Texas Car Accident Injury Law Blog : Texas Personal Injury Lawyer & Attorney : Allen Rogers Law Firm : Austin, Fort Worth

The National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency charged with investigating major transportation accidents, voted unanimously on April 21, 2009, to cite the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ("NHTSA") for failing to implement recommendations that could lead to new safety equipment on buses, including seatbelts and stronger roofs and windows. They have been attempting to get the NHTSA to enact their suggestions since 1999.

A string of deadly bus crashes has led to more urget calls for action. It is absolutely ridiculous that the NHTSA has failed for ten years to enact rules that would save lives. Among the most recent fatal crashes:

January 6, 2008: A commercial bus with a driver and 52 passengers departed Telluride, CO, and ran off the highway near Mexican Hat, UT. The bus rolled once and 51 of the occupants were ejected. Nine passengers died and dozens were injured. The bus was being driven by a 71 year-old driver and was traveling approximately 90 m.p.h. The top was sheered off the bus, ejecting everyone except the driver who was wearing the only seatbelt on the bus, and a single passenger whose leg got stuck.

April 4, 2009: A shuttle bus carrying employees of the Resort at Squaw Creek in Lake Tahoe veered off Interstate 80 near Floriston, CA, approximately 20 miles west of Reno. It went

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Car wreck injury victims leave the scene of their wreck dazed and confused. How do I get medical treatment if I don't have health insurance? When is my property damage claim going to be settled? Frequently they get home from the hospital emergency room, clouded by pain medications, only to face a barrage of phone calls and knocks at their door from telemarketers and in-person case runners. Those telemarketers and case runners get paid a "bounty" for each patient they successfully deliver to a chiropractic clinic.

The terrible fact is, such telemarketing and in-person solicitation is completely legal in Texas! Representative Todd Smith (R-Tarrant) introduced House Bill 1519 in the 2007 legislative session to outlaw such conduct. But Governor Rick Perry vetoed the bill, even though it passed both the Texas House and Senate without a single "nay" vote. I was glad to testify in the House and the Senate on behalf of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association in favor of the bill. Why would the governor veto legislation designed to protect injury victims from unwanted strong-arm solicitation after an injury?

He gave two explanations. First, in an interview with The Texas Lawyer newspaper, his office explained that he vetoed

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Too many Texans do not have auto liability insurance. State law requires it. Many people cannot afford to buy and maintain auto insurance. They buy auto insurance when its time to renew their driver's license or their vehicle registratoin, and then the policy soon lapses when the buyer stops paying the monthly insurance premium.

What if you're in a wreck with an uninsured driver? The first question you must answer is, do you have Uninsured Motorist coverage on your own auto insurance policy? Uninsured Motorist ("UM") coverage is actually insurance you buy to protect yourself in case you're in a wreck with an uninsured driver. Be aware that experienced personal injury lawyers can often locate insurance policies that are unknown at first.

If you do have UM coverage, a claim must be set up with your own insurance company. Your personal injury attorney will generally want to handle that for you in order to minimize your direct contact with the insurance adjuster. Your insurance company will assign a claim number and they will assign an insurance adjuster to handle the claim. Of course the insurance company is going to try to put one over on you most of the time, but at least there's insurance coverage.

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The Texas Department of Insurance requires all auto insurance companies to provide the consumer with a copy of the Consumer Bill of Rights for Personal Automobile Insurance. The Bill of Rights is a summary of the consumer's rights under the auto insurance policy, but it is not part of the auto insurance policy.

Here's a link to the Consumer Bill of Rights.

Whenever a consumer has a question about their rights under the insurance policy, the Bill of Rights is a good place to look. A copy should be kept with the policy in a safe place. But the Bill of Rights will not necessarily resolve all problems that arise. It may be necessary to file a complaint with the Texas Department of Insurance or to hire an injury lawyer. When in doubt, contact an experienced injury lawyer for advice as soon as possible.

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The Texas Department of Insurance publishes as an annual index of complaints filed against auto insurance companies doing businesss in Texas. It lists each insurance company, shows the total number of complaints that are filed against it that year, the total number of auto insurance policies in effect, and an index to show how each company compares to the others in the number of complaints.

The index number basically gives a way to compare a company that has one auto insurance policy to another company that has 20,000. So a company with an index of 1.0 is average. A company with an index of 0.5 has half the number of complaints than the average company. A company with an index of 5.0 has five times the number of complaints as the average company.

For example, Allstate Insurance Company has an index of 2.18. So they have twice the number of complaints as the average auto insurer in Texas. Farmers Insurance Exchange has an index of 4.23, or four times the expected number of complaints. Kemper Independent Insurance Company has an index of 8.72, or eight times the expected number of complaints. Nationwide Property & Casualty Insurance Company has an index of 5.54, or five times the expected number of complaints.

The most recent data available is for 2007. Click here to see how your insurance company ranks.

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Insurance companies must be held accountable for all the evil and harm they cause. People who have a bad experience with an insurance company generally either hire a lawyer or just walk away with a bad deal. The problem is, if the insurance company's bad acts are not reported, they just keep doing it.

