When you are involved in a West Virginia rear-end accident, you should seek medical attention following the crash. Many collision victims do not go to the hospital to get care because they are worried about costs or because they don’t think they are badly hurt. Unfortunately, if you don’t get a comprehensive medical exam following the accident, you could do worse damage to your health and worse damage to your finances.
Why Seek Medical Attention After a Rear-End Crash in West Virginia
You should go to the doctor to get medical attention after a rear-end crash in West Virginia because:
- You want to make sure you don’t have undiagnosed injuries which could be doing damage to your body. Internal injuries may not immediately manifest in outward symptoms. Internal bleeding could occur or organ damage may have happened in the crash. Mayo Clinic also warns about delayed-onset of some brain injury symptoms. If something is wrong inside your body, you need to know about it and get it treated right away, not wait until it becomes an emergency situation.
- You want to make sure there are detailed medical records of your injuries. If you want to make a claim with an auto insurer to pay for your car accident damages, you have to be able to show those damages actually happened as a result of the car accident. Medical records which show how badly you were hurt after the crash are going to be invaluable in proving the extent of damages when you decide to pursue a claim with an insurance company.
Car crash injuries are really expensive. Auto Insurance Center indicates the average cost for a bodily injury claim is $15,506. This average cost, calculated in 2013, is 32.1 percent higher than the average cost of car accident injury claims in 2005. Costs are rising rapidly due to rising healthcare prices, and most people cannot afford to pay to get the best medical assistance after a car crash. You don’t want to compromise on your care, so you want to try to get an insurance company to pay the bills.
Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association indicates 50 percent of costs of crashes are usually paid by insurance and 26 percent of costs of crashes are paid by motorists. In order to get insurance to pay your costs, though, you have to both prove the accident was the fault of the other driver and you have to prove how badly the accident hurt you.
West Virginia only requires bodily injury coverage, property damage coverage, and uninsured motorist coverage, although motorists are free to buy other additional supplemental auto insurance protection. If another driver hurt you, his bodily injury coverage should pay- if you can prove all of the elements of your injury claim.
In rear-end accident cases, it is usually simple for drivers in the lead vehicle to prove the rear driver was at fault since there is a presumption the rear driver is to blame. The key to getting compensation in these cases, therefore, is to have documented proof of injuries. Seeing a doctor right after the crash allows you to obtain this proof.