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Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Coverage

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It is a sad situation when a victim of a serious car accident discovers that their auto insurance policy doesn’t provide them with the type of protection they need.  Or, if the insurance company for the person at fault denies coverage for the collision.

Although the law requires that all Texas drivers have auto liability insurance, not everyone follows the law.  In some instances, many drivers only carry the minimum auto insurance requirement, which is $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident.  If you are involved in a car accident, your medical bills alone can exceed $30,000.00.  Your auto liability insurance policy alone won’t help you recover those medical costs if the driver at fault either didn’t carry insurance or didn’t carry enough to cover your damages.  In that situation, if all you have is liability insurance, through no fault of your own you would be on the hook for your own damages, like your medical bills.  That’s where Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Coverage comes into play.

Even if you’re the most learned and careful driver on the road, your skills won’t protect you alone from other drivers with no insurance or not enough insurance.  You should consider UM/UIM (uninsured/underinsured) auto coverage.  With UM/UIM coverage, you’ll be able to recover your losses such as medical bills or lost wages.

In Uninsured Motorist coverage in an auto policy, you are essentially buying auto insurance for another driver who causes an accident and did not have auto liability insurance of their own.  In Underinsured Motorist coverage, claims are paid up to the policy limit of the underinsured driver and the insurance company pays the balance of the coverage that you purchased in your policy.  In other words, if the underinsured driver was only able to cover $10,000 in your damages, and your policy limits for underinsured drivers with your insurance company covers damages up to $60,000, the insurance company is required to pay the remaining amount of damages after the first $10,000 is collected from the other driver’s insurance.  

UM/UIM insurance also covers you and any household family member riding in any car as well as any non-family members riding in your insured auto.  Most UM/UIM policies will provide coverage for hit-and-run accidents, as long as there was physical contact between the vehicles and the accident was promptly reported.  Typically, UM/UIM coverage will pay for losses including medical bills, personal injuries, lost wages and property damage.

Although Texas law does not require you to purchase UM/UIM coverage, your insurance company must get you to sign a valid written waiver in order to exclude the coverage from your policy.  Many drivers carry UM/UIM coverage without even knowing it, and some drivers think they have it even if they don’t.  Those who choose not to buy UM/UIM coverage should think again.  It is usually quite inexpensive, even as little as $43 per year, and can provide much needed coverage if you are injured in an accident with an uninsured or underinsured motorist.

So, if you are a Dallas resident, you should check to see if you have UM/UIM insurance coverage.  Should the unfortunate happen and you are involved in a wreck on the Dallas roadways, UM/UIM coverage will provide you some insurance protection if the driver at fault is either uninsured or underinsured.

Personal Injury on Your Property: What is Covered?

Texas Wrongful Death and Survival Claims Explained

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There is often confusion about Texas wrongful death and survival claims, but Dallas serious personal injury attorney, Ben DuBose, explains, “When tragedy strikes and a person dies because of someone’s negligent conduct, Texas law provides for two general types of recovery in our civil court system: wrongful death and survival claims.”

Survival claims

Survival claims are those personal injury claims the deceased individual would have if they were living. The individual’s death does not extinguish these claims. Rather, they “survive” their death and belong to the estate of the decedent. Survival claims include claims for pain, suffering, mental anguish, lost wages, as well as medical expenses related to treatment of the injury that caused the death.

Wrongful death claims

In addition, claims can be brought by the family of the decedent for wrongful death. Wrongful death claims exist by statute in Texas and belong to the family members of the decedent for the loss of their spouse, parent, or child.

How wrongful death and survival claims work together

DuBose points out that “while wrongful death and survival claims are separate claims, they are brought in the same lawsuit.”

A surviving spouse, parent or child may bring the wrongful death action. However, if none of those individuals have brought the claim within three months of the death of their loved one, the executor of the estate may bring the claim.

Surviving siblings do not have standing to bring a wrongful death action in Texas. However, most states have a wrongful death statute and the classes of relatives with standing to bring a claim vary from state to state.

In some Texas wrongful death claims, exemplary damages are available. Exemplary damages are permitted if the jury finds a wrongful death is caused by a willful act or omission, or by gross negligence. The purpose of exemplary damages is not to compensate the family, but to punish a wrongdoer and to make an example that willful or grossly negligent behavior will not be tolerated.

The award of damages in a Texas wrongful death claim is typically made by a jury. The jury allocates the damage award among the surviving family members in proportion to the injury they suffered as a result of the untimely death.

The Texas wrongful death statute can be found here.

Uber Self-Driving Car Kills Pedestrian

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The first case of a pedestrian killed by a self-driving car occurred in Tempe, Arizona. This technology is still in the experimental phase, however Uber self-driving cars are on the roads in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Toronto – as well as Tempe.

Are self-driving cars safer?

Increased safety was the initial premise for the existence of unmanned self-driving cars. One of the primary causes of automobile accidents is distracted driving. In a robotic car, that should not be a problem, but obviously there are issues to be addressed. Building systems to automatically react appropriately in unexpected situations is a difficult task.

What happened in Tempe?

In this case, the car did have a human in the car as a backup. It appears the car, a Volvo XC90, was going about 40 MPH on dry streets with clear weather at 10 p.m. on a Sunday. An investigation is ongoing since the safety driver did not appear impaired. The victim, a 49 year-old woman, was walking her bicycle in the street. Though this was the first accident involving a pedestrian, one of these autonomous vehicles collided with another car in March of 2017.

Safety measures in place

Because states are eager to encourage testing, there are few regulations in place – not only with Uber, but Waymo, Lyft and Cruise, owned by General Motors. Doug Ducey, governor of Arizona, said in 2017, “We needed our message to Uber, Lyft and other entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to be that Arizona was open to new ideas.” Originally Arizona mandated a backup driver in the car, but recently that was changed to allow testing of unmanned self-driving cars. This leniency is to boost the economy by allowing a low regulatory environment.

California is on the cusp of allowing unmanned vehicles, but is still investigating the proposition. In its testing of manned self-driving cars, Waymo has produced statistics required by California. When a human has to take control, it’s called a disengagement. In just over a year, Waymo’s cars drove 350,000 miles with 63 disengagements. This averages approximately 5,600 miles between disengagement events, clearly demonstrating the need for more testing before widespread use of unmanned vehicles.

Michael Bennett, an associate research professor at Arizona State University, has been studying the reaction of the public to driverless cars and their artificial intelligence. His comment on the aftermath of the Tempe pedestrian incident reveal his conclusion, “We’ve imagined an event like this as a huge inflection point for the technology and the companies advocating for it. They’re going to have to do a lot to prove that the technology is safe.”

Who’s Fault is Injury from Self-Driving Car?

“Look for insurance companies to lobby for profound changes in state insurance requirements and state laws”, says Dallas lawyer, Ben DuBose. “However, in the Arizona Uber incident, there was a back-up driver in the car. So, there’s still a question of why the back-up driver didn’t disengage and potential liability for her. People will still need car auto insurance and will still have potential liability.”

At the same time, as we head into the self-driving car era, DuBose says to look for additional new legal theories to address the autonomous car features. Automobile manufacturers and software designers will face new product liability claims. As even Volvo Car Corp. Vice President, Anders Karrberg recently testified before Congress “[c]armakers should take liability for any system in the car. So we have declared that if there is a malfunction to the [autonomous driving] system when operating autonomously, we would take the product liability.”