Every year, tens of thousands of California and Los Angeles vehicle drivers are involved in car accidents that result in injury to themselves or others. A high percentage of these accidents result in personal injury.
Car accidents in Los Angeles and Orange County are the most common types of personal injury cases. Cases involving personal injuries resulting from accidents are litigated under the principles of negligence, unless the state has decided to eliminate fault as an issue. The injured plaintiff must prove that someone was negligent, that the negligence caused the accident, and that the accident caused the plaintiff’s injuries. In some cases, his intuition may tell him that the other driver, bicyclist, or pedestrian acted recklessly, but not the rules they violated.
Types of Injuries in Car Accidents
Side Impact Injuries
A side impact injury occurs when another vehicle is thrown at you from the side. It is the deadliest form of auto accidents that kill 10,000 people a year. In a frontal collision, it is protected by several steel feet, engine and bumpers. A side impact accident leaves only a few inches of door and window glass between you and the other vehicle.
Every vehicle on the road is required to pass side impact standards implemented by the government. Many people feel that these standards are outdated. Government tests have been criticized for not testing the standards on all vehicles. He uses a dummy that represents an average-sized man with no head injuries, and his test only looks at what happens when vehicles of similar size collide.
passenger injuries
If you were a passenger in a vehicle involved in an accident and sustained injuries as a result, you are entitled to compensation for your injuries. As a passenger, you have a claim against both the driver of the vehicle you were riding in and the drivers of any other vehicle (or any other negligent party) involved in the collision. As a passenger, you generally cannot be held at fault or partially at fault for causing an accident unless you did something to cause the accident, such as distracting the driver.
Paraplegia
Paraplegia is a type of paralysis that affects both the legs and the torso. People affected by paraplegia have no movement in their legs and often limited or no movement in their torso. Paraplegia results from spinal cord injury. Many accident victims are paraplegics as a result of unsafe or defective vehicles.
Paraplegia disrupts sensory messages to the brain, so the affected person cannot “feel” the affected parts of their body and are generally insensitive to pain or heat. As a result, a victim’s health and safety are in jeopardy due to this inability to feel pain. Some victims have damaged nerves that cause phantom pain and sensations of heat. Paraplegia significantly affects the patient’s quality of life by affecting sexual drive, digestive abilities, bladder control and can even lead to reduced life expectancy.
Car accidents have often caused the most trauma resulting in paraplegia. Vehicles like SUVs are prone to rollover and do not have a proper roof structure. As a result, the ceiling crushes and collapses causing spinal cord injuries. Fortunately, there are steps to take to reduce such injuries, including paraplegia. There are steps automakers must take to ensure vehicles are safe and have the best airbags, seatbelts to prevent ejection in a crash, solid vehicle design, and roof stability.
spinal cord injuries
Although the spinal cord is only 18 inches long and made up of tiny, delicate nerve cells, a spinal cord injury (SCI) can be a devastating, traumatic injury resulting in a lifetime of pain, suffering, and enormous medical bills. .
An SCI typically involves some type of trauma to the nerve cells that make up the spinal cord. As the spinal cord carries messages from the brain to various parts of the body to control functions such as movement, breathing, speech, and other critical bodily functions, a spinal cord injury disrupts this communication, leading to impairment of the sensory sensitivity of the body. Involuntary motor and reflex functions. Depending on the nature and extent of the SCI, these disruptions can lead to two c
Devastating conditions: paraplegia (paralysis of the lower parts of the body) or quadriplegia (paralysis of the upper and lower parts of the body).
The main causes of SCI are car accidents, acts of violence, sports-related injuries, injuries at work, and other incidents that cause injury or compression to nerve cells in the spinal cord. Approximately 250,000 Americans currently suffer from some type of SCI, and there are approximately 11,000 new cases each year.
The costs associated with ICS can be staggering. More than half of all spinal cord injuries result in quadriplegia, resulting in an average hospital stay of 95 days and approximately $140,000 in medical expenses. For people who have SCI at age 25, the average lifetime medical costs for quadriplegia are $1.35 million. And this figure does not take into account the physical and emotional suffering of the victims, the loss of wages and other income, and the financial and emotional burdens that SCI places on the victims’ caregivers, who most often are not close relatives of the victim. victim.
Brain injuries
Most of the time, brain injuries are caused by serious vehicle accidents, severe falls, bus or train accidents, among other serious accidents. Every 15 seconds someone suffers a brain injury. The impact of a brain injury on someone’s life can be devastating, but an experienced brain injury attorney can help lessen the stress that the brain injury has caused by recovering the damages to which the injured patient is entitled. cerebral. Of all the injuries an individual can sustain, injuries to the brain are among the most frightening and the most deadly.
There are several different types of traumatic injuries that can damage the brain. A skull fracture occurs when the skull bone cracks or breaks. A depressed skull fracture occurs when parts of the broken skull press on brain tissue. This can cause bruising of the brain tissue, known as a contusion. Contusion may also occur in response to tremor of the brain within the confines of the skull. Damage to a major blood vessel inside the head can cause a bruise or heavy bleeding in or around the brain.
traumatic brain injury
A traumatic brain injury, commonly known as a TBI, is sudden physical damage to the brain. The damage can be caused by the head striking an object with force, such as hitting the wheel, window, or dashboard of a car (closed head injury), or by something passing through the skull and puncturing the brain, such as a bullet or knife (penetrating head injury). A closed head injury can also be experienced when the brain is jerked or twisted severely, such as whiplash.
The most common symptoms among adults are:
Low-grade headaches or neck pain that won’t go away
Having more trouble than usual with mental tasks (for example, remembering, concentrating, making decisions)
Slowness in thinking, speaking, acting, or reading
Get lost or confused easily
Feeling tired all the time, without energy or motivation.
Changes in sleep patterns (sleeping a lot more or having trouble sleeping)
Feeling dizzy or dizzy, losing your balance
Increased sensitivity to sounds, light, or distractions
Blurred vision, eyes that tire easily
Loss of sense of smell or taste
Ringing in the ears
Mood swings (for example, feeling sad or angry for no reason)
Among children, the symptoms are:
listlessness or tiredness
Irritability
Changes in eating or sleeping patterns
Changes in the way the child plays
Changes in school performance
Lack of interest in favorite toys or activities
Loss of new skills, such as potty training
Loss of balance or unsteady gait
Brain injuries can result from a number of different causes, with the leading causes being motor vehicle accidents, slip and falls, sports-related strokes, anoxia, tumors, viral infections, degenerative diseases, drowning, and other conditions that do not involve disease or external forces. Approximately 1 million Americans are treated and released from hospital emergency rooms each year as a result of TBI, and an estimated 5.3 million Americans are living with some form of TBI-related disability today.
I was a passenger involved in a car accident and sustained injuries, can I recover for personal injury damages?
If you have suffered a personal injury, you may be entitled to compensation for your injuries. In all car accident cases, it is essential that steps be taken immediately to preserve evidence, investigate the accident in question, and allow any injuries to be fully evaluated by doctors or other expert witnesses. It is important that your attorney understand the possibility of these injuries and not overlook them, as a poorly timed or poorly crafted settlement can leave you liable for thousands of dollars in medical bills. Therefore, it is important to choose an experienced personal injury attorney to file a claim to recover for your injuries.