The Texas Department of Insurance is definitely not consumer-friendly. For the most part, it is dominated by insurance company insiders who pal around with the insurance industry. The TDI typically gives its approval to whatever the insurance industry wants to do. However, the TDI is still a governmental entity. And they have to follow certain rules.

One of the rules is they have to accept and record complaints that are filed against insurance companies and claims adjusters. A consumer can file a complaint online here. Those complaints are presumably investigated, but at the very least the complaint is reported in the annual "report card" that TDI gives to insurance companies when it publishes the list of insurance companies and shows the number of complaints filed each year. Here's the 2007 Automobile Complaint Index.

So don't be a sucker. File a complaint when the insurance compnay does not treat you fairly. And then immediately hire an injury lawyer.

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Test Your Road IQ and Sharing the Road Skills

Can you read the road? You may be surprised at what you learn!

1. True or False? Yellow lines on the road separate traffic traveling in the same direction.

2. Do you know what a yellow EXIT ONLY panel below a green freeway guide sign means?

3. What does a FLASHING DON'T WALK or a don't walk symbol tell you?

4. Are you permitted to cross a double solid yellow line?

5. What does a pentagon-shaped sign mean?

6. What do the familiar red, white, and blue shields tell drivers?

7. What is the purpose of the green and white "mile mark­ers"?

8. What are the orange diamond signs used for?

9. In a "weaving section" where traffic is entering and exiting a freeway interchange, who is required to yield the right-or-way?

10. What direction are you traveling if you're on an Interstate highway numbered I-494?

What's Your Score?

10 correct A True Road Warrior

8 - 9 correct A Roadway Survivor

6 - 7 correct A Roadway Explorer

4 - 5 correct A Roadway Scout

1 - 3 correct Surrender Your Keys!

Quiz Answers

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Auto insurance pays for damages, injuries, and other losses that are detailed in your policy. Depending on the type of coverage, auto insurance can either pay for your damages or another driver's damages, or a passangers damages.

The most common types of auto insurance are:

LIABILITY pays for damage caused by you to another person or another person's vehicle or other property as a result of an automobile accident. The minimum coverage allowed is $25,000 per person (and $50,000 incident) for bodily injury and $25,000 for property. Types of liability coverage include:

• Bodily Injury (BI) If you injure someone in an auto accident for which you are legally to blame, this coverage will pay claims for injury or death against you and the cost of legal defense.
• Property damage (PD) pays for damage that you cause to someone else's vehicle or property for which you are legally liable. This does not cover your car or property.

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Injury claimants recently held their noses and breathed a sigh of relief after the Dallas Court of Appeals refused to allow Irving Holdings, Inc. to completely thrown Herman Brown under the bus. The issue in the case was which statute to apply first after a jury verdict--the comparative fault statue or the limitation on recovery statute. The court of appeals held the trial court properly applied the comparative fault statute first.

When a person is involved in a car wreck, there are two aspects of Texas law that can create problems in recovering damages. Texas is a comparative fault state. That means a person cannot recover damages for the percentage of fault the jury assigns to him. So if a jury finds the injury victim to be 10% at fault, the jury's verdict is reduced by 10%. For the sake of accuracy, it should be noted that an injury victim cannot recover any damages at all if the jury finds him to be 51% or more at fault. In other words, if a jury finds the injured person to be 51% at fault and also finds his damages to me $1 million, the injured person recovers nothing.

The second aspect of Texas law that is an issue in many cases, is the idiotic limitation on recovery statute enacted by the Texas Legislature in 2003, in Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code § 41.0105. The law is so poorly written that no one really knows what it means. For the most part, Texas courts have ignored the legislative history that clearly indicates it was meant to apply to medical malpractice lawsuits. Judge Gisela Triana-Doyle has recently published an excellent article discussing this statute. Click here to read it.

The insurance industry and some right-wing activist courts assert the statute means that when an injured person has health insurance that pays a negotiated reduced amount for medical services, the amount paid by the health insurance company is the maximum amount the injured person can recover for medical bills.

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The country lost a staggering 2.6 million jobs in 2008 and unemployment his a 16-year high of 7.2%. Texas Instruments just laid off 3,400 workers. The Austin-area has lost an estimated 28,700 tech jobs.. Many retailers and restaurants are closing, or at least cutting back hours.

What does this mean for the rest of us? Among other things, it means there will likely be a significant increase in the number of uninsured drivers on the road. Some Texas will have to choose between paying rent and buying car insurance. According to the Texas Department of Insurance, 15 - 20% of drivers were uninsured in 2008. Texas has about 16 million drivers, so that means about 3 million uninsured drivers were on the road. Those numbers are sure to go up has the economy struggles in 2009.

In 2005, the Texas legislature passed a law, called TexasSure to allow police agencies to verify insurance coverage through a state-wide database. It is paid for with a $1 fee added to vehicle registration renewals. However, the program was not implemented until 2008. While the program will catch some uninsured drivers and may discourage some folks from driving without insurance, it is not going to help the person who is involved in a wreck with an uninsured driver.

See more real stories of Texans involved in wrecks with uninsured drivers here.

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