In the United States, more than 2.5 million people sustain serious injuries in car accidents each year. Some of those injuries and wrongful deaths come from a type of accident called a t-bone accident. A t-bone traffic accident is a side-impact collision that occurs at an intersection between your vehicle and at least one other motor vehicle.
Due to the nature of these car crashes, t-bone accidents can be incredibly detrimental to your physical well-being and the well being of loved ones. A personal injury attorney can make sure you get compensation for your t-bone accident.
Don’t let someone texting at a traffic light take away your personal power, autonomy and make you feel helpless. Armed with the knowledge in this article, you’ll know how to handle a t-bone car crash should one ever occur.
What Is A T-Bone Accident?
A t-bone accident occurs when a motor vehicle drives into oncoming traffic at an intersection and hits the side of the car causing an auto accident. In a t-bone crash, one car is going East and West, while the other car drives North and South.
Imagine a four-way stop, this is where you will find t-bone accidents occurring. You are sitting at a red light or stop sign. When it’s your turn to go straight forward another driver who has a red light or stop sign makes a left turn and the next thing you know, you’ve been t-boned.
Unfortunately, any car crash in which the side of the car is hit or you experience a head-on collision (the two likely scenarios in a t-bone), serious injuries can occur. Injuries from a t-bone accident can lead to the need for medical attention, medical bills and even wrongful death.
Typical T-Bone Car Accident Injuries
Depending on the type of injury you receive in a t-bone crash, it may be necessary to seek costly medical attention. In these cases, an experienced car accident attorney can help you receive compensation for the medical procedures you endured as a result of the accident. Here are some common injuries:
Broken Bones
Broken bones commonly occur in intense crashes that cause major damage, like a t-bone collision. Broken bones can occur anywhere in the body, including susceptible appendages like arms and legs, as a result of an airbag deployment or distortion from the t-bone accident.
Seatbelt Injuries
Seatbelt injuries are often attributed to rear-end car crashes, but they can occur in side impact collisions as well. Wearing a seatbelt during a t-bone accident is always preferable to not securing yourself in your seat, but seatbelts, even when used properly, can cause injuries like broken bones, fractures, bruising and pulled muscles.
Neck And Back Injuries
Back injuries are commonplace in any kind of car crash. One spinal cord injury that occurs frequently in a t-bone car accident is whiplash. Whiplash is similar to a neck sprain that happens when the intervertebral joints, ligaments, discs, muscles of the cervical spine, and nerve endings become injured in a car accident causing neck injuries and back injuries.
Concussions, Head Injuries And Brain Injury
Airbag deployment is one large cause of head injuries in a head-on collision. In addition to breaking bones in your face, a forceful airbag hit can cause a concussion or other serious head injuries. A traumatic brain injury is always a risk in a t-bone car accident, whether an airbag deploys or not, if a person is ejected from a vehicle or strikes the airbag, dashboard or any other surface inside of the vehicle with their face or head, a brain injury and other severe injuries could be an outcome.
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What To Do If You Get In A T-Bone Accident?
If you’ve been hit or hit someone on the side of the car at an intersection, you’ve been in a t-bone accident. What should you do right after it happens? Keep reading to find out.
File A Police Report
If you’ve been in a motor vehicle accident, you should file a police report. But if you’ve been t-boned, you should contact police and emergency services, if able, because these accidents are likely to have serious injuries and sometimes those can result in a wrongful death.
Get A Free Consultation With A T-Bone Car Accident Attorney
A t-bone car accident attorney can offer a case evaluation and determine if you are eligible for compensation. If you have medical bills from a t-bone crash you may be able to seek money for your car accident injuries. In addition to evaluating your case, clients benefit from the attorney-client relationship in which your honesty and participation is valued and your testimony is secure until you speak in court, should it come to that.
Call Your Car Insurance Company
Your insurance company is there to help you get your car fixed or your medical bills covered. Calling your car insurance company after a crash is important so you can start your insurance claim. If you receive medical treatment for car accident injuries, your medical insurance company has representatives to assist you with your claim.
T-Bone Accident: Who Is At Fault?
Despite the severity of a t-bone accident, the fault isn’t always very clear. Typically, a t-bone accident occurs when someone misinterprets, gets distracted at or ignores traffic signals, like red lights and stop signs.
When you have a green light or it’s your turn at a stop sign, and you get t-boned anyway by someone making a left turn and texting, you want to make sure that fault is evaluated correctly because you had right of way and were being a conscientious driver.
There are four people in a typical t-bone car accident scenario who might be considered at fault. These are:
- Drivers
- Road engineers
- Others legally responsible
- Makers of automotive parts
Drivers
Drivers sometimes make mistakes. When this occurs, a driver could be at fault for a t-bone accident in this common but deadly scenario. Here’s how drivers end up in a t-bone crash:
Distracted Drivers
If a driver is texting, or otherwise distracted, they may miss the signals intended to prevent accidents. Too often we hear about drivers on smartphones running through stop signs and red lights and causing major accidents in an intersection. For this reason, many states now have laws about texting and driving.
Speeding Drivers
Speeding through an area with four-way intersections is never a good idea because it can cause a traffic accident. Speeding drivers may not be prepared to stop at a stop sign or red light. Because of this, they might be more likely to get into a t-bone accident when driving city miles, or across other areas in the United States that are likely to have dangerous intersections with frequent traffic signals.
Impaired Drivers
Impaired drivers should never drive. The United States has laws against driving impaired that are pretty consistent across all states. If you get caught driving impaired you could be subject to a misdemeanor or felony. Moreover, you are more likely to cause an accident with serious injury or wrongful death.
Road Engineers
If a stop sign is poorly placed or a road’s design doesn’t allow for visibility of a stop sign or traffic signal soon enough to stop an accident from occurring in some cases, then road engineers might be to blame. This is particularly true in areas where roads are hilly or winding, and traffic signals and signs can be hidden by changes in the topography of the road.
Others Legally Responsible
In some cases, there may be a passenger who is partially responsible for this type of accident. If a passenger is obscuring the driver’s vision or otherwise impairing a driver making it difficult for them to complete the task at hand, they can be held responsible as a party involved in the t-bone accident.
Makers Of Automotive Parts
If your brakes fail at an intersection, or you have some other mechanical failure caused by a part that is defective, the company that produces the part of your motor vehicle that failed can be faulted for the accident.
Florida No-Fault Car Accidents
Florida is a no-fault state, which makes car accidents a little more complicated if you live in the state for Florida.
There are 12 states in the United States offering a type of insurance called “no-fault” through a local insurance company. These are:
- Florida
- Hawaii
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- New Jersey
- New York
- North Dakota
- Pennsylvania
- Utah
In these states, no matter who is at fault or what type of accident occurs, insurance companies pay the medical and repair fees and rates are subject to increase for both parties as a result. In a t-bone collision, where the front-end of one vehicle intersects with the side of another vehicle, it may seem clear to the drivers who is to blame for the accident. But in states with no-fault insurance companies, blame alone doesn’t equal fault, and both parties are likely to see an increase in rates.
In these cases, seeking compensation for damages may be the only way to offset the financial impact of a broadside collision.
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T-Bone Accident Compensation?: Call A Car Accident Lawyer
If you or a loved one has been injured in a t-bone accident, a personal injury lawyer should be one of your first calls. A personal injury attorney can help you out in the event of a head-on collision or broadside collision.
At the law firm of Florin|Roebig, we can help you receive compensation for your t-bone accident-related expenses. Call us today for a free consultation.
