Car Accident Lawyer, Red Bank NJ

It depends on who had the lane, and merge crashes on the bridge approach are argued both ways. Struck from behind in stopped bridge traffic, New Jersey presumes the driver behind you followed too closely. For a merge the rule is N.J.S.A. 39:4-88, which bars leaving a lane until the move can be made safely; for a left turn across Maple Avenue it is N.J.S.A. 39:4-90, which makes the turning driver yield to oncoming traffic. The crash report says which rule the officer thought was broken, each car's data recorder fixes speed and braking, and a commuter's dash camera is often the only view of who moved first. Send us the report and your photos first.

Yes. Riverview Medical Center is inside the borough, minutes from anywhere in Red Bank you could have been hit, and a same-day emergency room chart is the one document in the claim that neither you nor an insurer wrote: it fixes the date, the mechanism and your first complaints in a record no adjuster can credibly say you shaped later. Tell the registration desk it was a motor vehicle crash and give them your own auto insurance, because in New Jersey the bill goes to your PIP coverage first, not to your health plan, unless your auto policy was written health-primary. Keep the discharge papers; they are the first thing we ask for.

Usually, but the money may come from your own policy rather than theirs. New Jersey's basic policy under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-3.1 carries PIP and property damage coverage but no bodily injury liability coverage unless the buyer added the optional amount, so the commuter who hit you may have nothing to pay an injury claim. Your own uninsured motorist coverage then answers for the injury as if the other car had no policy, and underinsured coverage does the same when their limits stop short of the injury. We put one question to the other driver's carrier in writing, whether that policy carries any bodily injury coverage, which no adjuster volunteers. Send us both policies and the crash report; there is no fee unless we win.

No, but it raises the bar for the pain-and-suffering part of the claim. Under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-8, a driver who chose the limitation on lawsuit option can recover for pain and suffering only if the injury falls into a listed category: a permanent injury confirmed by a physician's certification, a displaced fracture, significant scarring or disfigurement, dismemberment, loss of a fetus, or death. Lost wages and medical costs beyond what PIP paid are recoverable either way. Whether a Route 35 or bridge-approach injury clears that threshold usually turns on the imaging and the treating doctor's certification, so the question is proof, not permission. Check the option on your declarations page and bring it to the free consultation.

With no driver to claim against, the injury claim runs on the uninsured motorist coverage of your own policy, and it has two clocks that start the same day: the police report, which your carrier will demand before it opens the file, and the notice to that carrier, for which your policy sets its own short deadline. If you were on foot, PIP still pays your medical bills, through your own auto policy or one in your household, and otherwise through the policy on the car that hit you if it is identified. Tell the officer which side of the tracks you were on and which way the car left; an uninsured motorist adjuster tests a hit-and-run account against those details. Call us the same day.