After you have been involved in a car accident, everything in your world changes. Before you know it, you are constantly going to medical appointments, dealing with insurance companies, and worrying about how long you will be out of work. However, if you use common sense and good judgment along the way, you can work with an attorney to get compensation for your injuries and other damages. To do so, here are five tips to keep in mind after your accident.
Document the Accident
One of the most important things you can do after a car accident is to document the damage to your vehicle as well as damage to the other vehicles involved in the accident. To do so, take as many pictures and even videos as you think are necessary. Once you have evidence of the damages, this will make it harder for the other driver to claim their vehicle suffered more damage than what actually occurred. This will also help you when filing a claim with your own insurance company since it will become harder for your insurer to deny your version of what happened.
Stay Away from Social Media
While you are spending time at home recovering from your injuries, take the advice given to you by your Houston car accident lawyer, or a lawyer in your area, and stay away from your social media accounts while your case is playing out in court. Unfortunately, many car accident victims don’t take this advice, and instead, go online and post comments about their accident and the other driver. To make matters worse, they often post photos of the accident scene as well. However, what you may not realize is that insurance companies usually monitor the social media activity of car accident victims in an effort to find information that can be used against them. Should you say the wrong thing or post the wrong photo online, your personal injury case could be doomed.
Don’t Skip Your Medical Appointments
Even as you begin to recover from your injuries, it will be crucial that you continue to keep all of your scheduled medical appointments. If you don’t, the other driver as well as their lawyer and the insurance company will claim you were not injured as seriously from the accident as you initially claimed. If you suffered head, neck, or back injuries in your car accident, remember that these types often take a very long time to completely heal. Thus, even if you are starting to feel much better, stopping your medical treatment too soon could have long-term consequences on your health, as well as damage your chances of winning your personal injury lawsuit.
Don’t Talk to the Insurance Company
Shortly after your accident, it is likely you will be contacted by the other driver’s insurance company. When this happens, you may feel as if you are obligated to share with them all details of your accident. However, this is not true. While the company representative will act friendly and as if they are wanting to help you, the fact is they want to do the exact opposite. Once they are able to engage you in conversation, their goal will be to get you confused enough so that you say something that is contradictory or otherwise damaging to your case. Should they be able to accomplish this, it will become much harder to win your lawsuit.
Hire an Experienced Car Accident Attorney
Since car accident cases are always quite complex, it is imperative that you not trust your case to an attorney who does not specialize in personal injury cases of this nature. By choosing to hire an experienced car accident attorney, you will have a lawyer on your side who can help you understand your rights, gather key pieces of evidence needed to bolster your case, and negotiate with insurance companies until they realize that reaching a fair and equitable out-of-court settlement is the best resolution for everyone involved.
Conclusion
Though you will have much to deal with after your car accident, keep these tips in mind from the very beginning. By doing so, you will make it much easier for your attorney to build a case on your behalf that will result in you getting the compensation you need and deserve.