What to do if you have an accident while riding the bus

Recently, a drowsy driving accident on an express bus in Korea has become a big topic. New Jersey and New York also have high public transit users, with more than 1 million people using buses and subways every day. As a result, accidents occur naturally, and tens of thousands of bus passengers are involved in accidents every year, resulting in injury or death. In today’s column, we’re going to briefly cover how to respond when an accident occurs while riding a bus, and how an accident attorney can help injured passengers.

Once an accident has occurred, it should be reported immediately and treated as soon as possible. One of the common mistakes victims of traffic accidents make is that they bother or delay hospital treatment when there is no major trauma. And this often results in significant losses in the subsequent litigation process. Even under the laws of most states in the United States, if the victim does not seek medical treatment within a certain period of time after the accident, it may be completely barred from filing a claim for the accident after that time. In addition, since the symptoms of an internal injury caused by a car accident appear only a few weeks later, there are many cases of late regrets without treatment. In some cases, the bus company reimburses the cost of treatment regardless of whether the lawsuit is ongoing, so it is recommended to examine all body parts suspected of being injured, such as the back, shoulder, or head.

Also, unless the injury is serious and you must leave the scene immediately, it is a good idea to obtain as much evidence as possible from the scene that an attorney can refer to in the future. For example, if you receive contact information, names, addresses, etc. of other people or witnesses who were present at the scene, and the police are dispatched to the scene, it is also a good idea to obtain the name of the officer. If you can take pictures of the accident scene or the victim’s own injuries, it’s a good idea to take as many pictures as possible from different angles. This is because, rather than relying on the victim’s own memory, if there is objective evidence, compensation for damage can be obtained more smoothly.

You may be wondering whether to hire a lawyer after an accident, but I want to emphasize that the help of a competent lawyer is essential, especially in the case of a bus accident. There are several reasons for this. First of all, bus accidents are large in scale, and the buses are not even equipped with basic safety equipment such as airbags or seat belts, which often results in serious injuries. In addition, bus accidents often involve multiple victims at once, which makes handling the case very complex. In the simplest case, each state’s laws and insurance company policies determine how compensation is calculated per victim completely. In some cases, each bus passenger receives a separate compensation amount depending on the degree of injury, while in other cases, the total amount of compensation must be shared among all passengers.

It’s interesting to note that in bus accidents, there are multiple defendants who can be sued. This means that depending on the skills and strategies of the victim’s attorney, you may end up in a completely different kind of case against different defendants. For example, when an accident occurs due to the negligence of the bus driver, the simplest way is to file a lawsuit against the individual driver and receive compensation. However, furthermore, the driver’s employer or transportation company may be subject to legal liability, including agency liability. For example, when an accident occurs while a novice bus driver is instructed to drive for a long period of time, as in the case of drowsy driving in Korea, the New Jersey court accepts the victim’s claim that the transportation company was negligent in managing and supervising its employees and collects compensation. I did.

In addition to this, there were many different types of litigation in the New York and New Jersey cases alone. A case suing the vehicle manufacturer saying that the bus vehicle itself was not sturdy, a case suing the seat belt manufacturer that the seat belt did not work properly and causing serious injuries, and finally, a government agency that manages the road stating that the road itself was designed to be dangerous A savory case, etc. As there are not only two victims and defendants involved, it is essential to have a competent attorney who can accurately outline the case and strategize wisely to ensure that victims receive maximum compensation in bus accidents. If you have any other questions or want to know about accident-related laws, please feel free to contact us at pi@songlawfirm.com.

 

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