Suffering injuries in a car accident can wreak havoc on your life physically, emotionally, and financially. While no amount of money can undo the trauma, obtaining fair compensation for your losses can aid tremendously with recovery.
To have the best chance at maximum compensation for your injuries through an insurance settlement or court award, you must thoroughly document how the injuries impair your daily personal and professional activities over both the short and long term.
Seek Prompt Medical Attention
The foundation for proving damages starts with prompt diagnosis and treatment from medical professionals. Here’s what to do:
- Get checked out at the emergency room or urgent care clinic right away, even if your injuries seem minor. Many conditions like whiplash or concussions can take days to fully manifest. An immediate medical record shows you sought care promptly. Describe all physical complaints like pain, numbness, nausea, disorientation, etc., and ask that documentation specifically indicate you were evaluated due to a car accident.
- Follow up with your primary care physician and any specialists within 1-2 days for complete examinations. Fully explain the accident circumstances (speeds, angles of impact, airbag deployment, areas of the body that hit the interior, etc.), your evolving symptoms, precise areas of pain, and any limitations or concerns about work, family responsibilities, mobility, etc. Ask for referrals to specialists like orthopedists, neurologists, psychiatrists, physical/occupational therapists, etc if needed. Having a coordinated care team prevents gaps in treatment that insurers may try to exploit to minimize injury claims.
- Attend all appointments consistently. Missing visits can wrongly suggest you are healed or are exaggerating injuries. Cancel only when absolutely necessary like for illness or family emergency and promptly reschedule.
- Carry a notebook, your calendar, and a list of medications to every appointment. Document the date, name of clinician seen, list of symptoms reported, any new diagnoses, treatment plans ordered, medications prescribed, referrals made, next steps for testing or follow-up, etc. These contemporaneous notes help verify what was conveyed versus what ends up only in the formal medical records. They also help you remember what to do next while recovering from distressing mental fog.
- Explicitly ask clinicians to note accident-related diagnoses in your medical chart rather than just general conditions like “back pain.” The documentation should clearly state diagnoses like “Cervical strain due to motor vehicle collision on 5/12/22” or “Post-concussion syndrome resulting from auto accident on 8/30/22.”
- Request a copy of all medical records from each provider once treatment concludes or reaches maximum benefit. This serves as evidence if disputes about the care you received or the necessity of treatment arise later. Keep the records in your insurance claim file.
- Ask any surgeons or specialists if your injuries will cause permanent impairment or disability. Request they document the prognosis in your medical file to substantiate future disability claims.
Maintain Thorough Symptom Journals
In addition to clinician notes, keep a daily personal journal detailing:
- Pain levels on a scale of 1-10, specifying location and type (sharp, throbbing, stiffness, spasms, etc.)
- New symptoms appearing over time like tingling, numbness, headaches, dizziness, etc.
- Changes in severity and frequency of symptoms
- Activities, movements, foods, or environmental factors aggravating pain
- Anything alleviating pain and other symptoms
- Times of day pain/symptoms increase or decrease
- Effects on energy levels and fatigue
- Impact on sleep quantity and quality
- Effects on mood – sadness, anger, frustration, hopelessness
- Worries about developing chronic conditions or disabilities
- Limitations in self-care activities like bathing, dressing, eating
- Difficulties carrying out childcare, pet care, household duties
Such journals humanize how injuries impair quality of life. Quantifying symptoms also helps physicians better track recovery progress or plateauing. Descriptions of how symptoms vary by time of day or in response to stimuli aid in diagnosis. Note obstacles in completing personal and family responsibilities that previously brought joy and fulfillment before the crash.
Document Lifestyle Limitations
Beyond just medical treatment, document how injuries affect daily functioning through:
- Journal entries on specific life activities impacted – caring for family, playing with children/pets, preparing meals, cleaning the house, doing laundry, running errands, recreational sports or hobbies, social gatherings, etc.
- Photos and videos documenting efforts attempting tasks that exceed current medical restrictions prescribed by doctors. For example, show struggles climbing stairs to do laundry due to a knee injury, difficulty carrying dishes due to back spasms, problems typing on a computer due to a wrist brace, inability to focus on screens due to post-concussion vision disturbance, etc.
- Receipts and invoices for home modifications like grab bars in showers, wheelchair ramps, mobility assistance equipment, automatic door openers, etc. needed to navigate the home due to mobility limitations from orthopedic trauma.
- Receipts for costs of lawn care, house cleaning, meal delivery, transportation, childcare, and pet care services made necessary by activity restrictions during recovery.
- Written statements from family members, friends, neighbors, and coworkers documenting their observations of your limitations with household and occupational tasks you handled independently pre-accident but now require assistance to complete.
Meticulously demonstrate how the injuries prevent normal participation in activities that previously brought joy, and fulfillment and enriched family relationships. This can support claims for both economic and non-economic damages like loss of consortium.
