Road Rage Accidents and Injuries, and Insurance Coverage: Here’s How it Works
Road rage is seen by many as an act of violence, and, if it gets out of hand, can be a criminal act. And when you’re injured by someone as a result of a road rage incident, you may not know whether or not you can get compensation for your injuries. But in fact, you certainly can.
What is Road Rage?
Road rage is a broad term, for what can be a wide variety of actions.
Road rage can entail another driver getting out of his vehicle to personally and physically confront someone else. But it can also involve drivers remaining inside their cars, and simply driving aggressively. Imagine a driver, angered, who purposely tries to run your car off the road, or who purposely tails you very closely from behind.
Sometimes, someone may just be so angry that they in fact do, accidentally, cause an accident. Imagine a driver who is so desperately trying to catch up to you to yell at you (or worse), and that driver ends up losing control of his vehicle.
Inside the Vehicle
Road rage accidents that happen when the other driver is inside the vehicle, such as purposefully running into another car, have a better chance of being covered by the other driver’s insurance company.
Many insurance companies don’t cover intentional criminal acts, like road rage, but most people who cause accidents because of road rage, won’t admit to acting purposefully–some will claim that it was “just an accident,” and as such, they are unknowingly allowing you to access their insurance coverage, which does cover accidents.
This is one reason why you should get an attorney to help you in road rage accidents, before saying anything. If you claim that the other driver in fact acted purposefully and out of anger, even if he or she did so, you may be allowing the other driver’s insurance company to deny coverage.
And really, there is a very subtle difference between aggressive driving (which is normally covered under car insurance) and road rage (which generally is not covered), so you should wait until you speak to an injury attorney who can help you, before claiming that any driver acted intentionally or not.
The Jury May Not be Happy
Insurance companies, in road rage cases, are in a difficult position, because they also know that if a jury does suspect anger, or hostility, or an aggressive act, the jury will not take kindly to that kind of behavior. In fact, in many cases, Defendants will admit to liability, in order to try to avoid the jury from ever hearing that the driver was enraged.
Outside of the Vehicle
Accidents that happen outside of vehicles, such as when someone steps out of a car and attacks another driver, create different problems, because that is often blatant evidence of intentional behavior that is normally excluded from insurance policies.
Still, there may be situations, such as when the enraged driver was working at the time of the road rage, where there may be someone or an entity that can compensate you for your injuries.
Schedule a consultation with our Tampa personal injury lawyers at Barbas, Nunez, Sanders, Butler & Hovsepian today to see if you can be compensated if you have been injured in any kind of road rage accident.
