Pedestrians. They struggle with numerous factors. There is the wind. There is the rain. There are cars that honk horns and do not obey common sense and common traffic laws. Generally, pedestrians are allowed to cross on crosswalks with the right of way. Cars are not supposed to hit them. But they do.
There are many car accidents in the United States. There are some statistics surrounding car accidents that are worth noting in this article. They are in the following section.
- 3 million people are injured every year in car accidents on U.S. roads.
- There are approximately 6 million car accidents in the U.S. each year.
- Auto and motorcycle accidents account for more than 35% of new spinal cord injuries each year.
- In the U.S. in 2015, over 1,000 bicyclists died and there were about 467,000 bicycle-related injuries.
- In 2015, 5,376 pedestrians were killed and an estimated 70,000 were injured in traffic crashes in the United States.
Car accidents happen. They happen when a driver isn’t paying attention. They happen when a driver struggles to control his or her vehicle. Sometimes, a part breaks down, causing the car to swerve into the next lane. Brakes fail and a person can’t brake quick enough to avoid a rear end collision.
But these are accidents that are car to car, vehicle to vehicle, machine to machine. Unfortunately, in America, there are other forms of accidents that involve a vehicle but do not involve another vehicle. There are single car accidents, when a car runs out of control and hits a building. Then there are pedestrians.
According to that one statistic above, over 5,000 pedestrians were killed in 2015 and thousands more injured in traffic crashes. Sometimes this happens when a crash leaks onto the sidewalk. Sometimes this happens when a car runs off the road onto the sidewalk. Whatever the reason, pedestrians are injured and sometimes killed.
A pedestrian faces a great danger in these situations. They have no shield to protect them. They are not in another vehicle. They are on their own, without protection, when a huge machine driving at a certain mile per hour hits them. This causes injuries. This causes broken bones. There may be a concussion. There may be a trip to the hospital.
A pedestrian who goes to the hospital faces a barrage of tests. They will have MRIs, CAT scans, x-rays, anything to determine if they are healthy, or perhaps to determine whether they have life-threatening injuries or not. A pedestrian will rack up thousands of dollars in medical bills, and that’s if they have insurance.
The injury, the bills, the possible physical therapy that a pedestrian all come back to one simple premise: They, most likely, were not at fault. Another person hit them with a vehicle, and they incurred all these expenses and time lost. Perhaps they were emotionally scarred by the event. Perhaps they need a therapist.
This all amounts to money. And that’s when it’s time to see a lawyer.
A pedestrian accident attorney is one who represents pedestrians in court cases where they are suing another person. A pedestrian accident attorney may have sought out the person injured or the person sought out them. A pedestrian accident attorney could be male or could be female, but they should be experienced.
A pedestrian accident attorney should know the ropes, the court system, the other lawyers, and the case at hand. There are other names for them as well, as they typically represent different people. There is the car crash attorney, the car wreck attorney, the injury attorney, the injury lawyer, the personal injury attorney.
A pedestrian accident attorney can go by many names. But the result is the same: They fight for their client to recoup financial damage for an accident that wasn’t their fault. This is the point of the court case. This is the point of winning. A pedestrian accident attorney will try their best to win the battle for their client.
At all costs.
A pedestrian who is involved in an accident, who believes they were not at fault, who obeyed all the right laws and did not influence the accident in any way, has a right to compensation for injuries. These include medical bills, bill for therapy for emotional trauma, and any other kind of damage.