With the increasing number of ridesharing services popping up out there, like Uber and Lyft, it should come as no surprise that there is now a need for people to sometimes contact a Los Angeles ridesharing accident lawyer like West Coast Trial Lawyers when they’ve become injured in a ridesharing accident. While ridesharing services originated in larger cities, their popularity and success has made it so that they have even begun to spread to more rural parts of the country. The concept behind them makes plenty of sense, so it’s no wonder they’ve been so successful. They allow people who don’t drive or don’t have driver’s licenses to get where they’re going without having to take a traditional taxi cab services. They also allow people who simply don’t want to take their car out or who are trying to save money on gas to do so by sharing a ride with someone else.
What Happens If An Accident Occurs?
However, with so many ridesharing vehicles on the road nowadays, there are bound to be accidents, which raises the question of what happens when you’re the passenger and you become injured when using a ridesharing service? While this was once uncharted territory, a Los Angeles ridesharing accident lawyer can quickly clear up any questions you may have about this scenario for you.
Unlike a traditional auto accident where the court must determine which driver was a fault, if you are injured as a passenger of a ridesharing service, it doesn’t necessarily matter whether the person driving the ridesharing vehicle was at fault or not. As any Lyft accident lawyer or Uber accident lawyer will likely tell you, companies like Lyft and Uber have an automatic $1 million insurance coverage policy that kicks in when a passenger is injured in one of their ridesharing vehicles. There are a few caveats to this, however.
How to Qualify for Ridesharing Insurance Coverage
In order for Lyft or Uber’s insurance coverage to kick in when you were injured in an auto accident while using their services, you must have been in the vehicle when the accident occurred and in transit to your destination. Usually, the ridesharing app will be running on your phone as well as that of your driver, proving to the ridesharing company that you were indeed using their service when the accident occurred. In situations such as these, it doesn’t necessarily matter if the driver was at fault for the accident or not. All that matters is that you were using the ridesharing service at the time of the accident, which makes the ridesharing company liable for your injuries.
What Can You Be Compensated For?
When you’ve been injured in a ridesharing accident, you can get compensated for the injuries that you wouldn’t have had otherwise had it not been for the accident your ridesharing driver was involved in. If you have any life-long injuries that debilitate you and keep you from ever working again, you could be compensated for your future decrease in the quality of your life and your inability to work. Of course, you’ll also be eligible to seek reimbursement for any immediate and future medical bills that you incur and are projected to incur as a result of your injuries. If you had to miss time off of work due to your injuries, you could be compensated for that as well. In some cases, you could even be awarded monies for emotional and psychological trauma as well as punitive damages to help you deal with the aftermath of the accident.
Seeking Compensation
The first thing that you’ll want to do after being involved in any kind of auto accident is to seek medical attention. Even if you don’t think you’re injured, you should be checked out by a medical professional so that there will be documentation later on that can be used as evidence in your claim. A lot of times people who have been involved in an auto accident mistakenly believe that they are fine when they are actually injured but don’t realize it due to the adrenaline and shock coursing through their systems.
Of course, after seeking medical attention, the next thing that you should do is contact a Lyft accident lawyer or an Uber accident lawyer, depending upon which ridesharing service you were using. T Lawyers who specialize in personal injury claims dealing with ridesharing services are experienced with handling cases such as yours. Law firms such as West Coast Trial Lawyers have attorneys who can help out. They likewise have probably built up the relationships with the appropriate courts and insurance companies to be able to negotiate you the most favorable settlement possible for your injuries.
What if You Can’t Afford an Attorney?
Many people don’t seek compensation when they’ve been injured in a ridesharing accident because they don’t think they can afford an attorney. The good thing about a personal injury attorney, however, is that most of them don’t require any sort of upfront payment. They know that you’re already strapped for cash. They know you’ve just been injured and that your finances have probably taken a huge hit due to unforeseen medical expenses. Therefore, they don’t expect you to pay them upfront for their services.
Rather, most personal injury attorneys work on a contingency basis, which basically means that they don’t get paid unless you do. This provides you even greater security as a client because you can be assured that your attorney will be working as hard as he or she can to secure you the best claim possible because the more money you get, the more money he or she will get. Most personal injury attorneys receive compensation in the form of a percentage of the settlement that you receive. Most of them receive somewhere in the vicinity of 30 percent of your settlement, which is honestly not too bad considering that you’ll have money too, you don’t have to worry about paying your lawyer upfront and you can have the peace of mind that your lawyer is working as hard as he or she can to handle your case.
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