It’s been more than a year since I sent my girlfriend a text that just said, “Call me.” I attached a picture of our little Honda, front driver’s side panel woefully crumpled, emergency vehicle lights reflecting in the windshield glass.
I was on my way home, our big Dutch Shepherd in the back seat, when the SUV came flying out of nowhere and struck my car just in front of the driver’s side door. I don’t like to think how differently the story might read if I had been going a little faster.
I was soon to learn that being in an accident isn’t just traumatizing in terms of physical damage to property and self.
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The SUV somehow ended up on the other side of my car, upside down. Witnesses said that the woman driving it had not only run the stop sign at the cross street, but had actually flown around another vehicle that was stopped at the stop sign in order to try to make it across the five lanes of traffic. If I hadn’t been there, she would have been fine. So would I.
I was soon to learn that being in an accident isn’t just traumatizing in terms of physical damage to property and self. The mental and emotional toll of a complicated and lengthy “medical-legal” process is frustrating, confusing, scary, and uncertain. I suspected I’d made some mistakes, so I talked to Brady McAninch, a personal injury lawyer and partner in the Belleville, Illinois law firm of Hipskind & McAninch and asked him for a checklist of what I should have done, and what you should do, in case a rogue driver disrupts your life.
Get Police on the Scene and Get a Report
My incident clearly required police presence because of the extent of the damages, but getting an official police report is important even if you think the damages are minor. As Brady says, “This assures there will be a record of the incident and will help arrange transportation to the hospital should it be needed. Police reports are generally the first record of any accident and will be used throughout your claim.”
Do NOT Move Your Car
I didn’t follow this rule to the letter. Brady’s advice was to avoid moving the vehicles involved in the accident unless they are blocking traffic or creating a safety hazard. It is important for the responding officers to see the accident scene as it was. I’m not sure my car was a safety hazard, but it was blocking one lane of traffic and there were a lot of angry drivers yelling at me to get out of their way. So I did coast my car over to the curb.
Document, Document, Document
Yes, we had the police on the scene so they collected information from the drivers and witnesses. But, like any good attorney, Brady hammered the documentation point home. He says to gather as much information as you can from all the drivers, passengers, and witnesses. Make sure to get the license plate numbers and insurance information from the other drivers and get contact information (full name, phone number, email, and address.)
And take pictures. Lots of pictures. I got this one mostly right. Here’s the list Brady gave me of what you should record in photos: the accident scene, the damage to the vehicles, the license plates, and any injuries you may have suffered. If the accident was caused by an out of order traffic signal or a downed stop sign, take pictures of that too. It is important that you take as many pictures as possible to help support your claim.
Never Assume You’re OK
Adrenaline is an amazing drug. There’s a reason our bodies release a flood of it when we’re threatened. With adrenaline pumping through your system you have the power to move mountains, outrun a Grizzly bear, or take on a wildcat barehanded. I might be exaggerating just a tad, but seriously, that’s exactly what adrenaline is for—to give you superhuman strength for just long enough to (hopefully) survive.
It can also mask physical injury. So you might feel OK immediately after the accident, but that doesn’t mean you really are OK. In my case, I was so worried about getting Mishka out of the back seat to make sure he wasn’t hurt that I really didn’t pay much attention to my body.
I really failed on this one. Brady’s advice is, “Seek medical treatment right away. It generally takes hours, days, and sometimes even weeks for you to feel the full effect of the injuries you have suffered. You need to seek medical attention as soon as practical in order to determine what, if any, injuries you have suffered and how to best treat them.”
Yeah. Except that isn’t what I did. I had burns on my hands and arms from the airbag, and my back muscles were seizing, but I didn’t feel like I needed an expensive ambulance ride to the ER. I thought a quick visit to an urgent care the next day would do the trick. I was disappointed when the doctor told me to take a week off work. I declined an X-ray and didn’t notice the sharp pain in my hip until a week later. What I didn’t know then was that I had a more serious hip injury that bottlenecked my ability to work for an entire year.
Don’t Talk to the Other Person’s Insurance Company without Backup
Two days after the accident, I took a call from the other driver’s insurance company. Luckily, my girlfriend was with me and she wasn’t as rattled from the accident as I was, so she kept me from answering their more leading questions.
Brady put it pretty bluntly, “Do not provide recorded statements to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. The opposing insurance company’s goal is to settle your claim as quickly and as cheaply as possible. They are trained to ask you leading questions that could hurt your claim. Seek the counsel of an attorney before you speak with the insurance company.”
But next time I’ll hire an attorney first and let them handle the inquisition.
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Two days after an incident like that it’s likely that you’re coming off an adrenaline high, the pain is reaching a peak, and you’ve had a couple of sleepless nights reliving the event and thinking about how much worse it might have been. I was pretty well wrung out, in pain, and taking muscle relaxers, so left to my own devices, I would have just answered the questions and been done with it.
Brady is right on the money here, that insurance company representative had one goal—to prove that the accident was, at least in part, my fault. And she had clearly been trained to ask the “when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife” kinds of questions that they can spin to make a case for hanging some of the blame on you.
In hindsight, I could see the nasty hooks embedded in her seemingly harmless questions. Luckily, I didn’t answer most of them, and the police report made the case cut and dried. But next time I’ll hire an attorney first and let them handle the inquisition.
Never Assume Doctors Know Everything
Here’s an extra piece of advice I did not get from an attorney. As a bodyworker and personal trainer I’m constantly telling my clients, “No one knows your body like you do.” No amount of training or experience can give someone else the ability to know what you feel or to understand what is normal for your body. Whether you’re working with a fitness trainer, a therapist, a coach, or a medical professional you always have to advocate for yourself.
In my case, I was sent to a medical practice that specialized in accident-related injuries. This was partly because they were willing to work on “lien,” meaning they would wait to be paid until the case was settled and the other driver’s insurance company paid up. This kept my medical insurance out of the claim, which was great, but I soon realized that this practice had a hammer and they were going to assume I was a nail unless I raised a lot of hell.
Because of years of performance and movement training, I know my body. After several soft tissue “treatments” I could tell that what they were doing wasn’t addressing the source of my pain. I requested an MRI. They agreed to write the order, but they wanted me to keep coming for the “treatments.” The order didn’t get written so I persisted. Finally, I got the MRI and was diagnosed with a torn labrum in my right hip joint. Their “treatments” would never have made that better, but they would have racked up fees for many more visits before the average patient would have insisted on a better diagnosis.
While the “lien” system is great, it incentivizes the medical practice to keep you in care, especially for treatment that is largely performed by auxiliary staff, which mine was. You have to listen to your body, insist on being taken seriously, and don’t hesitate to change providers if you’re not getting better. After I insisted on the MRI and got an accurate diagnosis, I transferred to a surgery center. I don’t know how long it would have been, how much pain I would have endured, or how many more “treatments” would have been billed if I had not persisted in advocating for myself.
I wish I had had Brady’s advice before my accident, because every single thing he said to me was exactly what I went through. I hope you never have a similar experience, but hopefully my story and his advice will help someone else navigate the medical-legal labyrinth a little more easily.
Even the best insurance settlement can never “undo” an accident, we can only move forward from where we are. No one has more “skin-in-the-game” than you do so please, advocate for yourself, listen to your body, and insist on good, comprehensive care from your medical providers and fair representation from your attorney.
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Photo: Getty Images