Scooters are front and center in the emerging world of “micro-mobility.” As these transportation devices begin to pop up across the country, municipalities scramble to determine the most appropriate way to handle them. As with any new means of transportation, the growing popularity of scooters has led to an increase in scooter and scooter-related accidents. The legal world — including insurers — is working equally hard to figure out the best way to handle these accidents from a personal injury perspective. If you have been injured in a scooter accident that someone else caused, you may already recognize that insurers are quick to leverage the fact that these types of cases are generally unprecedented by working to settle as quickly and aggressively as possible, and not in your favor. A Fort Walton Beach motorcycle accident lawyer can further explain this process to you.
After an accident, whether you or a loved one is the victim, knowing where to turn for your legal needs can be complicated. Typically, scooter accidents are handled through the at-fault party’s insurance policy, and while the actual process of submitting a claim is simple, getting the money you deserve is much more complicated. This is because insurers leverage a claimant’s inexperience and compromised situation to reach a final settlement favorable to the insurer’s bottom line, not the victim’s financial needs. A Fort Walton Beach personal injury lawyer understands this process and represent many clients through these claims to reach a settlement or award that accurately reflects the victim’s damages.
Contact Fasig | Brooks For a Free Consultation After Your Scooter Accident
The first step to working with a personal injury attorney is contacting a law firm representing scooter accidents before determining whether or not you want to work with them. We offer a free initial consultation for victims of scooter accidents where we can discuss the whole range of details about your case to understand better what went wrong, who caused the accident, and the impacts your scooter crash has had on your life so far, and more. Then, once we understand the overall situation, we will provide you with straightforward legal guidance and advice.
One of the best parts of a free consultation is that you will learn that you are not alone and that you do not need to go through this overwhelming and complicated process without experienced help. Therefore, contact us as soon as possible to schedule your consultation so you can begin focusing on your recovery without the added anxiety of trying to handle your claim at the same time.
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Common Causes of Scooter Accidents
The following are just a few examples of scooter accident causes. Whether or not you see your accident below, contact us as soon as possible to speak with an experienced personal injury attorney. If someone else caused your accident, you do not deserve to take on the financial impacts of their reckless or negligent behavior, and we are here to help.
Texting While Driving
Texting while driving is just one of the many distractions that drivers engage in every day across the United States and one that takes a lot more attention than most people realize. When someone’s visual attention is diverted from the road to a screen like a smartphone or a GPS, a driver is more likely to miss a scooter rider in their field of vision, possibly leading to an accident. Like motorcycles and bicycles, scooters are much smaller than passenger vehicles that a driver is generally accustomed to looking for and are easy to miss in a driver’s peripheral vision.
Drunk Driving
Legally speaking, drunk driving is any time an adult over the age of 21 operates a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) over 0.08%, or a driver under the age of 21 uses a car with a BAC of 0.02%. When a driver is intoxicated by alcohol or other mind-altering substances, they increase the risk of an accident due to a range of factors, including reduced risk awareness, decreased reaction time, diminished hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness, and more. All of these factors can lead to an avoidable scooter accident.
Speeding
Speed limits are posted for a reason, and while an alarming number of drivers on the road treat them as suggestions, they are the law and are meant to keep people safe, accounting for several factors that may or may not be readily apparent. For example, a speed limit in a school zone is 20 mph (unless otherwise posted) because there is a significant possibility of children in or around the roadway. When a driver ignores a posted speed limit, they are putting pedestrians, scooter riders, and everyone else on the road at an increased risk of an accident — as well as increased injuries due to a higher speed on impact.
Failure to Yield
One major issue that scooter riders and drivers are having is a misunderstanding about the rights of way on the roads. A driver may believe that a scooter rider is illegally using a road when, in fact, they have the right to the lane, and this may be true for many other instances where a scooter rider may find themselves in the way of oncoming traffic. You will need to work with your personal injury attorney to determine and then prove that the driver had an obligation to yield in your accident by using various pieces of evidence, including an accident report, eyewitness accounts, and more.
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Contact Fasig | Brooks Today
The insurance company may work to convince you that you are partially — if not entirely — responsible for the crash to reduce or eliminate their financial obligation. Still, when working with a personal injury attorney, you can count on our team pushing back to get you the money you deserve. Contact us as soon as possible to get the support you deserve through your entire insurance claims process. We are here for you every step of the way, and will not back down from taking your case to the Florida courts if necessary.
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