Texas Car Accident Guide

If you’ve been seriously injured in a car accident in Texas, go to the emergency room, call EMS, or call your doctor. Take care of yourself first because you don’t know the extent of your injuries unless you’re a doctor. The fact is, you might think you’re okay but tomorrow you’re going to wake up and all of a sudden have pains that you never had before. You now have things you’re worried about that you never had to worry about before. The only way to take care of that is to get yourself looked at by somebody who knows what they’re doing.

The only way to make sure that you get full compensation for what happened to you is to hire a law firm that knows what they’re doing. We will worry about all the legal hurdles; we’ll jump over them for you. We’ll take care of you.

The honest truth is not always, but you need to know when that is the case. If you’ve been seriously injured, have medical bills piling up, are missing time from work, you’re probably going to need a lawyer. You need to worry about things like how am I going to pay my bills? What am I going to do if I can’t go to work for another two weeks? How am I going to get my car fixed?

Let’s be upfront about this: if you’re not hurt, your car has got a dent in it, and the insurance company says they’ll fix it, you probably don’t need a lawyer. Our firm is here. Our experience will be put to work for you when you know you need a lawyer.

If an insurance company calls you after a car accident, especially if it’s the other person’s insurance, be very careful what you say. The fact of the matter is, they can only record you if they ask you, but be very careful. I always tell people not to give them a statement. You need somebody there sitting with you who can hear the questions, make sure they’re appropriate questions and make sure that the information they want to get from you is information they’re allowed to have.

Insurance companies hire adjusters that are trained to ask you questions to which there’s no good answer. They record it and type it up, and they use it against you. Don’t get caught in that trap. Before you talk to the other person’s insurance company, make sure you have someone experienced by your side.
If your insurance company wants to talk to you, you need to cooperate with them. They’re the ones that are trying to help you get your car fixed and take care of those basic things. If the other person’s insurance calls you, I wouldn’t talk to them; not unless you have a San Antonio car accident lawyer ready to go.

If you’ve been in a car accident, you might get a quick phone call from an insurance company. They might want to offer you $500 right up front. You should not accept that offer. The thing you need to think about is when you accept that check, when you sign that piece of paper, it’s over. If you find out next week that your doctor is telling you to get surgery, there’s nothing you can do to get compensation for that. That’s why insurance companies call you and offer you a quick check. Quick and easy usually isn’t the right answer. Call us so we can help you. Our firm has 30 years of experience doing this for you.

If you’ve been in a car accident in Texas and it’s prevented you from going to work, whether that’s for three days, a week, or longer, you’re entitled to compensation for that lost time. Even if your employer allows you to take it as vacation time or doesn’t penalize you for it, you’re still losing something of value. For example, if you made $5 an hour and you work 10 hours a day, that’s $50 a day that’s coming out of your pocket because someone was careless, caused you an injury, and you’re missing time from work. Whatever your pay rate is, whatever your salary is, for that number of days, weeks, or months, you’re entitled to it. If it goes into the future, you’re entitled to what that would calculate out to as well.

When you’re injured in a car crash, there are a couple of things going on. If you have health insurance, they will pay for those bills. It’s becoming more and more complicated and some health insurance companies don’t like paying for those bills, but we’ll navigate those waters for you.

The thing to keep in mind, however, is if your health insurance company pays for your medical bills and then you recover money from the person who hit you, you have to pay back your health insurance company. Health insurance is there primarily if you have a cold or a sore throat. They will pay the bills for a car wreck, but they just have a law – it’s called subrogation – and it’s written in your insurance policy that says if you recover from that wrongdoer, you have to pay them back.

With an experienced law firm, they’re going to call that health insurance company and say, “We did all the work. We got this money back for you, and there are Texas laws that say you can’t have it all because the person who suffered the injuries is really the one who needs it.” We’ll negotiate that, we’ll lower what we have to pay back to the health insurance company, and that puts more money in your pocket. That puts more money available for you to take care of whatever happened to you.

People ask all the time what their car accident case is worth, but the truth is we don’t know yet. We don’t know the extent of your injuries. We don’t know how much future treatment you might need. We don’t know if this is going to cost you your job or if you’ll be able to work at all.

In Texas, you’re entitled to full and fair compensation for several categories of damages. You’re entitled to all your past medical bills, any future medical bills that your doctors think you may need, any wages that this has caused you to lose, and if it’s going to impact your wage-earning ability in the future, you’re entitled to make up that difference. If someone harms you through their carelessness, their insurance company is responsible to compensate you for those things.

Then there are the things that aren’t easy to count. There’s the pain that you’re going through, and the fact that now you can’t do the things you used to be able to do. That can be basic things like needing a caregiver now because you can’t get in and out of the shower. It can be things like not being able to take care of your family anymore. All of those kinds of damages are part of the equation too.

