Car crashes can be life-altering and traumatic experiences, to say nothing of how incredibly expensive they often are. It can take quite some time for your life to get back to normal, especially if you or a passenger suffered serious injuries in the collision.
After a serious car crash caused by a driver who got distracted by their phone at the wheel, you may have thousands of dollars in medical costs, a totaled vehicle and worry about whether or not you can ever go back to your job.
Insurance might not cover all of your costs, especially if the other driver didn’t have a robust policy and you don’t have underinsured driver coverage. Is texting at the wheel sufficient reason to bring a personal injury claim against a driver who caused a crash that hurt you or someone in your family?
What are common grounds for personal injury claims?
Personal injury claims are basically lawsuits brought by a party that suffered some kind of financial loss because of something someone else did or did not do. Wrongful death claims also fall under the umbrella of personal injury claims. They seek to assign civil penalties for someone who caused fatal harm to another person.
For either personal injury claims brought by someone who suffered an injury or wrongful death claims brought by those who lost a loved one, it is typically necessary to demonstrate that the defendant was either negligent in their behavior or that they committed wrongful action.
Texting at the wheel is a wrongful act in Ohio
Ohio has laws that make it illegal for anyone to manually text while driving. Unfortunately, plenty of drivers still do so because they think they can safely text while in control of a vehicle. While the law doesn’t make texting a primary offense that provides grounds for a traffic stop, it does make it clear that reading or typing a text while driving is illegal.
Even if Ohio’s law didn’t forbid manual entry into digital devices while driving, there’s little question that most people would regard texting while driving to be negligent because of the potential risk it causes.
Gathering evidence, ranging from phone records to camera recordings or photos, can be an important early part of a personal injury strategy focused on a distracted driver. Getting help with this process can potentially increase your chances of success.