What do you do if you’ve been injured by a hit and run driver? Now, before I became a lawyer, I had no idea about the number of hit and run accidents that were out there. It is absolutely, absolutely amazing how many people come to me on a weekly basis after being injured after a hit and run driver caused an accident and fled the scene and are nowhere to be found. So clients asked me repeatedly, well, what, what, what are my steps? I’m injured, my car is damaged, uh, what do I do? And so the steps are as follows, number one, you need to report the accident to law enforcement. And I assume that that has already been done and law enforcement was not able to find the driver of the other vehicle. Step number to report the accident to your own insurance company. Now this is going to be a situation where there’s no other vehicle insurance to go after.
So your own insurance company is going to be the one that has, that foots the bill in terms of repairing the damage. And unfortunately you’re going to be responsible to pay that deductible. Number three, as far as your medical treatment. Uh, your, if you have auto insurance at the time of the accident, I hope you do, then pip or no fault insurance will cover the damages after the hit and run accident and pay for those medical bills up to $10,000. So at least you’ll have a pot of money to get treated for your injuries. If you did not have auto insurance at the time of the hit and run accident, then you’ll need to bill it through. And I hope you have health insurance. So again, you won’t be out of pocket for those medical bills if you do not have auto insurance or health insurance and you’ve got a real problem because there simply is not going to be another pot to go after since you don’t know the driver, you can’t chase him either civilly, civilly or criminally.
So finally, in terms of recovering money for the injuries that were caused after the hit and run accident, hopefully you have uninsured motorist coverage and that is the type of coverage that you have to buy. It’s a, an extra coverage and it is not necessarily people come to me and say, well, I’ve got full coverage on my car insurance. Well, full coverage does not require a uninsured motorist coverage. So look to your policy. If you have uninsured motorist coverage, then you have something to go after. And again, that’s why you buy uninsured motorist coverage, uh, in a situation where the hit and run driver. Um, because that person obviously can’t be, it can’t be found. You don’t have an insurance pot to go after there. So you look back to your own uninsured motorist coverage. If you did not carry uninsured motorist, then you do not have a claim other than, uh, just simply getting your medical bills paid through pip or through your own, um, uh, health insurance. And it just simply is not. Um, there’s no, um, bucket of money to go after. So those are the steps to take if you’ve been injured after a hit and run driver has caused an accident to you, and I hope you’re not in that situation, but if you are, I hope this video at least provided some type of guidance.
*The above has been transcribed by a third party service and has not been checked for accuracy.
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