In Kentucky if you are a pedestrian or a bicyclist that has been hit by a car or a truck you may be wondering whether or not your medical treatment will be paid for and by whom.  This is a good questions for bicycle accident victims, as well as pedestrian accident victims. As a personal injury attorney, I can tell you that in almost every circumstance your treatment for injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident will be paid for by an insurance company.  The question is what insurance company? Is it your health insurance? Is it your car insurance? Is it the car insurance for the car that hit you?

The first place that we look is to the car that hit you, the car that caused the bicycle accident or the pedestrian accident. If the car had auto insurance their PIP benefits will pay for your first $10,000.00 of medical treatment, no questions asked, as long as the treatment is related to the accident. 

If for some reason the car that caused the accident did not have insurance we then turn to your own personal car insurance company if you owned a car.  You might think this is the last place that you should look. After all you weren’t in your car at the time of this accident. Under almost all car insurance policies your car insurance is required to pay your medical treatment from injuries sustained in an accident between a car and you if you were a pedestrian or riding a bicycle. No matter how the accident occurred your car insurance will pay as long as it was a motor vehicle accident of some sort. 

Now if the other car did not have insurance and you do not own a car you will be eligible for benefits under what is called the Kentucky Assigned Claims Plan.  This is a state run program that requires insurance companies to, on rotation, pay for medical treatment for people that did not have insurance or no insurance available to them in a particular accident.

After the PIP benefits are exhausted you will then look to your personal health insurance, Medicare or Kentucky Passport. This insurance is secondary and is not used until the $10,000.00 in No-Fault Benefits are exhausted. Your health insurance will pay under the terms of your policy for any medical bills over the $10,000.00. Your health insurance company, Medicare or Passport may be entitled to repayment under federal law called ERISA or the terms of the policy from your personal injury recovery. You should check with an attorney to determine if subrogation is required.

After the PIP benefits are exhausted you will then look to your personal health insurance, Medicare or Kentucky Passport. This insurance is secondary and is not used until the $10,000.00 in No-Fault Benefits are exhausted. Your health insurance will pay under the terms of your policy for any medical bills over the $10,000.00. Your health insurance company, Medicare or Passport may be entitled to repayment under federal law called ERISA or the terms of the policy from your personal injury recovery. You should check with an attorney to determine if subrogation is required.

The bottom line is if you’ve been in a pedestrian accident or a bicycle accident where you’ve been hit by a car you are entitled to have your medical bills paid.  So don’t hold off on getting the treatment you need to recover from your injuries.  Get the doctor and find out what’s wrong with you and get better. This will enable you to achieve the best result possible in your bicycle accident or pedestrian accident case. 

         Bicycle accidents and pedestrian accidents that happen in Kentucky pose different questions and different answers for the accident victims. Bicycle accident victims and pedestrian accident victims come into my office after being hit by a car and have suffered serious injuries. They wonder if they have a case. They’ve been hurt and they want to recover for their injuries.

        What happens if the car that hit them did not have insurance? Can the bicyclist or pedestrian be compensated for injuries they suffered in the accident through no fault of their own? There can be a recovery even if that person didn’t have insurance or they don’t have assets sufficient to pay for the injuries that they caused by their negligent actions.

As a personal injury attorney, I will look at the insurance policy of the person on the bicycle or the pedestrian to see if they have what is called your uninsured motorist coverage (UIM). This is coverage on your own car. UIM will pay for your pain and suffering in a pedestrian or bicycle accident if for some reason the car that hit you did not have insurance. Most people have no idea that their own car insurance will give those benefits under this situation.

You need to make sure that you have this coverage on your own car insurance policy, make sure that if you are hurt in an accident like this that you will be covered!

Your PIP will also pay for the first $10,000.00 of your medical bills. This happens even though you were no where close to your car.

I had a client a few years ago that was on a moped and on her way to work. She was injured by a car that ran her off the road and then took off. We never found the car and have no idea who the person was that hit her. She had very serious injuries. Her leg was broke and required two surgeries, pins and rods were inserted. There was a year of recovery. We were able to get a recovery for her by looking to the UIM on her car. This was from her own car insurance company, even though she was not driving that car at the time and she was on a moped.

You need to look seriously toward your insurance company in these situations. Give your personal injury attorney something to work with. If you are not sure if you have this coverage call your insurance agent and ask. For more information on Uninsured Motorist Coverage follow this link to get a free copy of my book “What You Don’t Know About Buying Car Insurance Can Hurt You.”

Kentucky is a No-Fault Insurance state. What does this mean? There are a lot of Kentucky accident victims who hear this term and believe that this means that it doesn’t matter who caused a automobile accident. People come into my office all the time and are confused by the term No-Fault. They believe that anyone who is injured in a Kentucky automobile accident can recover for their pain and suffering. Some people believe that no matter whose fault the accident is they are going to get paid for their injuries. This is not what it means at all.

What No-Fault means is that no matter whose fault the accident is your own personal car insurance will pay for your medical treatment for injuries from the car accident.  This means that even if the car accident was your fault you can go to the doctor. You can receive medical care and treatment for your injuries. This is where the term No-Fault comes from.

You don’t have to worry about how you are going to pay for your medical care. Your medical bills will be paid. You can go to the doctor of your choice. You don’t have to worry about the insurance company of the person that caused the accident agreeing to the treatment. There is no pre-authorization that a doctor needs to get before they can treat you for your injuries.

