Injuries When You’re Run Off The Road

Is it possible to be in a car accident without ever touching or impacting another car? It sounds like a riddle, but it does happen, and it’s not as unusual as you think. It’s called being run off the road, and it happens when the negligent or careless act of another driver causes you to either run off the road, or veer into an object or another (usually, innocent) car.

How Do These Accidents Happen?

Run off the road accidents happen any number of ways. For example, a car may be trying to change lanes in a lane that you are occupying. To avoid them you veer off the road, or into an adjacent lane. Or, another vehicle may run a stop sign or red light, causing you to take an evasive maneuver.

Often, when cars almost, nearly hit you, it can cause you to overcorrect—that is, to go too far in the opposite direction, in an effort to avoid the impact. In doing so, you may hit another driver, which can cause a “liability chain,” where the other driver sues you, but you know that what you did was caused by the other, now missing driver’s negligent behavior.

Missing Drivers

One thing that all accidents that are run off the road accidents have in common is the fact that the negligent driver often is not found or identified.

The negligent driver may have no idea that his or her behavior caused you to get into an accident, or, they may be fully aware, but having not been impacted or involved in the accident, they purposely drive away.

That means that proving these kinds of accidents often depends on the testimony of witnesses, or getting camera recordings which may have recorded the incident, or looking at physical markings left on the roads.

Things like tire marks or skid marks on the ground can help determine what happened, as well as your car’s electronic data recorder, which may indicate that you took a sudden, unexplained, action when driving that could only be explained by an external influence, like a careless other driver on the road.

Insurance Issues

It also means that in many cases, insurance companies may, at first, either deny your claim, or be very hesitant to compensate you, as there is no immediate proof of what the other driver did—or even that there was ever another driver involved in the accident at all.

In many of these cases, because the other driver is often never identified or found, you are left to make a claim with your own uninsured motorist (UM) insurance. Your UM will compensate you, as if the UM were the careless, now missing driver. This is just another reason why having UM coverage is a smart idea.

Injured by a phantom driver, or a driver that drove off after causing you to get into an accident? Contact our Rhode Island personal injury lawyers at Robert E. Craven & Associates at 401-453-2700 today.

Source:

crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811500