Memphis Injury Law Blog : Memphis Personal Injury Lawyer & Attorney : James Ferrell Law Firm : Tennessee, Mississippi

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Last week, hundreds of Memphis students turned out to pay their respects to a teenager who was killed in a multi-vehicle accident. 14-year-old Walnut Grove-resident Meredith Fox was killed last Tuesday when the car she was riding in crashed on the Walnut Grove-Humphrey's flyover. According to news reports, the Isuzu Trooper struck a curb, and ended up flipping over. Another passenger continues to be hospitalized with serious injuries, while the 17-year-old driver sustained minor injuries.

Predictably, the accident has turned attention to teen motorists. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

• Motor vehicle accidents are the number one cause of death for teenagers. Sixteen-year-old teen drivers have a three times higher chance of dying in automobile accidents than other motorists.
• Teen drivers aged between 16 and 19 have the highest crash risk of any motorist on the roads.
• Teens also have some of the worst driving behaviors, including low rates of seat belt use, and high rates of distraction from passengers.

Teen safety on the roads has also influenced the Ford Motor Company. The automaker announced earlier this month that its MyKey safety feature, which helps parents restrict and control their teen's driving, will be standard on a number of models, including the Taurus. MyKey helps parents set maximum speed limits for their children, shuts down the ignition system when teen motorists and front seat passengers are not buckled up, and offers a host of other safety features 

Whether MyKey will impact teen accident rates remains to be seen. 

As a Memphis personal injury lawyer however, I believe that no technology can take the place of the right driver education for teen motorists. We send too many young, brash and inexperienced drivers out on the road, without the right kind of skill sets to handle real-life driving situations. Driver education programs in Tennessee could do with stronger and more aggressive reinforcement of safety messages for these vulnerable motorists. Ultimately, that is what will prevent accidents, and create a generation of smart and informed motorists in Memphis, and around Tennessee.

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Because we are a personal injury and car wreck law firm we got hundreds of calls a year asking about situations in which people where involved in some type of car accident. We don't always have time to answere these questions on the phone due to our current caseload so here on the Memphis Injury Law Blog I'll try to answer some of our most frequently asked questions.

Question: I was in a small accident where my car crashed into someone else's car while we were both in a parking lot. There wasn't much damage to either of our cars and noone in the other car seemed to be hurt. I don't want to report the accident and have my car insurance rates go up. Do you recommend just settling with the other drive and not reporting this to my insurance company?

Answer: It might be tempting to just attempt to settle everything on your own and not report this to your insurance company, especially if this isn't your first accident. But NOT reporting the accident to your insurance company could be a really BAD idea.

We all make mistakes. And each of us pays an insurance premium, in part, so that we don't have to deal with the headach of the mistake and claim ourself. If you don't report the claim immediately what could happen is that in a few months the guy you hit might find out that his injuries were much worse than both of you previously thought, and his back is still hurting. Because you didn't report the claim to your insurance company you're going to be defending the claim all by yourself.

If you had reported this to your insurance company months ago then his claim would have been handled by your insurance company.  But if it has been months since the insurance and you never notified your insurance company then they are probably going to deny the claim because of "late notice." (Insurance policies typically require you to give "prompt notice" of any claim.  Not notifying them because you were scared your premiums would go up is not a valid reason to not report the claim.)

Now you're stuck with a claim that you're going to have to pay for, and that you're going to have to personally hire a lawyer to defend. If you would have reported the claim to begin with none of this would have happened.

Bottom Line: Report the claim.