Reader question:
What do you do if you lose someone in a car accident?
Javier
It’s a legitimate question, but one I wish people didn’t have to ask.
Getting in a car accident is hard enough, but when someone dies as a result, especially when it’s somebody on your end, the insanity of the situation just grows exponentially. And so it’s good, then, to know what to do if you should be confronted by this situation. You may think that it will never happen to you, but the facts state that car accident related deaths are one of the leading causes of death in the United States. It is very likely that you will get into a car accident sometime in your life. And it is also likely that you will lose someone to a car accident. But when it is someone who was in the car while you were driving, or who was driving your car when they died, it adds a whole new layer of responsibility.
However, even if the person lost was the driver, you can still do something. In order to deal with this terrible situation, you will want to hire either a lawyer who specializes in car accidents or a wrongful death lawyer. Once you have a lawyer, you can file a wrongful death lawsuit. This is usually done by the dead person’s family. In order for a death to be considered wrongful, it needs to be the result of the other’s driver lack of attention, to his bad driving or failure to follow safety procedures. If another driver drives recklessly and causes someone’s death, it is his responsibility to pay the survivors.
To some it may seem distasteful to be fighting over money when someone you care about is died, but death is enough to put many families deep into debt. Not only, in many cases, are you losing a source of income and bringing all sorts of emotional problems on yourself, but the cost of the funeral and burial can put many families deep in debt. Just the cost of the casket alone is more than many make in a month. Because of that, it is important to get what is deserved in a situation like this, in order to offset at least the part of the disaster that you have control over.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.