Do Distracted Driving Accidents Require An Auto Accident Lawyer In Salt Lake City, UT?

Distracted driving causes an average of almost 5,200 automobile crashes in Utah annually. These accidents injure approximately 2,000 people and kill 20 more every year. The sad fact is that most of these wrecks are avoidable.

People injured in distracted driving accidents may need medical treatments and extended periods away from work during recovery, a combination that can cause financial strains and hardship. These victims might wonder if they need to hire a Salt Lake City auto accident lawyer. Fielding Law discusses distracted driving accidents and how an attorney can help.

What Is Distracted Driving?

There are three categories of distracted driving, with the common factor being that these actions take a driver’s attention away from the road:

• Cognitive distractions are thoughts that take your attention away from the road.
• Manual distractions are things that take your hands off the steering wheel.
• Visual distractions take your eyes away from the road.

Some distractions encompass all three categories, and any of them can be deadly.

What Are Common Distractions?

A multitude of things can distract you and remove your focus from driving, but there are a few widespread ones that cause many accidents:

• Using your phone for reading or responding to texts or other messages, entering a phone number, searching for music, or taking photos
• Eating, drinking, and smoking
• Interacting with children, other passengers, or pets
• Looking at scenery, wrecks in opposite lanes, or billboards
• Adjusting controls in your vehicle
• Searching for something in the floorboard, seat, or bag

Driving a car is a serious responsibility. Looking in your purse for chewing gum while in heavy traffic or at interstate speeds might seem simple, but that seemingly innocent action can have catastrophic consequences.

Is Texting While Driving Illegal?

Would you drive with your eyes closed? You might as well if you decide to text while driving. Looking at your phone and reading a text takes around five seconds, meaning your eyes won’t be on the road for that time. If your speed is 55 mph, you’ll travel roughly 100 yards (the length of a football field) in five seconds.

While you may think that five seconds isn’t much time, 100 yards is enough distance to miss brake lights in the traffic ahead of you, a car in an adjacent lane merging in front of you, animals or children darting into the path of your vehicle, or traffic signs or lights. By the time you notice these things on the road, it may be too late to avoid hitting them.

Texting while driving is illegal in most of the U.S. Some states allow hands-free phone use, and others restrict younger drivers from using their phones at all. It’s important to know and follow the laws governing cell phone usage in your state.

Why Is Distracted Driving Dangerous?

Almost anything can happen on America’s streets, roads, highways, and interstates. Avoiding a collision is challenging to the best drivers in certain conditions, such as during rush hour or other congested traffic periods, during heavy rains or snowfalls, at night, and on slick roads.

If you’re distracted and not paying attention to the road and surrounding traffic, you might:

• Unintentionally veer into oncoming traffic
• Speed up or slow down erratically
• Not see obstacles like debris on the road or large potholes
• Be unable to slow or stop quickly enough to avoid hitting other vehicles, animals, or people
• Cause a chain-reaction collision involving multiple vehicles

You could avoid most of those risks if you focus on driving. Distracted driving is negligent behavior that can severely injure or kill people.

How Does Negligence Affect Car Accident Claims?

Negligence is the foundation for most car accident and personal injury claims. A driver’s degree of negligence directly affects their liability for paying damages for injuries they cause. We’ll use an example to explain how to show negligence in car crashes.

Say that Jill is texting while driving and causes a wreck. All of the following statements must be true to show that Jill was negligent:

• Jill owed you a duty of care. Every driver has a duty of care to drive safely to minimize the risk of harming others.
• Jill breached her duty of care. Jill was texting, which is unsafe and negligent behavior.
• Jill’s breach was the cause of an accident.
• You suffered damages due to the collision Jill caused. Your damages can be bodily injuries, suffering, and vehicle damage.

Jill probably won’t admit that she was texting, so what can you do? Speak to a competent auto accident lawyer from Fielding Law. We can request Jill’s cell phone records to prove that she was using her phone immediately before your crash.

No matter what kind of distracted driving or negligence Jill is guilty of, your car accident attorney from Fielding Law can help. We will investigate the cause of your accident and seek compensation for you from the guilty party or parties.

Do You Have To Hire a Distracted Driving Lawyer?

You don’t have to hire an attorney to represent your interests in a distracted driving accident, but legal representation has many benefits. Fielding Law offers free case evaluations, so contacting us to get our opinion about your specific circumstances won’t cost anything, but it can mean the difference between a low settlement and a maximum amount of compensation.

Insurance Claim

If a distracted driver caused an accident that injured you, you’ll expect compensation from the guilty party’s insurance company. Unfortunately, most insurance companies don’t want to pay more than a minimum amount, even when their policyholder is responsible.

Unless you have legal representation, insurance company investigators and representatives might try to take advantage of you. When you hire an attorney from Fielding Law, we won’t allow that to happen. We will help file your claim, speak to representatives on your behalf, and negotiate a fair settlement for your damages.

Assigned Fault

Multiple drivers are sometimes at fault for accidents. Even if a distracted driver holds the most responsibility, you may be partly to blame. In multiple-vehicle collisions, assigning fault is even more complicated.

It’s in your best interests to be assigned a minimal degree of fault for causing your wreck because your percentage of responsibility directly affects the amount of compensation you might receive. Although you probably don’t know how to place blame where it belongs — on the distracted driver — your car accident lawyer knows how to investigate your wreck and assign blame properly.

Personal Injury Lawsuit

Your lawyer can probably negotiate a settlement without taking your case to court. However, sometimes a trial is necessary. An auto accident lawyer from Fielding Law is uniquely qualified to help you if your case goes to trial.

How Can Fielding Law Assist You if You Are a Distracted Driving Accident Victim?

We at Fielding Law focus on car accidents and personal injury cases. That means we have the experience needed to represent you successfully. Our goal is to collect maximum compensation for the damages you suffered from your distracted driving accident.

Fielding Law has the resources of a large law firm, but we take time to get to know our clients and their case details. You can always speak to your attorney; we will answer your questions and keep you informed about your case’s status and developments.

Contact Fielding Law today for your free case evaluation, and we’ll tell you how we can help.