Consider a situation where you and a couple of friends are zipping down a road happily with perhaps some music playing in a ride-sharing service. It sounds all too familiar. But then, after a fraction of a second, things take a turn for the worst. And your driver collides with another car. Before you know, you are injured. As you turn for medical help, you are uncertain about the legal insurance provisions of ride-sharing. Ridesharing accidental injury liabilities are genuinely something that lies in legal grey areas rather than strict black and white demarcations. When you have experienced such a ride-sharing accident observe the following steps for both health and legal reasons:

For Drivers

– Give First Priority To Your Safety

Remember, your physical health should be the priority in everything you do immediately after an accident. Follow these steps:

1. Ensure the car is not obstructing the free flow of traffic
2. Check and double-check for any injury signs
3. Check if all the people inside your vehicle are alright
4. Check on the condition of the other party, see if they are injured

Remember, if there’s any injury to anyone, it will be best to call 911 immediately and wait for help. Try to warn other oncoming drivers or your stalled car and the danger it might pose to them. Use cones, flares, or reflective triangles-whatever you come across to achieve this.

– Make Documentation Of The Accident

Due to the vague legal status of ride-sharing transport, you should immediately capture a screenshot of your smartphone app, demonstrating the ride phase at the time of the accident. As the legal experts at www.brookslawgroup.com advise, it will prove to be useful to confirm that the ride was in company jurisdiction before its cancellation. Other things you need to do are as follows:

1. Make sure to store the contact and insurance information of the other party’s driver. This step is a statutory legal requirement.
2. Talk to one or a couple of the accident’s eye-witnesses and make sure that you collect their contact details as well.
3. Take videos or pictures of the scene of the accident and the damage caused by it.
4. If the damage is substantial, it would be wise to seek police help. When the police arrive, remember to collect their contact details as well.
– Report The Accident To The Ride-Sharing Company And Your Insurance Firm

It is critically important to inform the company that facilitated the app about the accident you experienced. It is also important to inform the insurance company of the other party involved in the accident. You can inform the ride-sharing company by using company phone helplines or by messaging from within the app. Additionally, you would do well to report the incident to your insurance firm.

– Get Medical Help

In case the accident involves injuries to you, get immediate medical help. Ask them to evaluate your physical condition and assist you in getting essential treatment. Seeking medical assistance immediately after an accident is incredibly helpful if you were to have undergone long-term injuries that might not be obvious from above or at once. The treatment will serve to prove the injuries you have experienced as a result of the accident. It is crucial to note that treatment gaps might potentially put injury claims in jeopardy. And lastly, remember to keep copies of all medical bills that you had to foot to produce them with ease to get compensation for the same.

For Passengers

For accidents involving people availing of ride-sharing from the likes of Uber, the compensation sums are determined by the faulty party.

The typical amount that companies pay out to accident victims where the contractor engaged by the company is at fault, the injury compensation may extend to $1 million. At times, the responsible driver does not have insurance or the insured amount is not enough to cover injuries. For such situations, including hit-and-run incidents, the ride-sharing service should financially compensate you for your damage. For cases where the fault belongs to other drivers involved in the accident, you have to approach their insurance company for compensation. However, things get less specific and maybe even somewhat murky if both or several parties are responsible for the accident.

Remember that even if your injuries and damages are indeed covered by the ride-sharing service provider’s policies, that will not make the collection of the amount any easier. The things you need to do as a passenger of a ride-sharing service involved in an accident remain more or less the same as that of the drivers.

As you must have noticed, accident insurance and seeking financial compensation for the same is legally tricky. Such accidents become even more complicated if multiple parties are injured or are responsible for the accident. Further, there are service provider policies and insurance company requirements and protocols you need to contend with. When you consider all these things, it is best to seek expert help and professional lawyers’ counsel. Good luck to you!