Large families might have several licensed drivers living under the same roof. They also may have multiple vehicles. Alternatively, maybe there are several licensed drivers, but they’re all sharing the same one or two cars.
If your family has multiple licensed drivers, one of you might need to contact a car accident lawyer at some point. This is a law firm or individual practitioner who handles car accident cases or personal injury lawsuits.
Whether another vehicle hit your family member’s car or they caused an accident themselves, you’ll want a capable lawyer who can advise you on what to do next. Below are some of the common reasons you’ll need to contact a car accident attorney.
A Family Member Drove Drunk and Hit Another Vehicle
Maybe you have a relative who’s a problem drinker. It’s not uncommon, particularly if you have alcoholism in your family.
Perhaps this individual had one too many at a bar, and instead of calling for an Uber or getting a taxi, they thought they would be okay driving home. Perhaps they swerved out of their lane and collided with another vehicle, or maybe they hit a parked car.
You’ll certainly want to contact a car accident lawyer by clicking here. You’ll want an attorney who can convince a judge to give your relative a lenient sentence.
You’d hope that your relative did not injure anyone too severely. Perhaps this can be the wakeup call they need so they can turn their life around and stop drinking or cut back dramatically.
Your Teen Driver Hit Another Car or a Pedestrian in a Parking Lot
If you have a teen driver in the family, you’re probably proud of them, but maybe you’re a little nervous every time they take the car out as well. You know that they’re still just a kid, even if they are a licensed driver now, and they haven’t had very much real-world driving experience.
Some teen drivers have a hard time backing up or maneuvering a car into or out of a tight parking space. Perhaps they’re trying to back up with cars on either side of them, and they accidentally hit another vehicle. Maybe they even hit a pedestrian who they didn’t see coming.
You’ll likely want to get your teen driver a car accident lawyer in that situation as well. Since they’re young and inexperienced, their lawyer can probably get a judge to be lenient with them, assuming they show remorse for what happened.
You Ingested Drugs and Got in a Car Accident
Ingesting drugs and then driving is just as bad as consuming alcohol and then hopping behind the wheel. Maybe you’re in a state where marijuana is legal recreationally now. You might have eaten a weed gummy and driven to the store.
If you ingest marijuana, or if you do some other drug, you’re impaired, and you have no business driving. If you hit another vehicle and the police detect that you’ve under the influence of something, you’ll likely want to hire a car accident lawyer who has dealt with similar cases in the past.
Again, you’ll probably do best in this situation if you can show remorse and state sincerely that you’ll never do it again. If this is your first offense, you may escape without any jail time unless you killed or seriously injured someone. You’ll have to learn from this incident since what you did is potentially quite serious, and next time you might inflict even worse damage.
Your Older Relative Hit Another Vehicle
You might have a situation where you have an older relative, like a grandmother or grandfather, and they live with you. They’ve probably been driving for many years, but perhaps their cognitive abilities are not what they once were. Maybe they have dementia, or maybe they can’t see or hear as well as they once could.
That’s a recipe for a car accident. If you allow your older relative to keep driving, it’s probably only a matter of time till they hit someone or something.
You’ll have to contact a lawyer, and the best option might be to tell the judge that your older relative will surrender their driver’s license. They might not want to do it, but you may have to compel them to.
You can tell them that you will help drive them around from now on if they need to go somewhere. They can also take public transportation sometimes.