If you have been injured in a road traffic accident and the accident was not completely your own fault, you may have a claim against the negligent party and be able to recover damages for your injuries and losses.
Common kinds of road traffic accidents are the following:
1) You are stationary in a line of traffic. Another vehicle approaching from behind you does not brake in time and collides with the back of your vehicle. You suffer some form of injury, perhaps whiplash. In this scenario, it should be fairly straightforward to show that you were not to blame for the accident at all and that the driver who collided with you was at fault, as he should have kept a proper lookout and seen you in time.
2) You are waiting at the end of a side road to turn onto a main road. You pull out but as you do so a vehicle on the main road collides with the side of your vehicle. In this case, you may well be partly to blame for the accident as the other driver may argue that you did not check to see that the main road was clear before you turned onto it, but you could still have a claim if you could show a degree of fault on the part of the driver who hit you, for example if he was driving too fast and would have been able to stop if he had been travelling at a slower speed.
3) You are a pedestrian. You walk out from between two parked cars to cross the road. A driver on the road collides with you. Again, in this case you may still have a claim as it may be possible to argue that both parties were to blame. You could argue that the driver who hit you could have taken evasive action, and the driver could argue that you should have kept a better lookout and not stepped onto the road.
If you are partly to blame for an accident, there is said to be contributory negligence on your part. This does not mean that you have no claim at all. What it does mean is that if you are, for example, 50% to blame for the accident, any damages you recover for your injuries and losses will be reduced by 50%. So long as you can demonstrate that someone other than yourself was also at fault, you should still be able to recover something.
In England and Wales, all drivers must have at least third party insurance cover. This means that even if the driver who injures you does not personally have the means to compensate you for your injuries, his insurance company will have to. For those individuals who are injured by an uninsured driver or a driver who does not stop at the scene of the accident, there is an organisation known as the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (the MIB) which was set up to compensate people in these circumstances.
If you want to know more about possibly making a claim, please consult our Directory of Solicitors to find a solicitor in your area who may be able to help you. If you are a driver, your own insurers may offer to find solicitors for you, but these solicitors are unlikely to be local to you, it is unlikely that you will meet them face to face, and their main concern may be the interests of their insurer client who sends them work rather than you. You are always free to find your own solicitors who will advise and represent you directly.