When you are hurt in an accident, you might be wondering what bus accident case mistakes are that you should avoid to get the compensation you deserve.
Question:
What are common bus accident case mistakes people make that I should avoid?
Answer:
There are some common mistakes that folks who are injured in bus accidents make. One of the most common mistakes is that, if you’re a passenger on the bus that ends up in an accident, you don’t immediately tell the driver that you are injured. You get off the bus and you go about your way. Three days later, you’ve got an ache in your neck or you’re stiff or you notice some type of injury to your body. Then all of a sudden, you’re injured, and you are left with those three days that you didn’t say anything where the insurance company is going to try to say, well, we don’t know if you got that from playing basketball. We don’t know if you got that from throwing cake on your baby on their birthday party. They’ll come up with all kinds of ridiculous marginal things to try to mitigate the fact that you were injured on the bus. If you’re a passenger on a bus, it’s dutiful for you to say right up front, “Hey, Mr. bus driver, I was injured on this bus.” It doesn’t matter if it was just a rear end or a fender bender— if you’re injured, you’re injured. Let the bus driver know immediately.
Then there are other mistakes that folks make related to bus injury. Some of them they make in other cases. They go out, as soon as they have the bus injury, they go off the bus to the park to go play basketball, bus gets in an accident on the way, they get off the bus, and guess what they do? Go on to the park and play basketball. That’s not the smartest thing to do if you are going to claim that you were injured by this. It would behoove you, if you feel like you’ve been injured in a bus accident, stop for a minute. Think about the injury. Make sure you go to the hospital immediately. If you need to be transported, great, be transported. Don’t wait four or five days to go to the hospital. Go get treated immediately so that it shows that you sought out treatment immediately because all of these things will come up.
There are things that the insurance company and the adverse party will use against you to work against your claim to minimize the amount of damage, to sprinkle doubt over the fact of whether you were actually injured or not. Don’t post silly things about it on Facebook. “Hey, I got in a bus accident. Thank God, though, I didn’t die.” Be careful with all of that stuff because they’ll go back and research your Facebook page, subpoena all of that stuff and see on there where you said, yeah, you were grateful that you were alive. Then you say, “But I’m not hurt.” Then they’re going to say, “Well, why are you saying you’re not hurt here but now you are hurt ten days later?” You have to be careful. These folks will use everything that they can against you to not pay you what you’re worth.
Call a lawyer immediately. Call our office. Whether after hours, on the weekend, it doesn’t matter. Call us. We’ll walk you through the process of what you need to do if you’ve been involved in a bus injury accident as a passenger, as a driver, or as a party in another vehicle.
Were you or a loved one badly injured in a crash with or on public transportation and have questions about common bus accident case mistakes? Contact experienced Phoenix Bus Accident Attorneys at Smith & Green today for a legal consultation.
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