What Happens if Someone Breaks a Traffic Law and Injures You?

Traffic laws exist to keep everyone on the road safe from accidents and injuries. Without a doubt, they help achieve that goal. The rules of the road serve as a set of guidelines for drivers to follow to keep themselves and their passengers accident-and-injury-free. In addition, the threat of getting a ticket, points on a driver’s license, or even facing criminal sanctions for violating a traffic law provides extra motivation for drivers and other road users to stay safe.

Still, traffic laws have limits to their effectiveness in preventing accidents. Human beings are not programmable robots. We can only try our best to follow the rules of the road. Sometimes, we make mistakes behind the wheel that violate traffic laws. Sometimes, we break traffic laws on purpose. Inevitably, some of those violations result in accidents that leave victims injured, or worse.

If you suffered injuries in an accident caused (as most are) by a violation of a traffic law, then you may have the right to receive substantial financial compensation from the lawbreaker and anyone else answerable for that misconduct.

Here’s an overview of what happens if someone breaks a traffic law and injures you, and how a car accident lawyer can help you get the compensation you need.

Traffic Law Violations and Accidents Go Hand-in-Hand

Every state, including Florida, has laws governing the operation of motor vehicles on the state’s roads. These laws go by different names depending on where you live—”motor vehicle code”, “uniform traffic laws”, etc.—but they all cover the same ground.

Traffic laws dictate a wide range of specific, safe-driving practices that all drivers must follow. They tend to be exceedingly comprehensive, covering topics as varied as:

• Required safety features and equipment for all manner of vehicles.
• Road signs, traffic lights, and lane markings.
• Signaling and executing turns.
• Passing and merging.
• When and how to yield the right-of-way.
• Regulating driving speed.
• Special road conditions and features.
• Driving in and around construction zones.
• Sharing the road with emergency vehicles.
• Driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
• Texting and driving.
• What to do in the event of an accident.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Suffice to say that traffic laws address just about every conceivable facet of operating a motor vehicle.

In light of the all-encompassing nature of traffic laws, odds are good that in the event of an accident, someone has committed a traffic law violation. Consider the following common contributing factors in motor vehicle accidents and the laws that they usually break.

• Excessive speed that causes an accident may violate laws about posted speed limits, minimum speeds on certain roads, and regulating speed to match road conditions.
• Running a red light or stop sign can violate rules about stopping and yielding at intersections.
• Blind spot accidents, in which a vehicle (usually a truck) causes an accident by merging into a lane occupied by a vehicle in its blind spot can break laws about passing and overtaking.
• Distracted driving accidents frequently violate texting-and-driving and electronic device use laws.

Again, this is just a sampling. The point is, the mere fact that an accident has occurred usually serves as a reliable indication that someone has broken a traffic law. In fact, even when the cause of an accident does not violate a specific rule or regulation about how to operate a vehicle, chances are, at a bare minimum, it reflects a violation of the general obligation of all drivers to avoid careless or reckless actions behind the wheel.

Common Injuries for Which Car Accident Victims May Recover Compensation

Car accident victims can suffer serious injuries, depending upon the impact force—and how their body moves in the car when the crash happens. Some car accidents happen so forcefully that they cause the accident victim’s body to move around abruptly inside their vehicle, frontward and backward, or from side to side.

When that occurs, a part of the accident victim’s body might strike something in their vehicle, such as the steering wheel, console, headrest, or dashboard, causing serious injuries. Moreover, in some car accident scenarios, the impact force is so extreme that it ejects the driver or passenger’s body from their vehicle and onto the ground.

Some of the most common injuries that Florida car accident victims suffer include soft tissue contusions, traumatic brain injuries, broken bones, spinal cord injuries, and bruising from airbag deployment.

