When you get injured in a car accident, you could find yourself facing rather high medical bills. If the other driver was the one who was responsible, you likely want to seek compensation to cover those bills. This is one of the most common reasons that people begin looking into their legal options.
For instance, maybe you suffered a spinal cord injury and you had to spend months recovering. The bills are astronomical, more than you can ever hope to pay off. But the hospital is still charging you because they had to give you that care for a very serious injury.
It is important to get compensation for your medical bills and other costs that come directly from the injury. But you also want to remember that your real costs may go far beyond that.
Has this derailed your career?
For instance, maybe you are going to a trade school, learning to do a career that is in high demand. It’s a very physical job, which is why a lot of people don’t want to do it, and it takes a lot of technical expertise. But you’ve invested time and money in learning how to do it and you plan to start a long and lucrative career.
With your spinal cord injury, you had to drop out before the end of school and you didn’t graduate. To some degree, you feel like that doesn’t even matter, because the injury also means that you can’t do the physical career. Those options are over. Your life has been changed forever and you’re not going to be able to do the very thing that you’ve been working toward for so long.
How much money did you pay to go to school? How much did you expect to earn during your career? How long was that career going to be? If you’re young, you may have just lost 40 years of working in a high-paying industry, all because of that one car accident.
All of these costs may be much higher even than the medical bills that you have. And, even if they’re not higher, they substantially add to the amount of money that you may want to consider seeking.
As a result, if you have been injured in a car accident, you definitely need to know what you deserve and what legal steps to take.