Side-Swipe Car Accident Attorneys in Kentucky

If you are injured in a side swipe accident in Kentucky, you should immediately do the following:

Call 911 to get help from police and ambulance if needed: By Kentucky law you are required to report accidents to a police immediately and not move your vehicle unless you need to move your vehicle for safety reasons. The police will issue a report after they come to the scene.  This report is vital in proving that you are not at fault.  The police, upon arrival, will question all the drivers and passengers to see what happened including information for insurance. The report is used primarily by insurance companies to determine fault.

Call an ambulance: If you are severely injured or disoriented or anyone in the accident is injured and need immediate medical attention an ambulance should be called.  You can do so by dialing 911.  If you are injured you should not drive yourself to the hospital, but let an ambulance take you.  It is also very important to document your injuries and reporting immediate medical injuries from an accident is crucial to establishing a case.

What About the Accident Scene: If it is possible or one of your passengers can do so take pictures of the collision and of the vehicle.  Those photos are always extremely helpful in later proving fault.  Once you hire our law firm we will go to the scene and take pictures of the scene, skid marks, and the vehicles involved in the collision wherever possible.

When Should You Call a Side Swipe Car Accident Attorney? You can call us 24 hours a day, seven days a week to get the help you need.  We often meet clients at the emergency room when they have been injured in collisions.  The sooner you contact an experienced side swipe car accident lawyer the easier it will be to establish your case. It is also important at our law firm to obtain statements from witnesses since the police often do not obtain statements or will not give us the statements that they obtain.

Common Causes of Side Swipe Accidents

Side swipe accidents happen when one driver drifts into the other driver’s lane.  They can be traveling in the same direction or in different directions, but the results are equally tragic.

What can cause people to end up in one another’s lanes? Most side swipe accidents are the result of driver error.

• Distracted driving
• Poor timing while merging
• DUI/DWIs
• Driving while tired
• Failure to check the blind spot
• Sudden objects in the road which cause drivers to swerve
• Overcorrecting after a driving error
• Improper turns when there is more than one turn lane
• One driver cuts the other driver off
• Errors while leaving curbside parking spots
• Prevailing road conditions which can hamper visibility, or cause skidding, slipping or sliding while attempting to merge into another lane

Who is at fault for a side swipe accident?

Police will usually assign fault to the vehicle who was leaving their lane of travel. Of course, things get muddier when both cars tried to leave their lane of travel at the same time.  In very serious cases with catastrophic injuries our team of experts will include an accident reconstructionist who will travel to the scene and reconstruct the collision to determine who was at fault.

There are also exceptions.  The driver who did not leave their lane of travel can be at fault in cases where a driver suddenly sped up as the merging driver attempted to execute the merge.

In some very rare cases, the accident can be caused by a mechanical fault or failure, at which point we’d hold the manufacturer liable.

As long as another party carries the bulk of the negligence for your case, we can help you recover compensation.