Being involved in an auto accident can be scary, even when the collision is minor and there are no injuries. In some cases, car accidents may cause serious injuries that leave victims with painful conditions that can last for the rest of their lives. A vehicle crash can also result in costly medical bills, lost wages, expensive auto repairs, and other damages. Fortunately, a victim may pursue a personal injury that will allow them to recover compensation that will cover all or some of those expenses. To do so, the other driver's negligence must be proved using four elements: duty of care, breach of duty of care, causation, and damages.

Duty of Care

The idea behind negligence in Illinois is that drivers have a duty to take reasonable measures to ensure they do not hurt others who are on the road. This means that drivers are responsible for obeying all traffic laws and using other precautions when driving. Examples of obeying this duty of care include:

Every motorist becomes annoyed from time to time while driving. Maybe a driver forgot to use his or her turn signal, or a driver was not paying attention when the light turned green. Being bothered by other motorists on the road is almost an inevitable part of driving, but in some cases, it can escalate to an entirely different situation. According to a study conducted by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, nearly 80 percent of drivers felt significant anger or aggression behind the wheel at least once. Road rage is an especially dangerous form of reckless driving, because it can lead to car accidents, resulting in injury or even death. It is important to understand the signs of aggression or road rage in yourself and other drivers to help prevent these accidents.

What Is Road Rage?

Road rage is typically defined as any aggressive or dangerous behaviors that occur because of a driver’s uncontrolled anger toward other motorists. Various acts are considered to be examples of road rage, including:

• Tailgating

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In today’s world, it can feel like we always need to keep moving and doing more every day. For some people, driving a little faster than the speed limit to fit everything into a single day seems like a good idea, but what may seem like a minor violation of the law can have deadly consequences. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), speeding killed more than 9,700 people in 2017 and accounted for more than 25 percent of all fatal traffic accidents. Often, speeding may seem like a victimless crime, but speeding accidents can cause serious or fatal injuries. 

Why Do People Speed?

There are many reasons why a driver would speed. Most of the time, the reasons for speeding are not malicious, but speeding for any reason can be dangerous. Drivers may speed because they are:

Millions of car accidents are reported to police each year and range in severity from property damage only to fatal accidents. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there were nearly 6.5 million police-reported traffic crashes in 2017. While the majority of them were property-damage-only crashes, there were nearly 2 million crashes involving injuries and more than 34,000 fatal crashes.

One of the most serious injuries you can suffer when you are in a car accident is a brain injury. The brain is arguably the most important organ in your body because it controls all of your bodily functions. Injuring this organ can result in long-term or even permanent impairment to both your physical and mental states. Suffering a brain injury from a car accident may entitle you to financial compensation if the crash was someone else’s fault.

Picture this: You are in your car, stopped at a red light. The light turns green, so you hit the gas, but all of a sudden, a car running a red light comes out of nowhere and slams into the side of your vehicle. You put your hazard lights on and get out of your vehicle, trying to assess any damage to you or your car. You talk to the other driver and ask for their insurance information, but the other driver does not have insurance. What do you do in a situation like this?

Uninsured motorist collisions happen more often than you might think. According to the latest data available from the Insurance Information Institute, approximately 13 percent, or one in eight, motorists were uninsured in the United States in 2015. Even if a person has insurance, his or her coverage might not fully cover the costs of the damages sustained in an accident. If you are involved in an accident with an uninsured or underinsured motorist, here are a few tips to follow: