Personal Injury Attorneys at Myers Law Firm
What Should I Do After a Hit-and-Run Crash?
After a car crash in North Carolina, drivers are legally required stop and share information like their driver’s license number, report the accident to the police, and call for medical help if necessary. But what happens if the other vehicle drives off?
According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, more than 10% of car crashes reported to the police are hit-and-runs. If you’ve been the victim of a hit-and-run car accident, it’s understandable that you would be confused about what to do next and how to recover compensation for your injuries. After all, how do you file a personal injury claim if you don’t know who is responsible for your injuries?
One of the most important things to understand about a hit-and-run accident is that you should treat it much the same as a regular auto accident. Although you may not be able to identify the driver responsible for the crash, you will still need to prove that you were not at fault for insurance claims. Contacting an experienced attorney will greatly increase your chances of obtaining fair compensation for property damages and medical expenses from a crash where the other driver is unidentified.
Keep reading to learn what to do in a hit-and-run accident.
1. Pull Over
You should never attempt to chase the fleeing driver. Instead, you should pull over to a safe location.
Fleeing the scene of an accident can bring misdemeanor or felony charges according to North Carolina law. It can also put you in a dangerous situation and potentially lead to additional crashes or injuries.
2. Attempt to Identify the Other Driver
The police are frequently unable to catch hit-and-run drivers involved in accidents, but you can increase the chance of success if you:
- Call the police immediately. The sooner the police start looking for the at-fault driver, the better the chance they have of catching them. They will also create a police report of the hit-and-run accident.
- Write down any details you noticed about the other vehicle while the details are still fresh in your mind, such as color, make, model, or even a partial license plate number.
If you have a dash cam, make sure that footage gets saved—and back it up to your phone if you can. This evidence may be crucial to your case.
3. Seek Medical Attention for Your Injuries
If you have any pain after an accident, the first thing you should do is get yourself checked out at a hospital, even if your injuries are minor. While the most important reason is your physical well-being, seeking medical attention is an important aspect of your personal injury claim.
Visiting a doctor after hit-and-run accidents allows accident victims to document their injuries and demonstrate that they took them seriously. Both are very important in a personal injury case for proving you deserve compensation.
RELATED ARTICLE: 3 Reasons You Should Get Medical Treatment After a Car Accident
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SCHEDULE YOUR CONSULTATION4. Gather Evidence
Whether the other driver is identified or not, you will want to gather any evidence you can find to help show the facts of the accident.
- Ask other drivers or pedestrians if they witnessed the car accident and saw anything that could help identify the driver. Be sure to get their contact info so an attorney can follow up later.
- Use your cell phone to take pictures or videos of your vehicle damage and any infrastructure damage or skid marks on the roadway.
- If there are any shops or other buildings near the crash site, they may have security camera footage of either the accident or the fleeing vehicle. Note that security footage is often overwritten after just a few days, so you will need to act quickly. An attorney can help you.
5. Understand How to Recover Damages From a Hit-and-Run Accident
After a typical car accident, the at-fault party’s insurance company will be responsible for paying for the damage to your vehicle and person.
However, in most hit-and-run accidents, the at-fault driver is never identified. And even when they are identified, it’s very common for hit-and-run drivers to be uninsured anyway, or have few assets that could be used to pay your claim. (That may be why they choose to flee in the first place).
When the at-fault motorist in North Carolina is unidentified, uninsured, or underinsured, you will need to go through your own car insurance coverage to obtain compensation. This will be through your uninsured motorist coverage or underinsured motorist coverage (UM/UIM).
Uninsured motorist insurance covers drivers in crashes where the other party does not have any auto insurance, or cannot be identified (as with many hit and run accidents). It acts in place of the at-fault driver’s liability coverage and will cover damage up to policy limits. (Note that this means it will only pay if the uninsured driver was at fault.) If the other driver remains unidentified, your UM coverage will not cover your property damage. You will have to use your own collision coverage in that instance.
North Carolina requires drivers to purchase UM/UIM coverage as part of their auto insurance policy. However, the minimum amount required is just $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident in bodily injury coverage. If you are carrying only the minimum amount, it may not cover all your medical bills and lost wages—especially if you have sustained serious injuries.
UM/UIM coverage tends to be fairly inexpensive for the amount of coverage purchased, so we strongly recommend that you increase your policy limits if you can afford to do so.
6. Contact A Personal Injury Lawyer For Help After Your Hit-and-Run Accident
As the victim of a crash, you are entitled to seek compensation for your medical expenses, lost wages, property damage, and any pain and suffering you experienced. However, the insurance company—even if it is your own—will try to pay you as little as they can get away with.
With the help of a skilled attorney, you stand a better chance of getting fair compensation. For example, putting a price on the pain and suffering someone experienced is a very complicated process and typically requires the help of an attorney to estimate accurately.
According to North Carolina law, if an accident victim is even 1% responsible for the crash, they cannot recover compensation from the at-fault driver’s insurance due to contributory negligence. This can make accident claims very difficult to argue on your own. All the insurance company has to do is show that you were a tiny bit at fault, and then they owe you nothing.
An experienced car accident attorney can help show that you were 100% the victim of a hit-and-run driver, gathering valuable and objective evidence like the accident report, eyewitness statements, testimony from accident reconstruction experts, and more.
If the insurance policy limits are too low to fully cover your injuries, your attorney may also identify other policies that can help you with your financial burden, such as MedPay. Collecting on these insurance policies may be the difference between financial freedom and crushing debt, so it’s always a good idea to at least talk to an attorney to find out your legal rights.
RELATED: How Med Pay Coverage Can Help You After a Car Crash
Speak With the Experienced Personal Injury Attorneys at Myers Law Firm
Understanding how you can receive compensation for injuries sustained in a hit-and-run is only the first stage in your damage recovery process. You’ll need to work with an experienced personal injury attorney to help navigate the insurance claim process and avoid the many pitfalls along the way. As North Carolina attorneys, our team is not afraid to take aggressive legal action against negligent drivers and stingy insurance companies, so that people like you get the medical care you need to fully recover from your accident.
Call Myers Law Firm today at (888) 376-2889 or complete our online contact form to schedule your free consultation and get the help and compensation you deserve.
The content provided here is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice on any subject.
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