What Kind of Compensation Can You Expect After a Car Crash?
After being involved in a car accident that was not your fault, you may be entitled to compensation.
What kind of compensation can you expect? There are various kinds of settlement offers and amounts, and it depends on your specific accident case.
In this blog, we take a closer look at compensation within car accident cases and how a chiropractor can help increase your settlement amount.
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When you are the victim of a car accident, our doctors understand you need treatment without the stress and concern of having to pay for your costly medical bills.
If a negligent driver caused your crash, they should be responsible for all of your accident-related expenses.
Related post: My Back was Injured in a Car Accident, What Should I Do?
What Is Included In A Car Accident Settlement?
When you are injured in a car accident where the other party is at fault, you are entitled to receive compensation for damages that you’ve suffered. There are two main categories of damages: economic and non-economic.
Economic damage is everything that essentially took money out of your pocket, from paying an emergency room bill to losing days of work for medical treatment or recuperation.
Non-economic damages cover the emotional side of an accident and injuries, including pain and suffering, disability, disfigurement, etc.
Sometimes these non-economic losses like pain and suffering can be overwhelming and catastrophic after a car accident, and have a major influence on your car accident settlement.
So, to re-cap, economic damages can include costs for:
- Medical expenses like bills currently due or already paid, including ambulances, emergency departments, doctor’s appointments, surgery, hospitalization, therapy, and medication
- Damage to your vehicle or other property
- Future medical bills you are expected to get as a result of the injuries
- Wages lost from work due to the injury
- Future wages lost from work, if you have to cut down on your time at work or can no longer work due to the injuries
Non-economic damages often include the costs of:
- Pain and suffering
- Disfigurement
- Disability
- Loss of consortium (physical affection from a spouse or partner)
What Factors Influence the Amount of Monetary Compensation You Receive in Your Settlement?
There can be many factors that affect your final settlement offer amount from your accident claim.
The main factors you can expect a personal injury attorney and an insurance adjuster will take into consideration are the financial costs of:
- Doctor Visits
- Physical Therapy Visits
- Medical Treatments
- Prescription Medicine
- Lost Wages
- Pain and Suffering
- Permanent Disfigurement or Disability
- Emotional Damage
- Property Damage
- Other Documented Expenses
What Is The Average Car Accident Settlement?
Average personal injury settlement amounts range greatly. The value in your case depends on a number of factors that are specific to your case, including property damage, medicals bills, lost wages, and more.
On the low end, an injury case might settle for only a few thousand dollars. But many personal injury cases settle for much more.
An average personal injury settlement amount is anywhere between $3,000 and $75,000.
Be careful when using an average personal injury settlement calculator to give you an idea of what you may stand to collect. These numbers really depend on your individual case and are hard to predict without a professional car accident lawyer.
Of course, most cases fall in between the very high and very low end of average settlements.
There are also outliers – you’ve probably heard about people getting settlements that are millions of dollars. Some cases settle for that much, but they usually involve very unique circumstances with either punitive damages or other extraordinary damages.
An experienced injury lawyer can help you determine where your case falls on the spectrum of typical personal injury settlements.
How Will Your Settlement Offer Be Calculated?
Documented expenses, like property damage and medical bills, are pretty straight forward to calculate. However, putting a price on pain, suffering, and emotional damage is near impossible.
Therefore, there are two systems that are often used by insurance adjusters and personal injury attorneys to calculate the deserved monetary compensation.
These two systems used to calculate damages are a pain multiplier system and a per diem system.
Per Diem System: If this system is being used, a value will be determined for each day a victim suffered. This determined value will then be multiplied by the total number of days the victim suffered.
Pain Multiplier System: When this system is used, the amount of money from medical bills, lost wages, and other documented expenses are multiplied by a number between 1.5 and 5. This number is determined based upon the amount of suffering the victim underwent.
One last factor taken into consideration by the insurance adjusters is the insured’s policy value.
In many cases, the liability coverage has a maximum amount of money that the insurance company will be responsible for paying out when an accident occurs.
This means, no matter the total documented costs or circumstances of the accident, the insurance company is only responsible for paying that maximum amount and will never have to pay out more.
How Do Chiropractors Help After a Car Accident?
