Some car crashes will wreck your vehicle, but others could leave you with major injuries. Amputations, compound or comminuted fractures, spinal cord injuries and brain injuries can all potentially leave someone unable to work after a car crash. The more demanding someone’s career and the more severe their injuries, the more likely a crash is to negatively impact someone’s lifetime earning potential.
If you or a member of your immediate family suffered this kind of injury in a wreck, you will likely need to file a substantial insurance claim. The driver at fault for the crash should have liability coverage that will cover both medical bills and potentially your lost wages. Will Insurance be enough to cover those expenses?
Car insurance might cover a year of income or so
Every driver gets to decide how much liability coverage they want to carry, and some people have much more insurance than others. Some drivers have as little as $30,000 in bodily injury liability protection.
Depending on your current wages and the benefits package your employer offers, even the full amount of insurance coverage may not cover one year of lost wages, to say nothing of several decades of lost income. No insurance company will pay more on a claim than the maximum amount of coverage someone carried, regardless of how much someone stands to lose.
If you invested in underinsured driver coverage, your own policy may help to supplement those benefits. Even so, your policy may also fall short of the long-term impact of your injuries.
How can you recoup your lost income?
When a driver doesn’t carry enough liability insurance to compensate someone that they hurt in a crash, the victim of that collision could take them to court. A North Carolina personal injury lawsuit could result in a judgment awarding you all of the damages you have suffered, including those future lost wages.
In some cases, there might even be a third party, such as an employer or a vehicle manufacturer, who has partial liability for the crash, which could give you more options. Learning more about insurance and personal injury law can help you push for compensation after you get hurt in a car crash.