Can You Be Compensated For Road Rage Accidents?

Usually, car accidents are just that: accidents. But sometimes, they are a little bit more. Sometimes, they can have an element of anger, hostility or threats. We’re talking about road rage, which often goes beyond just aggressive words or gestures, and can morph very quickly into a car accident or collision.

Identifying Road Rage

Road rage has been known to manifest as gun violence with ample stories of people shooting at each other on the road. Other times, the anger or hostility by a driver leads them to drive so carelessly, that they inadvertently cause a car accident. On some occasions, they may even intentionally cause an accident. They may threaten drivers, causing those drivers to cause accidents in attempts to escape the enraged, and potentially dangerous, driver.

Insurance Coverage Problems

When someone causes you injury out of anger or if they act intentionally—and possibly, even criminally—you may have a problem with the other driver’s insurance company. Many insurance companies won’t cover intentional or criminal acts.

That can lead to the other driver’s insurance, denying them coverage—something that hurts them, but also you, as the victim of the road rage-induced accident. Both you and the other driver may be on the same side for this one issue, both trying to get the road raged driver’s insurance company to agree to insure their driver.

Juries and Road Rage

When road rage is involved, insurance companies that do agree to cover negligent drivers, may be in a tough spot. That’s because there is no jury in the world that likes or sympathizes with road rage. In a trial, mention of a driver’s hostile, aggressive or even violent behavior, is a sure fire way to draw a jury’s ire—something insurance companies know.

Criminal Charges

In some cases, the driver who had road rage and caused the accident, may be criminally charged. If you suspect your accident is a result of road rage, it is something you should tell the investigating officer, and you should consider pressing criminal charges against the other driver.

Fault is With the Enraged Driver

Road rage is independent of who is at fault in an accident.

For example, imagine that you ran a stop sign and almost hit another driver. In anger, the other driver tails you from behind, and eventually, slams into the back of your car. He gets out and threatens you.

Although you were at fault for running the stop sign originally, it is the road rage, and the other driver’s actions, that actually caused the accident. The other driver cannot defend his behavior and actions by saying that you ran the stop sign.

That’s why in road rage accidents, it’s important to recognize the road rage, and the driving that it caused, and not be distracted by what you, as the victim may or may not have done wrong while driving.

Injured in a road rage accident? We can help. Contact our Rhode Island injury lawyers at Robert E. Craven & Associates at 401-453-2700 for help today.

Source:

iii.org/article/road-rage-and-auto-insurance