Recovering For Your Injuries In Failure-To-Yield Accidents
Failing to yield the right-of-way is one of the most common car accident cases throughout the entire state of Georgia. The consequences of a driver failing to yield can lead to a whole array of serious legal implications, from minor fender benders to catastrophic collisions with motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians.
Even when a failure to yield leads to a minor collision, the accident victims can be left with endless medical bills. This is exactly why it’s so crucial to understanding your legal rights in this type of accident situation because Georgia law will entitle failure-to-yield accident victims to their rightful compensation towards their financial recovery.
At Greathouse Trial Law, we pride ourselves on the success of our past clients and our continuous mission to support accident victims of all types in terms of recovering their finances and truly getting their lives back in order. We know what it takes to ensure that you or your loved ones obtain their rightful compensation, so if you have any questions feel free to reach out to us for a free consultation so we can review the details of your case and put you in the best position for legal recourse.
What Constitutes a Failure to Yield?
Georgia motorists, like drivers all across the country, are often rushing from Point A to Point B on a daily basis. This is simply a part of our ever-evolving society, but when a driver causes a car accident by failing to yield they can leave themselves and the other victims of the accident permanently altered.
Yielding technically means that you must wait as other drivers (or pedestrians) go, due to the other driver or pedestrian having the right-of-way. There are countless situations in which drivers must yield the right-of-way, and when a failure to yield causes a collision it’s always the law-breaking driver’s legal liability to be responsible for the ensuing injuries and damages.
Georgia’s Right-Of-Way Laws are pretty straightforward when it comes to who’s liable in terms of crossing or entering a roadway, but these types of traffic violations can also involve negligent conduct pertaining to the following roadway scenarios:
- Not properly checking blind spots
- Speeding or other types of reckless driving
- Drunk driving
- Changing lanes in an unsafe manner
- Driving through traffic
- Passing motorcycles
- Driving through pedestrian crosswalks
- Not properly sharing roadways with bicyclists
- Any kind of improper left-hand turns
- Failing to yield at a four-way stop intersection or other turnabouts
- Merging onto a highway
- Pulling out onto roadways from a parking lot or driveway
- Failing to yield to emergency vehicles
Whether a driver was acting recklessly or made an innocent mistake, failing to yield along Georgia’s roadways can lead to very serious accidents and subsequently personal injury liability for any associated damages.
Common Types of Injuries in Failure-to-Yield Accidents
It’s not uncommon for motorists to have very little time to react when another driver fails to yield along any given roadway, and the overall tendency for a driver to swerve into other lanes, brake, or generally overcorrect to avoid a negligent driver is high. Victims of failure-to-yield accidents will typically face costly repairs, but more importantly, they’ll be susceptible to a whole variety of different serious injuries.
Some of the common injuries associated with failure-to-yield accidents include the following:
- Various types of neck pain
- Bone fractures and sprains
- Head injuries, including TBIs
- Moderate to serious lacerations
- Blood loss and sepsis
- Damage to an individual’s spinal cord and back muscles
- Permanent disfigurement
- Cognitive impairment
The overall severity of these types of injuries will ultimately depend upon the amount of force involved within the collision, as well as the areas of the body that are directly affected upon impact. It’s crucial that victims of failure-to-yield accidents understand how they’re entitled to compensation, and how an experienced Georgia car accident attorney can help make your maximum, rightful compensation more attainable.
Failure-to-Yield Personal Injury Liability
Georgia’s comparative negligence laws will hold negligent drivers responsible for the injuries that they caused, but it also leaves room for defendants to attempt to determine the overall percentage of a plaintiff’s fault in terms of the accident’s overall occurrence.
When it comes to failure-to-yield accidents, the negligent driver is typically found to have failed to exercise due care rather easily. “Negligence per se” is also a likely possibility within these types of personal injury cases because the negligent driver also violated statutory rules of the road during their failure to yield.
This type of breach of duty will typically make at-fault drivers liable for all the resulting damages associated with the failure-to-yield accident, including the following examples:
- Property damage
- Medical costs
- Vehicle repairs
- Loss of income/work
- Funeral expenses
- Future medical care
- Occupational/Physical therapy
- Pain and suffering
- Surgery and other outpatient medical costs
- Loss of quality of life
- Wrongful death
Determining fault after a car accident does not require proving the actual intent of the negligent driver. What we focus on within these types of personal injury cases is the defendant’s violations of their legal duty to keep other drivers safe. When a driver fails to yield, they’re explicitly acting negligently by endangering others within their moment of overall carelessness.
This type of conduct will always provide a sufficient amount of evidence to hold the defendant’s liable for the victim’s damages, but recovering your rightful compensation is a lot easier said than done!
Recovering your Rightful Compensation
The first thing that failure-to-yield accident victims must do is consult an experienced Georgia personal injury specialist when they’re within the beginning stages of dealing with a negligent driver and their insurance company. Some people think that insurance companies will look out for their own best interests while “representing” them, but this is typically far from the truth.
You should never accept any offer or sign any release forms from the other party’s insurance company prior to obtaining assistance from your legal counsel. Dealing with insurance companies is simply one of the first of many complex legal issues that accident victims must face, which is why it’s so clear how an experienced Georgia car accident attorney can help you get your most favorable results.
Contact Us Today For A Free Consultation
Attorney Riah Greathouse has over a decade of experience working through all types of personal injury cases, so if you or a loved one was involved in a failure-to-yield accident you should contact us today for a free consultation.
When you call us we’ll be able to better understand the finer details of your accident and determine what your best course of legal action is in terms of successfully obtaining you or your loved one’s full and rightful compensation.
