Chattanooga accidents involving bad weather often occur due to the mountainous driving area. It has a lot of curvy roads, small roads, steep roads, and unpredictable weather. The weather changes very quickly; it can go from sunshine to rain in a short period of time and it can go from rain to freezing rain, sleet, and snow in a short period of time. With steep and narrow roads, slick roads are that much more dangerous. A lot of collisions occur as the result of people driving on icy or slick roads.
It is important to know what is going on with the weather, especially when it is getting cold or raining hard. Other things a person should be doing is always be looking at the roads and noting how the brakes work. If the person is worried about the temperature dropping and wetness on the road, they should be able to tell when the road starts to change texture and to adjust driving accordingly.
The individual should contact a distinguished car accident lawyer to talk about how to handle the claim and the role of liability on the crash. Attorneys have seen bad weather cases be the fault of a property owner’s fault or the government’s fault if something is wrong with the road or with the water drainage.
Initial Steps Following an Accident
Initial steps a person should take are always to notify the authorities when a collision occurs and to seek medical attention. If a person has any injuries at all, the person should seek medical attention from a doctor, hospital, or other medical provider. Injured parties should speak with an experienced attorney following their accident. There can be a lot of unknowns that require specific expertise or investigation to figure out.
One of the things that lawyers look for are weather records. There are national weather records that record temperature and precipitation. They may also have to talk to witnesses and people who were at the scene to hear exactly what they saw. They especially want to find photographs or other documentary evidence that recorded the scene of the collision at the time of the collision and before the weather changed.
Impact of Weather On the Assignment of Fault
Dangerous weather can make a case much more difficult to prove. If a person is driving on a slick road and slides into the back of another person, that slick road can provide a defense. Lawyers working on Chattanooga accidents involving bad weather can always argue that the person should have been going slower or that the person should not have been on the road at all because the road was too slick, but if their client was also on the road, sometimes those arguments do not work very well. If the road gets slick unexpectedly, the person does not have an opportunity to avoid the danger, and the person did not do something wrong that increased the danger, then the fact that the road was icy or slick may prevent them from having to pay anything at all.
How to Handle One-Vehicle Collisions
The way lawyers proceed in single-car crashes involving slick roads is to see if it was somebody else’s fault that the road was too slick. Perhaps the road should have been treated, the water should have been channeled away from the road, or the road did not handle the water correctly. All these factors can increase the danger of wet and icy roads. If something like that occurs, a person can still have a case even with a single-vehicle crash. Absent that, oftentimes, there is nothing lawyers can do.
The main thing that people need to do in dangerous weather is to drive cautiously and to drive as little as possible. A person needs to minimize time on the road. A person needs to increase the distance between them and other cars, go slower around curves and down hills, and be constantly aware of the surroundings and the dangers that may be coming their way.
The first thing a lawyer can do after Chattanooga accidents involving bad weather is investigate the circumstances of a collision and identify all potential people who may be at fault for the collision. Attorneys can give advice and guidance on how to deal with the insurance claims, the property damage, and their medical treatment. They can try to ensure that they get the medical attention that they need, which is sometimes difficult to do after a car wreck.
Recoverable Damages to Seek in Dangerous Weather Accidents
Chattanooga accidents involving bad weather can give rise to all the types of damages that arise in other cases. A person may be entitled to have their property damage paid for, to have their medical bills paid for, and to have their lost wages replaced. They can also recover lost earning capacity, future lost wages, and future lost earning capacity. They can also recover mental damages, like pain and suffering, mental anguish, worry, fear, and the other things that come with physical injuries.