While all motorists are expected to watch out for people walking near their cars and give pedestrians a safe amount of space, anyone who has ever crossed a busy roadway knows all too well how often drivers fail to fulfill this basic “duty of care.” When you are struck and injured by a negligent driver, you may unfortunately also soon learn how challenging it can be to actually enforce that duty of care and demand civil restitution for the harm you should never have sustained.
In a situation like this, assistance from an experienced personal injury attorney can be essential to getting a favorable case result. With a dedicated Gilbert pedestrian accident lawyer, you will have far better chances of establishing civil liability for your injuries and getting the compensation you deserve for your damages than you would ever likely have by filing suit on your own.
Who Is Legally at Fault for a Pedestrian Collision?
It hardly needs to be said that unprotected pedestrians involved in traffic accidents are at much greater risk of suffering serious injuries from the collision compared to anyone inside the motor vehicle which ran into them. However, this does not mean civil courts will assume that a driver who strikes a pedestrian is 100 percent to blame for the incident. Instead, the injured pedestrian will still have the burden of proving through a “preponderance of evidence” that their accident and subsequent injuries stemmed directly from a specific irresponsible and/or illegal act by the “defendant” driver named in their claim.
Furthermore, injured pedestrians should be prepared to actively contest allegations made by the driver who struck them that they—the injured pedestrian—were at fault for their own injuries because of their own negligent behavior. As a Gilbert pedestrian crash attorney could further explain, a person found partially to blame for their own accident in this way may have a percentage of “comparative fault” assigned to them by a court and then have their final damage reduced in proportion to that percentage.
Getting Paid Fairly Within Filing Deadlines
Another legal obstacle worth knowing about in advance is the “statute of limitations” for personal injury claims in Arizona. According to Arizona Revised Statutes §12-542, the vast majority of people who get hurt through another person’s misconduct have just two years at most after initially sustaining harm to file suit over their ensuing losses, even if those losses are expected to continue negatively affecting them for years or decades to come.
Fortunately, someone who files on time and has no “comparative fault” assigned to them can generally demand recovery for the full value of both economic and non-economic damages they will sustain because of their injuries, including:
- Medical bills
- Physical pain and suffering
- Lost overall enjoyment of life
- Personal property loss/damage
- Emotional and psychological distress
- Lost work income and/or earning capacity
A qualified lawyer could discuss what losses can be factored into a particular pedestrian accident claim in Gilbert during a private consultation.
Talk to a Gilbert Pedestrian Accident Attorney Today
Even low-speed collisions between multi-ton cars and pedestrians tend to have devastating consequences, and collisions at higher speeds are very often life-threatening. No matter how severely you have been hurt due to a driver’s misconduct, though, you deserve full and fair compensation for every loss you have suffered and will suffer because of your injuries.
Help is available from a Gilbert pedestrian accident lawyer from the Phillips Law Group with over three decades of experience helping people across the Phoenix metro area. Call today to learn more.
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