Undoubtedly, suffering a traffic accident is a very stressful situation, not only because of the possible physical damage and after-effects that you may have suffered, but also because of the lack of knowledge in this area in terms of: deadlines, reports, rehabilitation sessions, etc. In other words, you don’t know where to start.
When you are the victim of a traffic accident of a certain magnitude (physical damage) the first thing you should do is try to calm down (as far as possible) and call an officer of the authority (police on urban roads or Guardia Civil on interurban roads) so that they can come to the scene and draw up the corresponding police report. The police report, for those who do not know, is a report signed by the police authority that describes the accident in detail and, most importantly, who is responsible for the accident. What people normally do is to fill in a friendly report, however, we always advise that in addition to the friendly report, a police report should also be available to facilitate future financial claims.
Once this first step has been taken, the next step is to go to the nearest hospital within 72 hours of the accident to undergo an initial medical examination and, subsequently, to inform your company of the accident, attaching the emergency report and the friendly report (it takes a few days, depending on the municipality, to be able to collect it).
Next, you should check either in your insurance policy or by calling your insurance agent if you have taken out legal defence cover (it must be included as recognised in article 76 of the Insurance Contract Law).
And you may ask yourselves, what does the coverage of the right to free legal advice consist of? Well, this coverage, which by law must be included in all policies as it is a right of all insured persons, consists of the insured person being able to freely CHOOSE a private lawyer to defend his interests, only and exclusively his interests and not those of the insurance company.
Normally, when a lawyer works independently, that is, when he is not financially dependent on an insurance company, he will defend his client without any interference, looking only and exclusively after his client’s interests.
From this point on, a process begins which in most cases consists of rehabilitation sessions, travel expenses, medical expenses, medical visits by your doctor and the opposing company’s doctor, a medical assessment report, a reasoned offer, negotiation of the offer, counteroffer, etc. For all these reasons, you should be advised at all times by a professional expert in this area so that your financial compensation is in line with the damage caused and you can be compensated correctly.
