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In reply to the discussion: I was in a pretty bad car accident ( Edited to add Update) [View all]ShazzieB
(19,243 posts)8 years ago (I think?), my husband and I got t-boned by a guy who ran a red light when my husband was trying to turn left on a green arrow. Since the idiot was driving a big old SUV and we were in a compact car, the impact caved in the driver's side of our car, and my husband (the driver) ended up with a broken hip that put him in the hospital, followed by rehab, for 2 months total.
The impact also caused our car to slam into the car behind us (which was also trying to turn left), and the driver of that car confirmed that we had a green arrow and the othe guy was responsible. That was a bug relief to my husband, who had been second guessing himself as to whether the driver that hit us actually had a red light.
Our car was beyond totalled. They used the jaws of life to remove the driver's side door in order to get my husband out and then had to remove the back door as well (basically the whole left side of the car) to extricate him. There wasn't much left of the car after that. (Amazingly, my husband didn't have a mark on him; all of the damage to him was internal.)
I didn't think I was injured at all, but the next day I woke up aching in what felt like a thousand different places, and it took several days for that to subside.
We immediately agreed that we needed to get a lawyer, and I'm so glad we did. Among other things, when the hospital and medical bills started arriving, the lawyer told us to just bring them into the office, which we did, and they handled everything from there. When you're injured in a motor vehicle accident, your health insurance company, your auto insurance company, and the other driver's auto insurance company immediately start wrangling over who has to cover what, and the lawyer did all the necessary wrangling on our behalf. Not having to deal with all of that was a real sanity saver.