Monitor Job Impact
In addition to medical care and impact on personal life, car accidents often affect jobs and careers. Carefully record any effect on work capacity:
- Obtain a formal accident report from your employer’s Human Resources staff detailing the date you reported the crash and any conversations about the resulting workplace impact.
- Submit Return-to-Work notes from doctors specifying any physical restrictions that require job-duty modifications. Provide prompt updates after each medical appointment.
- Give written weekly or monthly updates to supervisors about treatment progress, recovery obstacles, and evolving work limitation needs.
- Log appointments and therapy sessions attended during work hours along with travel time. Calculate the exact hours of missed work time.
- Save emails from colleagues who covered assignments or meetings you missed due to medical issues.
- Compare payroll records, tax returns, and performance evaluations pre- and post-accident to confirm lost wages, fewer hours worked, decline in sales numbers, lower patients seen, etc. Showing reduced productivity strengthens lost income claims.
- Ask the employer to document in writing any accommodations made such as providing ergonomic equipment, allowing extra breaks, granting remote work options, assigning lighter tasks, modifying duties to align with medical restrictions, etc.
If unable to work at all for a period, ask doctors to clearly state in disability certificates that you are “temporarily totally disabled from any occupation whatsoever” directly due to car accident injuries. This helps prove that lost income results specifically from the crash rather than other factors. Pre-existing conditions may complicate proving causation.
Assemble Additional Evidence
Beyond medical and employment records, collect supplementary evidence demonstrating accident impact:
- Obtain police reports detailing crash circumstances, citations issued, vehicle damage, injuries reported on the scene, ambulance transport, etc. Photograph vehicle damage from multiple angles. Police reports can aid in establishing fault and liability.
- Request crash data retrieval from the airbag control module if deployed. The pre-crash and crash pulse data can help prove the severity and forces involved.
- If witnesses existed, obtain their signed statements recounting observations of crash circumstances, the conduct of drivers involved and your immediate symptoms or complaints of injury.
- Gather medical bills, payment receipts and health insurance records showing treatment costs incurred. Highlight services addressing accident-induced conditions.
- If the at-fault driver was issued traffic citations, request court documentation showing convictions entered for the offenses. This helps substantiate negligence.
- Order driving histories for all parties involved to assess past safety patterns and collision rates.
Retain Experienced Legal Counsel
While collecting extensive evidence to prove damages, consult a law firm for car accident injury claims from start to finish.
An attorney at such a law firm can assist by:
- Investigating liability and negotiating assertively with insurers
- Helping coordinate medical care and secure funding options if uninsured
- Identifying all potential sources of compensation beyond the at-fault driver’s policy
- Consulting accident reconstruction specialists to validate crash mechanics and injury causation
- Retaining economists and vocational experts to calculate the full loss of earnings capacity over a lifetime career
- Valuing both economic and harder-to-quantify non-economic damages like pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life with family, harm to marital relationships, etc.
- Legally compelling insurers to provide full and fair out-of-court legal settlements
- Taking uncooperative insurers to court if needed to fight for maximum compensation
- Ensuring you receive full restitution for all losses – past, present and future
Skilled legal advocates intimately familiar with injury law, insurance regulations, and court litigation can maximize recovery potential versus attempting to negotiate alone against insurers’ legal and medical experts.
Remain Diligent Throughout Recovery
The full effects of car accidents often persist for months or years depending on factors like injury type, age, pre-existing conditions and access to quality medical care. To protect your right to fair compensation as you heal:
- Continue complying well with all treatment plans until discharge. Do prescribed home exercises consistently despite discomfort to aid healing.
- Attend scheduled re-evaluations even after discharge to check for evolving issues like arthritis or herniated discs which sometimes manifest years later.
- Frequently update journals detailing any positive or negative changes in symptoms and physical abilities.
- Return for additional medical assessment if any worsening or new injury symptoms appear. Expand treatment activities if recovery plateaus.
- Maintain consistent contact with legal counsel about progress through treatment stages, positive and setback developments, changes in work capacity over time, etc. Update them on medical and employment record requests.
- Follow up on referrals to any additional specialists like psychiatrists, vestibular therapists, spine specialists, pain clinics, etc.
- Research local and online support groups and mental health resources to aid in coping with post-accident anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms.
- Commit to the long road toward maximum medical improvement no matter how frustratingly slow progress seems. Follow all advice to continue strengthening and flexibility training to protect long-term function.
While no amount of money can undo the physical, emotional and psycho-social trauma of car crash injuries, receiving fair compensation for how the harm continues impacting your life can help you move forward. With diligence and determination, you can prove the full extent of damages and demand the maximum recovery you deserve under the law. Consult a personal injury attorney to understand your legal rights.
