You may have brought your family along with you on a weekend drive to visit some of your relatives living hundreds of miles away from your place or for your yearly summer getaway. But you all haven’t even reached your destination yet when another vehicle had suddenly crashed into yours. And before you know it, you and your family have fallen victim to a vehicle accident. As you want to get compensated for any injuries and damages that you and your family had received after getting involved in a vehicle accident, here are some things that you can do from a legal standpoint about it:
Don’t leave the scene of the vehicle accident that you and your family got involved in as doing so can be used against you even if you were the victim of it and not the culprit.
The vehicle accident that you and your family got involved in might have gotten a bit too traumatic for all of you. Thus, you may have decided to hail a passing cab and bring you and your family back home only minutes after the said incident happened so that you can all get your collective shock out of your system.
- However, even if you didn’t cause the vehicle accident to happen to you and your family at all, leaving the scene of the crash itself might cause law enforcement to assume that you partially caused it to occur. Get a free vehicle check and things like road insurance checks, previous car reg numbers and theft.
- You may even be surprised to find out that taking yourself and your family back home right after getting involved in a vehicle accident can get you penalized, and your vehicle’s insurance might become voided.
- So even if you and your family were victims of the vehicle accident that you got involved in, you should stay where you are and turn your vehicle’s hazard lights on so that other drivers passing by would know what happened to all of you.
Call emergency medical services and police to respond to the scene of the vehicle accident.
What you should then do instead of taking yourself and your family back home right after getting involved in a vehicle accident is dial the statewide number for emergency medical service as well as police who are then supposed to head over there in a matter of minutes.
- If any member of your family got stuck under debris that fell on top of them, you shouldn’t attempt to move the debris out as you can further injure them. You should wait for emergency medical services to arrive at the site of the crash instead.
- You’ll also want the police to direct incoming vehicular traffic away from the site of the crash itself as well as document the vehicle accident that happened to you and your family.
Even if you and your family were unharmed after getting involved in a vehicle accident, you should all see your family doctor.
You and your family may have turned out OK even after getting involved in a vehicle accident, but you shouldn’t assume that it would remain that way weeks, months, or even years after the said incident happened.
- Some injuries resulting from vehicle accidents don’t show up until much later.
- Thus, if you already had a family doctor before you and your family got involved in a vehicle accident, you should all see the said medical professional as soon as possible.
- But if you don’t have a family doctor yet, any physician would do for the time being.
File a wrongful death lawsuit against the driver who had caused the vehicle accident to happen in case any of the members of your family got killed as a result of the said incident and the criminal lawsuit that you may have previously filed against the driver resulted in a defeat on your end.
If you and the driver who caused the vehicle accident that you and your family got involved in hadn’t settled at all, you might have decided to file a criminal lawsuit against them, especially if anyone in your family died as a result of the said incident.
- However, after a long and costly trial, the judge who presided the hearing regarding your criminal lawsuit may have decided in favor of the at-fault driver.
- You can still bring justice to the untimely death of a member of your family though – albeit under civil law with a wrongful death lawsuit against the at-fault driver so that you can still make them liable for the pain and suffering as well as financial losses that they caused you. Click this link to learn more about wrongful death lawsuits.
According to the Association for Safe International Road Travel, more than one million people all over the world get killed in vehicle accidents each year. You don’t want yourself and your family to be part of that statistic, and yet you’ve gotten all of you caught in a vehicle accident which then resulted in all of your weekend plans with your family getting derailed. But aside from checking if every single family member who you brought along with you is still alive, you should do the above-listed things that you can do legally if you and your family are involved in a vehicle accident. When in doubt though, you should call a lawyer as soon as you can, and you may click here to read more about specific legal options you have.
Dianna Charles