• Soft tissue contusions. A soft tissue contusion is a muscular sprain or strain. One of the most common types of soft tissue injuries that drivers and passengers suffer is whiplash. A whiplash injury typically happens when the force of an impact causes an accident victim’s head and neck to snap backward and forward. Although most soft tissue injuries do not require surgery to correct, they can still result in significant pain and suffering for the accident victim. The accident victim may also need other medical treatment, including physical therapy, to fully recover from their soft tissue injury.
• Traumatic brain injuries (TBI). A traumatic brain injury typically happens when a car accident victim’s head strikes something in their vehicle, like the headrest or steering wheel. The impact force may cause the accident victim’s brain to move around inside their skull and strike the side of the skull, leading to a brain bruise or concussion. While traumatic brain injuries sometimes have short-term symptoms, like headaches, short-term memory losses, nausea, and dizziness, they can also leave accident victims in a coma or permanent vegetative state when they are serious enough.
• Broken bones. When the impact force causes a part of the accident victim’s body to strike something in the vehicle, they may end up with a fracture or broken bone. Moreover, if the impact force thrusts the accident victim’s chest into the steering wheel, they can sustain one or more rib fractures. Although many rib fractures heal on their own after a while, most serious fractures require multiple surgeries and lengthy physical therapy to correct.
• Spinal cord injuries. Spinal cord injuries can happen to car accident victims when the impact force thrusts their neck or back a certain way or ejects them from their vehicle altogether. The most serious spinal cord injuries often come with full or partial paralysis, which may prevent the accident victim from using one or more body parts. When an accident victim suffers a paralysis injury—or some other permanent injury—they can recover monetary compensation, not only for anticipated medical costs but also for their future pain, suffering, and inconvenience.

Even if you are unsure whether you suffered an injury in your car accident, you must seek prompt, same-day medical treatment at a hospital emergency room or urgent care facility. When treating at one of these facilities, the physician can order the necessary imaging studies, including MRIs and x-rays—and thoroughly examine you—to render a complete medical diagnosis. Your provider can also recommend follow-up care with an orthopedic doctor or neurologist.

Seeking prompt medical treatment after a car accident and treating your injuries continuously is extremely important. First, it helps to prevent your injuries from becoming worse. Moreover, if you later have to file a personal injury claim or lawsuit, it shows the insurance company that you took your medical treatment seriously. In turn, the insurance company adjuster is more likely to offer you favorable monetary compensation for your injuries. Our legal team will work to maximize the damages you recover as part of your personal injury claim or lawsuit.

Overview of Seeking Compensation for Traffic Accident Injuries

Victims of traffic accidents frequently have the right to receive compensation from the party or parties at fault for the crash. Obtaining that compensation may involve making an insurance claim under an auto liability insurance policy, filing a lawsuit against a party at fault, or both.

In general, the party at fault for causing a traffic accident, and anyone else who has a legal duty to answer for that party’s conduct, will owe damages to injured victims that include payment for:

• Medical costs for treating accident-related injuries.
• Other out-of-pocket expenses resulting from the accident or injuries.
• Lost wages and income due to injuries keeping a victim out of work.
• Pain, suffering, diminished quality of life, and harm to personal relationships.

In the relatively rare cases in which someone causes a traffic accident by engaging in extreme or deliberately harmful conduct, a court may also order the at-fault party to pay punitive damages to the victim. These damages aim to punish and deter wrongful conduct, rather than to compensate for specific injuries.

The amount of money a victim might receive by taking legal action will generally depend on the nature, severity, and impact of the injuries the victim suffered, the strength of the case the victim’s lawyer can build for liability and damages, and the financial resources of the party from whom the victim seeks payment. Lawyers for traffic accident victims often invest significant effort in identifying as many sources of payment for crash injuries as possible, to improve their clients’ chances of receiving every last dollar they deserve.

How Traffic Law Violations Affect Accident Injury Claims?

Claiming damages from a party at fault for a traffic accident involves collecting and presenting evidence of how the party caused a crash resulting in physical, emotional, and financial harm to a victim.

Lawyers use a wide range of evidence to prove injury claims, such as witness statements, data from onboard vehicle computers, and photos and videos of accident scenes. The goal is to demonstrate through this evidence that a party’s wrongful actions led directly (or “proximately”) to the accident.

The fact that a party committed a traffic law violation can make the process of proving a claim for damages against that party much more straightforward than building a case one piece of evidence at-a-time. In effect, traffic law violations can serve as shortcuts to prove that a party acted wrongfully because, by definition, violating a traffic law constitutes wrongful conduct.

That’s not to say that you have a guaranteed-to-succeed claim for damages just because you got into an accident with a driver who broke a traffic law. Your lawyer still must have evidence to prove that the violation actually caused the accident that injured you. And, as we’ve said, just about every traffic accident involves a traffic violation of some sort, so depending on what the violation was, it might not always constitute the strongest evidence to support your case.

However, in general, traffic violations by at-fault parties help to prove accident injury cases, and increase the odds of your lawyer securing a favorable financial outcome on your behalf.

Violations vs. Citations vs. Criminal Convictions

Violating a traffic law is not the same as getting cited or charged criminally for it. Generally speaking, the greater the consequence to the at-fault driver who causes an accident by violating a traffic law, the more weight that violation has as evidence in helping to prove an injury claim.