People want to know, “What’s the value of my claim?” The value of your claim in Texas is full and fair compensation for everything that person did to you. In some instances, there are limitations, but when you hire an experienced law firm for your Texas car accident, what they should do is seek out every penny available for you.

There is no easy answer for you. It’s going to take as long as necessary to make sure that everything that needs to be taken care of, is taken care of. There are some basic steps. We’ll get in touch with the insurance company, we’ll tell them that you’re being treated by a doctor, and when we know the extent of your injuries, we can make some decisions.

If we file a lawsuit in your case, there are just some natural delays. By law, they get 30 days to even respond to it. Every case cannot be resolved in six months. Not every case is resolved in a year. When you have an experienced team behind you, what you can count on is that they will push the case so that it doesn’t take longer than it should. There are not going to be any delays on our end, and we’re not going to let them delay more than the law allows.

If you’ve been in a car accident in Texas, you have two years to take action. That doesn’t mean you should wait one year and 364 days, but you do have time. You don’t have to let somebody rush you into anything. Two years is the absolute limitation period, and that’s two years from the date of that wreck.If you call us a day before that time runs out, we may not be able to help you. Take your time though. Think things through and get a grip on what you’re facing with medical bills, with work, with repair bills, all of those things, and we’ll take action. We’ll take action quickly and we’ll move things along as quickly as we can.

Drunk driving accidents in Texas unfortunately are a very common thing. Texas has one of the highest drunk driving rates in the nation. If you’ve been involved in a car accident with a drunk driver, there are a couple of things you need to know. Number one, whatever happens to the other driver on the criminal side happens to them. You need to worry about what’s going to happen to you. Their insurance company needs to compensate you. Their insurance company needs to accept the fact that this was more than carelessness. This was somebody going out, getting drunk, barreling down the road and slamming into you, and that causes a lot of harm.

In Texas, if you’ve been hit by a drunk driver you need somebody on your side that understands the intricacies of that. At our law firm, we have criminal defense lawyers. We understand the laws of drunk driving, and we put those to your benefit. We use those to help you in your civil lawsuit.

What is Personal Injury Protection Insurance?

In Texas, most drivers have personal injury protection, PIP coverage, on their insurance policy. If you don’t have it, you really should get it. What that does is it provides immediate reimbursement to you for medical expenses and for lost time at work. There are limits to PIP insurance. The most common policy in Texas provides $2,500 worth of payments, but check with your insurance agent because you can get $5,000 – $10,000. Some companies will provide even more. What we can do for you for no charge is fill out a form, and send in your paperwork. You get all your out-of-pocket expenses immediately reimbursed and you get 70% of your wages immediately reimbursed. We’ll handle all of the administrative stuff, and none of our fees apply to those coverages.

If you’ve been in a car accident and it wasn’t your fault, but the police are saying it’s your fault, you don’t have to give in. We have the resources. We hire accident re-constructionists, and engineers. We’ll go out to the scene. We’ve handled cases where a DPS officer said the crash was 100% our client’s fault, but when we went to the scene, and when we looked at all of the evidence, we found that the other driver was 100% at fault. We looked at the skid marks, and the crash results. The engineers measured the scene, took their tests and made their determinations.

Texas insurance policies provide for uninsured or underinsured insurance coverage. You have to ask for it and you have to pay an extra premium, but it’s very cost-effective and it’s very important. In Texas, some of the latest statistics tell us that one out of every four drivers on the road doesn’t have insurance. We’re all supposed to. The law says you have to have insurance, but the fact is there are a lot of irresponsible people out there that don’t.

If you get hit by one of those people, you need uninsured motorist protection. If somebody with a minimum insurance policy slams into you, causes catastrophic injuries, and all they have is $30,000 of insurance coverage, then you’re going to need underinsured coverage. What that does is provides a second layer of coverage. For instance, if you had a $100,000 uninsured/underinsured coverage on your policy, and somebody hits you that only has $30,000 in coverage, right off the bat you’ve got $130,000 of available benefits to take care of the injuries caused in that car crash.

If you’ve been in a car accident and the other driver doesn’t have insurance, the fact of the matter is that’s not good for you. About the only thing that we can go after is their liability insurance. Your own uninsured motorist protection can help you out, In Texas, unless that other driver is Bill Gates, insurance is the only thing you can go after. If they don’t have insurance, there’s not a lot that anybody can do for you.

When people are in car accidents, the first thing they worry about is, “What can I get to compensate me?” You get compensated for a lot of different things. All your medical bills need to be compensated. All your lost wages need to be compensated. All of what people call intangible is not really intangible damages; it’s the things that make you hurt. It’s the things that keep you up at night. It’s the things that changed your body. Your life is different because somebody was careless. You’re entitled to compensation for all those aspects, and the only way is to fight hard, and to fight with experience.