Car Accident Lawyer, Little Egg Harbor Township NJ

Your own auto insurer pays the medical bills first, whatever the other driver says happened, because PIP under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4 runs without regard to fault. His account that you stopped short rarely changes who is responsible, since a driver coming up from behind is expected to leave room for a car that slows to turn. What it does change is how hard his insurer argues that you share the blame, so the details are worth recording now: your turn signal and brake lights, where your car sat in the lane, and how the two cars were damaged. Photograph all of it, open the medical claim with your own insurer the same day, and call us before you give his insurer a statement.

From your own policy, through its underinsured motorist coverage, but only when the coverage you carry is worth more than what his policy holds. The order of events matters. First his carrier offers what its policy has; before you accept, your own insurer must get written notice of that offer and a chance to respond, and only then is a release signed. After that your own company owes the difference between his limits and yours, and it will test your injuries as hard as his insurer would have. The same part of the policy, uninsured motorist coverage, answers when the driver who hit you carried nothing or left the scene. Have your own coverage page ready when you call, and sign nothing from his carrier first.

The New Jersey State Police patrol the Parkway and write the crash report, not the township officers on Radio Road. A lawsuit over a crash on the township's stretch of the Parkway would normally be filed in New Jersey, usually in Ocean County Superior Court, where civil filings go to 118 Washington Street in Toms River. Check the municipality on the report, because the Parkway runs only about four miles through Little Egg Harbor before crossing into Bass River Township in Burlington County, and that can change the county. Either way the deadline is generally two years under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2. Send us the report number and we will order the file and any trooper video.

Not until it has been inspected, because a car released for salvage is gone as evidence within days. Many newer vehicles store speed, braking and seat belt information in a crash module, and that download has to happen while the car still exists, as do photographs of the airbags, the seat positions and the interior. Ask the adjuster in writing to hold the vehicle, tell the storage yard the same thing in writing, and keep a copy of both requests. None of that stops you from accepting a fair figure for the car itself afterward. Tell us where the vehicle is being kept before you sign a total loss release.

A crash with no witnesses is proved by testing the other driver's story, not by finding a bystander. Start with what was said: the account each driver gave the responding officer, the 911 calls and their timing, and whatever the other driver later tells his own insurer, because a version that shifts is evidence in itself. If a lawsuit is filed, his phone records for those minutes can be subpoenaed. Then comes the damage to the two vehicles, which can show the angle of impact and help establish which car had crossed the center line of a two-lane road like Route 539. Write your own account down today while it is fresh, and give it only to us and your own insurer.