A rental car is any car that a person pays a fee to use for a temporary amount of time, usually days or weeks. Rental for a period of years is called a car lease. For more information on the guidelines and expectations surrounding borrowed cars, speak with a skilled car accident attorney. Chattanooga rental car accident lawyers can help you navigate the steps to take following collisions depending on how long you had the vehicle in your possession.
Individuals with a short-term rental are only using somebody else’s car for a brief period of time and is not required to maintain the car or keep the car working properly. That responsibility is on the company that owns and rents out the car. With a longer term rental, or lease, that burden shifts to the person who is the lessee of the car to be responsible for maintaining the car and taking care of the car even though, from a legal perspective, they do not technically own it.
Common Rental Car Injuries
With rental car accident injuries, they are really the same injuries in a typical car accident. The only difference is more head-on collisions by people turning the wrong way at intersections and going down wrong way streets because they are from out-of-town. These types of accidents cause more head injuries, knee and wrist injuries, and broken arm injuries.
Insurance Coverage for Rental Cars
Insurance coverage does not differ much between a typical car accident injury and a rental car accident injury. The biggest difference is that often times there are more than one insurance company involved. In general, when a person rents a car on a short-term rental, they either buy insurance at the time of the rental through the rental car company or their personal insurance will cover any recovery.
If a person has personal insurance that covers rental cars, then they probably will not buy the coverage offered by the rental companies. If they do not have that type of insurance, then they need to add the insurance coverage to the car rental fee.
In the event of an accident, determining who the proper insurance company is, their personal coverage and/or coverage purchased through the rental agency, can make the insurance part of a car accident injury a little bit more complicated in a short-term rental situation. Individuals should speak with a Chattanooga rental car accident lawyer as soon as possible.
Fact Patterns Surrounding Accidents with Borrowed Cars
The fact patterns that often involve rental cars getting into accidents are usually people who are confused about local traffic signs, how the roadways work, merge lanes, and things like that. Out-of-town people make mistakes because they are unfamiliar with an area.
They might turn down on a one-way street going the wrong way or something of that nature; they might go through a stop sign not having seen it because they are lost. Those are the type of things seen with rentals. Chattanooga rental car accident lawyers have seen that often times a defendant from out-of-town tries to file a lawsuit, but the person they are trying to sue may live several states away, and that can complicate things as well.
