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Living With A Permanent Injury

A traffic accident can be a life-changing event, even when it’s not a life-ending event.

Most accidents are not terribly remarkable beyond what they do to your insurance premiums. A bent fender here, a dented car door there. No one’s hurt, no one’s put out, you simply trade information with any other drivers involved and move on with your life.

Sometimes, however, you find yourself involved in something a little more serious. Perhaps someone decided to make a left turn as you sped up to beat a yellow light, or maybe your tire simply exploded one day as you drove down the highway and your truck flipped as soon as it hit the ditch along the side of the road. Serious traffic accidents can happen to anyone, and while the police and the insurance companies may care a great deal about who is at fault, identifying the responsible party doesn’t change the number of people who are injured or killed in a given incident.

The Cost Of Living



Under Florida law, anyone who operates a licensed motor vehicle in the state must purchase both traditional liability car insurance which covers damages done to other vehicles in an accident and also personal injury protection or “no fault” insurance which covers your own medical bills and some lost income regardless of who is at fault in an accident. It even applies regardless of whether you were in a vehicle when the accident happened.

The minimum policy amount for PIP insurance is $10,000, but a recent change in the law has made it such that you cannot access more than $2,500 unless a doctor certifies that you have an emergency medical condition. This change is meant to fight insurance fraud, but in the process it’s made it much harder for honest citizens to access three-quarters of their own insurance policies. The full amount is supposed to be available both for life-threatening and potentially crippling medical situations, but often times there are gray areas where symptoms don’t appear until days later, especially when brain injuries are involved.

Even if you do get access to the full $10,000, however, you may discover that it runs out surprisingly fast thanks to the cost of staying in a hospital for any length of time, and if you require any sort of major surgery it may eat up your claim in one bite – and that’s assuming the insurance company lets you access the full amount.

The Long Recovery



If you get injured on the job, workers’ compensation will provide you with a number of benefits and assistance with finding a new job if you find yourself unable to perform your old one. However, if you get injured at home, on vacation, or on the road, all you can expect is what your PIP and health insurance can provide to cover your medical bills. It’s possible to get funds from Social Security, but you need to be almost completely unable to work to qualify for their disability program.

If you wind up with a moderate but permanent disability, such as losing 80 percent mobility in one hand, you may simply fall through the cracks of both the federal and private programs. If you get a brain injury, it may take months or years for the worst symptoms to show up, plus with as little as the medical community currently knows about traumatic brain injuries you may have to wait even longer than that to get an accurate diagnosis.

If you find yourself all alone against the system, you may do well to hire a personal injury lawyer to stand in your corner. Insurance companies grow wary around reputable lawyers with the resources and the will to bring a case all the way to court, and so if you retain such a person you may discover that they will offer you a better settlement in less time than it would have taken otherwise in order to get rid of you. Living with a permanent disability is hard news for anyone to take, but with a personal injury lawyer on your side, not all of the news has to be bad.