Beyond broken bones and stitches, there are many other ailments drivers can experience after a car accident. For this reason, your car accident lawyer may recommend that you see a chiropractor immediately afterward.
By seeing a chiropractor after a car crash, you can find out how severe any injuries are and find out how to care for them.
Chiropractic treatment addresses bones, tissues, muscles, ligaments, and other facets of whole-body recovery and wellness.
Post car accident chiropractic care can reduce pain and muscular tension, help you heal, and prevent inflammation and scarring.
Of course, if you have broken bones or other serious wounds, you should seek emergency medical care as soon as possible. Often, an ambulance will offer to take you to the nearest hospital for an assessment.
Even if you visit the emergency room after a collision, you can still seek chiropractic treatment for your injuries later.
While it’s ideal to see a chiropractor as promptly as possible after the car accident, you can still reap the benefits of comprehensive chiropractic care days, weeks, or months after the collision.
Keep in mind, however, that there is a statute of limitations on vehicle accidents and settlements.
Therefore, it’s never a good idea to skip medical care if you experience a collision—even if you feel fine immediately afterward. Some ailments take time to affect your daily life, and by the time you realize the impact they have, it might be too late to take legal action.
Car Accident Injuries A Chiropractor Can Treat
Car accidents can cause a plethora of injuries.
These injuries range from minor bumps and scratches to broken bones and debilitating nerve or muscle damage.
Even a seemingly minor car accident, like a fender bender, can cause dangerous injuries. It can leave you with pain that makes it difficult to move for months or even years after the car accident.
While a visit to an emergency room is sometimes necessary after a car wreck, not all injuries can be treated in the hospital. Chronic pain requires more specialized treatment. That’s where a chiropractor comes in.
A few injuries your chiropractor can treat are:
- Whiplash
- Neck & Shoulder Pain
- Chest Pain
- Back Pain
- Cuts & Scrapes
- Head Injuries & Concussions
- Bruised or Dislocated Ribs
- Herniated Discs
Who Pays for Chiropractic Care After an Accident?
Many people have no idea if their insurance company covers chiropractic care.
In most cases, either the patient or the insurance company will pay for chiropractic care after a crash.
In order to have chiropractic expenses covered by an insurance company, drivers will need to prove that the chiropractic care was necessary after their car wreck.
Insurance companies realize that necessary medical care is needed for a full recovery after car accidents, but proving that chiropractic care is essential for recovery can often depend on documenting everything related to the treatments.
Critical documentation can include:
- Initial report of symptoms
- Records of all chiropractic treatments
- Records of all expenses related to chiropractic treatments
Injured drivers may require chiropractic treatment before and after a settlement with the insurance company is reached, which can make determining full and fair compensation a challenge and can result in injured drivers accumulating significant medical expenses.
How Can Your Chiropractic Doctor Help Increase Your Settlement Amount?
A doctor, or chiropractor, can play a huge role in determining your settlement outcome.
That is why it is crucial to see a doctor immediately after a car accident, not just for your injuries, but for your injury claim.
This is not just for your health and well-being, but for the benefit of your injury accident claim and car accident settlement.
When you see a chiropractic doctor following your accident, they can quickly diagnose your injuries and pain symptoms, and provide a continuous treatment plan to help return you to optimal health.
It is your doctor's responsibility to document all of your pain symptoms in detail, provide records of your injuries, pain, suffering, and treatment plans.
This helps to build your accident claim when you start the settlement process. Lapses in seeking treatment can affect the settlement offer and your accident case.
Your chiropractor can also help refer you to a reputable personal injury law firm that can represent your accident claim. That takes another aspect off your plate allowing you to focus on healing your injuries.
They can help total the amount of pain and suffering your injuries caused you, in addition to the total cost of your treatment and medical bills.
Call Georgia's Best Accident Injury Chiropractor Today If You Were Hurt In an Accident!
Car accidents take everyone by surprise, especially if they were due to the negligence of another driver.
The first thing you need to do after a car wreck is take care of your health, but then you need to think about your settlement.
The chiropractic doctors at Arrowhead Clinic specialize in helping accident victims return to full health and receive the compensation they deserve in their settlement.
The Arrowhead Clinics will work closely with insurance companies and injury lawyers to make sure you get every dollar you're owed after a car crash.
Call the professionals today if you want to obtain the money you deserve for your accident injuries.
