Buckling up is the most effective thing you can do to protect yourself during a car crash. It keeps you safe and secure inside your vehicle. Without your seatbelt on, you could be thrown into a rapidly inflating air bag or out of the vehicle entirely. While most understand the lifesaving value of seatbelts and potentially fatal consequences of not wearing a seatbelt, accidents still happen when drivers and passengers aren’t buckled.
What Happens to Your Personal Injury Case if You Weren’t Wearing a Seatbelt?
Minnesota has a seatbelt law requiring all drivers and passengers to wear seatbelts or be in a proper child restraint. While failing to wear one is against the law and might land you a ticket, it doesn’t automatically negate a personal injury claim. It could, however, still impact your case in a number of ways.
Failure to Mitigate Damages
While Minnesota has a “seat belt evidence rule” that restricts using the fact that someone wasn’t wearing a seatbelt as evidence of liability or proximate cause, it can still be used as evidence of failing to mitigate damages. Which means that in a personal injury case, the insurance company or at-fault driver’s lawyer could argue that the injury was worsened by you not wearing your seat belt.
Passenger Injuries
A passenger’s failure to wear a seatbelt typically won’t have an effect on an insurance claim, unless it can be proven that the unbuckled passenger’s actions contributed to the crash.
What to Do If You Are in an Accident While Not Wearing a Seatbelt?
Regardless of whether you were or weren’t wearing your seatbelt at the time of the accident, you should always:
- Call emergency services if anyone was injured.
- Seek medical treatment as soon as possible, even if you don’t think you are injured. Your insurance company may try to use it against you if you delay.
- Exchange contact information and collect as much evidence as you can including driver’s license numbers, registration details, photos of damages and witness statements to document what happened as best you can.
- Contact an attorney. Before you talk to your insurance company, we recommend speaking with a personal injury attorney.
If you weren’t wearing your seatbelt, try not to mention it to the other driver, law enforcement or your insurance company until you’ve consulted with an attorney.
Understanding Your Rights After an Automobile Accident
Consulting with a personal injury attorney is essential to understanding your rights and how seatbelt laws might affect your specific case. Insurance companies may try to use seatbelt non-use to blur fault and minimize claims, but at Brazil Sweeney Law, we know the fault of the crash lies with the cause not whether or not you were buckled up. We’ll make sure the focus stays on the actual cause of the accident and protect your right to fair compensation. If you’ve been injured in a car accident, contact us today for a free, no-obligation case review. We’ll look at all the facts, identify the cause of the car or truck accident and seek maximum compensation from the negligent driver and his or her insurance company.