The name of the No-Fault Statute is actually the Motor Vehicle Reparations Act. You can find it at KRS 304.39 et seq if you really want to read the statute. It is not the most entertaining reading I have ever done by any stretch of the imagination, but it does contain the rules that cover how insurance company handle medical care and the payment for that care in auto accident cases in Kentucky.

The purpose of the No-Fault Act, as it is called, is to make sure that people that are injured in accidents are able to get the treatment they need.  This helps to give you peace of mind. It has nothing to do at all with whether or not the accident was your fault and whether you can collect for what is commonly called pain and suffering. There must be an at-fault party to sue for you to have a personal injury case and collect for your pain and suffering. No-Fault only deals with the payment of medical bills. It has nothing to do with a pain and suffering settlement.

The bottom line is if medical care is related to injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident in Kentucky they will be paid by your No-Fault benefits.

When a client comes into my office on an initial consultation, one of the questions that are almost always asked is “How much is my accident case worth?”  As a personal injury attorney I dislike talking about money at this point in time. It is too early. I have to look my potential client in the eye and say “I have no idea.”

         At this point in time there is no way to know.  At the beginning of the case there are too many questions that are left to be answered. To give an accurate assessment of what that value of a personal injury case is you must:

·        Have insurance information

·        Assess the strength of liability

·        Review and analyze all medical records

·        Know what the injuries are

·        How the accident has affected the client

·        The permanency of any injury 

Once you have finished treating and we know what the extent of your injuries are and whether or not you are going to recover or have permanent injuries that is the time to assess the value of your accident case.  You almost never can assess the value of it at the beginning of the case.  You need to wait to the end to find out what the real long-term consequences of the accident are on your life.

At that point in time a personal injury attorney will use their experience to put a value on your pain and suffering, medical bills and loss of power to labor and earn money. A valuable tool that is used is trial experience. I also use The Kentucky Trial Court Review which is put out every year by Shannon Ragland. Since 1990 Shannon has been summarizing every civil jury trial that has been tried in Kentucky. These summaries of verdicts are an invaluable tool that I use to help asses the true value of a case, which is an accident victim’s pain and suffering. By comparing a case with similar fact situations I can get an idea as to what a jury has awarded under similar circumstances.

Insurance companies have tried to systematize placing a value on a car accident case by using programs such as COLOSSUS. This computer program is used by part of the insurance industry in an effort to minimize settlement values in personal injury cases. These computer programs are used to make settlement offers uniform and to ultimately increase the insurance companies profits. The insurance adjuster simply enters the data into the program. The program then gives the adjuster a range that a case can be settled in. This is one of the many reasons your attorney needs your entire medical history and all of the facts about your automobile accident case.  By making sure the adjuster receives all the appropriate information that is used in the computer program and outlining that data, your attorney can increase the odds that the settlement offer is as high as possible.

        Placing a value on a case is not a science. Many times it is a gut feeling that only experience can truly give you.

The March 26th accident in Hart County, Kentucky is the second worst traffic accident in Kentucky history.  The worse occurred on May 14, 1988, when 27 people were killed in a bus crash caused by a drunk driver outside Carrollton, Kentucky. I was a young prosecutor at the time and was horrified by the accident. I still get a chill every time I drive pass the memorial sign on I-71.

       I would describe The Munfordville truck accident in the same one word: “horrific.” A semi truck traveling south in the early morning hours crossed the median, went through the cable barriers into the oncoming traffic and hit a van head on killing 10 of its passengers  The driver of the truck was also killed.  Several families and communities suffered great losses that morning. My heart goes out to them.

       The 10 people in the van were traveling from Marrowbone, Kentucky to Iowa for a wedding.  They were members of the Mennonite faith. As the grieving process continues with family, loved ones and communities touched by this tragedy are looking for an explanation as to why and how this happened.

       There have been some answers from this ongoing investigation of The National Transportation and Safety Board, who are investigating the crash.  The cable barriers were found to be properly installed and up to safety standards. Unfortunately there is little that can stop a truck loaded with auto parts. We know that there were no skid marks on the roadway. We can only guess as to why the driver of the tractor trailer did not brake.

       Information from The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has identified the trucking company from Alabama involved in the accident as Hester. Hester has had a poor safety rating from federal regulators and repeatedly failed roadside inspections.  The FMCSA gave Hester a rating of 88.4 based on a review of inspection in February.  The scoring range goes from 1-100, 100 being the worst score. Any score of 75 or more is considered deficient.

       The truck involved in this tragedy had been cited with problems ranging from lights, brakes, and emergency equipment.  These problems were identified in six roadside inspections since 2008.  There have not been any citations issued in 2009 or so far in 2010.

       A spokesman for the American Trucking Association said that based on the safety score the trucking company should not have been in operation. I will look with interest as the NTSB goes through their investigation. What will the driver’s log show? Was the vehicle in proper working order? Was there brake failure?  These are questions that any truck accident attorney would be interested in pursuing a wrongful death claim, as well as family and friends who are looking for answers. Although there is nothing that can be done to reverse this tragedy I hope the parties who are responsible will be held accountable. Based on the track record of Hester there is a good chance this accident could have been avoided.