Personal Injury in an Auto Accident
An automobile accident can be a scary event. Even if you and your family emerge unharmed, you most likely will have to deal with emotional scars and an insurance nightmare. It’s even worse if you or your family are injured during the accident. If you’ve been in an auto accident and your child was injured as a result, then you might wonder what options you have when it comes to personal injury cases. While auto accidents are not always open-and-shut cases, accidents involving a child injury can best be pursued by trying to prove negligence.
What is negligence?
Legally speaking, negligence means that a person has behaved in a manner that can be described as thoughtless or careless — especially when they were in a situation that required them to be careful. Negligence can happen when someone does something that they aren’t supposed to — like running a red light or texting while driving — or when they don’t do something that they are supposed to do — like turning on the lights at night.
Because driving a vehicle is inherently dangerous, drivers have a legal obligation to operate the vehicle carefully. When a driver does not do so, then it’s possible to prove negligence. In fact, negligence is often the way a personal injury case involving auto accident are won.
How to prove negligence
Proving a negligence case can be difficulty. To do so, you first have to establish that the situation required the accused to be reasonably careful. This is the easy part.
What gets more difficult, however, is the next part: proving that the defendant was not careful. This can be difficult because an auto accident — even one that involves a child injury — is not necessarily a result of negligence. The reason they are called “accidents” is because sometimes, even when everyone is paying attention and being careful, random events can happen.
So, if you are going to win your personal injury case, it’s imperative that you are able to prove negligence. In doing so, you have to show that the driver didn’t pay reasonable attention and diligence to a driver’s duties, including driving at a reasonable speed, obeying traffic laws and maintaining an awareness of traffic and pedestrians around.
If you have been in an auto accident, or if you, your spouse or your child has been injured as a result of an accident, then you owe it to yourself to see what legal options you have. If you would like to know more, then don’t hesitate to contact us today.