Violations = Potentially Useful Evidence

Technically speaking, a traffic violation happens any time someone breaks a rule of the road. Most drivers regularly commit traffic violations because, as we’ve said, traffic codes get hyper-specific and most drivers would struggle to follow them to the letter even if they tried (which many don’t). In reality, the vast majority of traffic violations go unreported and unpunished—when was the last time you were cited for driving 5mph over the speed limit, for example?

Citations = Frequently Useful Evidence

When police do catch a driver committing a traffic law violation, the consequence to the driver (if any) usually consists of a civil citation (a ticket, in other words). Citations are not criminal punishments. They’re civil (non-criminal) penalties used to help enforce the rules of the road. Citations have consequences of course, including fines, the potential for having points against your license, and higher insurance costs, but for most people, they’re an inconvenience rather than a legal problem.

Still, when it comes to proving an accident injury claim, the fact that a driver received a citation can serve as stronger evidence of wrongful conduct than the mere fact that a violation occurred but wasn’t cited.

Criminal Charges/Convictions = Always Useful Evidence

Less often, a traffic law violation can result in a criminal charge and conviction. The most common form of violation leading to criminal sanctions is driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol. However, virtually any violation might amount to criminal conduct if it’s sufficiently extreme or deliberate. Many states, for example, treat driving at twice the speed limit as a criminal offense. Violating a traffic law and causing an accident that results in serious injuries also frequently results in potential criminal charges.

If the at-fault party in an accident faced criminal charges for violating a traffic law and, even more, was convicted for them, it can often serve as powerful evidence of liability in proving an accident injury claim.

Seeking an Expert Opinion about Who Caused the Accident

In some car accident cases, it can be difficult to determine how the accident occurred—and who caused it. This is especially true in cases where more than two vehicles are involved. In those cases, the accident victim’s lawyer can retain an expert accident reconstructionist to testify in the case and offer their professional opinion.

An accident reconstructionist can review the car accident police report and speak to any eyewitnesses who observed the accident firsthand. Moreover, the reconstructionist can go to the accident scene, take photographs, and assess the entire situation. After reviewing this evidence, the reconstructionist will likely draft a report about how the car accident likely occurred—and who caused it.

Can you seek compensation from someone who was charged, convicted, and sent to jail for violating a traffic law?

Helpful as evidence of a criminal charge and conviction can be in proving an accident injury claim, it might also seem like a double-edged sword. After all, someone who gets sent to jail for causing an accident will tend to have less ability to pay damages than someone who remains free. You might even wonder whether it’s possible to sue someone who has gone to jail.

To respond to the latter part first, yes, it’s possible, and it happens all the time.

Turning to the question of financial resources, the fact that the at-fault party was prosecuted oftentimes has less of an impact than you might think on a victim’s odds of securing compensation. In the vast majority of motor vehicle accident injury cases, the at-fault party’s liability insurance carrier, not the at-fault party, actually writes the check to the victim. With rare exceptions, auto liability insurance covers damages caused by a policyholder’s traffic law violations, even when those violations result in a criminal conviction.

Never assume that you cannot receive compensation for your crash injuries just because the at-fault driver ended up going to jail. With the help of a skilled accident injury lawyer, you probably have a good chance of securing compensation from the driver’s insurance.

How an Experienced Lawyer Can Help After an Accident Caused by a Traffic Law Violation

After a traffic accident leaves you or a loved one injured, you need a skilled, trustworthy attorney who can explain your options and assist you in making important legal and financial decisions.

That’s especially true when you know – or think – that someone committed a traffic law violation that led to the crash and your injuries.

Here are just some of the ways that a lawyer can assist you in that situation.

• A lawyer can investigate the accident to determine if a violation occurred.
• A lawyer can communicate with law enforcement to find out if a violation was cited or charged criminally.
• A lawyer can interact with prosecutors and help you manage your potential role as a witness in the criminal case.
• A lawyer can evaluate the injuries and losses you suffered, and calculate the damages you deserve to receive as compensation for them.
• A lawyer can explain your options, answer your questions, and guide you through any choices you need to make about how to proceed.

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  A lawyer can prepare, file, and litigate an insurance claim and/or lawsuit on your behalf, leveraging whatever facts and evidence that might exist of the traffic violation that caused the crash.

• A lawyer can negotiate with defense lawyers and insurance companies in hopes of securing a favorable settlement of your claim.
• A lawyer can take your claim to court to be presented to a judge and jury in a trial.
• A lawyer can collect the money owed to you as a result of a settlement, judgment, or jury award.

Contact a skilled personal injury lawyer today to learn more about your rights after suffering injuries in an accident caused by a traffic law violation.

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