Santa Maria Traffic Accident Dangers

There are a lot of reasons people end up in Santa Maria. Work, school, the nearby beaches, and maybe even the draw of our unique style of BBQ. People may be dropping their kids off at school, commuting to Vandenberg AFB, or racing to get to a local farm or industrial complex for a shift, but they all use the same roads and highways.

This rush to get out and get back home can lead to traffic jams that can leave you behind slow agricultural trucks and big 18-wheelers hauling produce. That’s the frustrating part, but the true danger lies in the collisions that careless drivers can cause.

Santa Maria law enforcement sees dangerous accidents every day in our city. According to TIMS Accident Tracking, Santa Maria reported 367 collisions in 2019. Incredibly, almost 500 people were documented as hurt in those accidents. 25 of those injured were pedestrians, 14 were bicyclists, and another 13 were riders on motorcycles.

Insurance Compensation in Car Accidents

In a devastating impact, you can be severely hurt and left in the hospital. Your health and wellbeing need to be your first concern, but once you are stabilized the worries over your financial situation may start. You may have thousands of dollars in hospital bills coming due and still more ahead. You may also be facing a long time away from work and the inability to earn paychecks due to your injury.

The at-fault driver, and any company they may drive for, should be taking on this burden for you, but that means dealing with their insurance agents and potentially even big company lawyers. What should be a clear cut case of getting you the support you need may turn into a battle of blame and stalling.

These are just some of the tactics insurance agents use to save money for their companies and separate you from the help you need:

• Delayed Justice: Insurance agents can just delay responding to your claim hoping the longer they make you wait the more desperate you become. If you have hospital bills piling up and are defaulting on car payments and mortgage premiums you may be more willing to accept their unfair offers. An attorney can call an insurance company on this practice and make sure your injuries and hardships receive priority treatment.
• Rejecting a claim: An insurance company may reject your claim outright even if they know their policyholder was clearly at fault. They do this to see if you’ll give up. You might not know the reason they give for dismissal wouldn’t hold up in court, but your attorney will know what’s going on.
• Lowball settlement offers: Insurance agents may make you an unfair offer just to see if you have anyone advising you on how much your case is actually worth. Many people take first offers and end up not having enough money to pay for medical care needed in the weeks and months to come.
• Refusal to settle: Insurers can refuse to settle to see if you’re actually willing to hold them accountable in a courtroom. It will cost them a lot to defend a case in court, so if you hold firm insurance adjusters will often cave and make you a much better settlement offer. Having an attorney on your side, constantly preparing evidence to go to court if necessary, lets them know that a trial is a real possibility.