Passengers
Passengers Are Entitled to Compensation Too
Passenger accident and injury claims are common place, with passengers usually the innocent victims of vehicle accidents.
As such, if you are a passenger who has been involved in a road traffic accident or been injured in some other way while being transported by another person, you are in a strong legal position and are likely to have a positive chance of receiving a compensation pay out for your injury or distress.
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Examples of Passenger Injury
Passenger injuries are frequent in the UK with neck injury, whiplash injury, back injury and fractures among the typical forms of injury affecting passengers during road traffic accidents. Passenger injury can occur in a variety of transport situations, involving cars, bicycles, motorbikes and public transport.
Types of Passenger Compensation Claim:
- Car passenger
- Taxi passenger
- Bus passenger
- Train passenger
- Motorcycle passenger
Including:
- Whiplash claims
- Spinal injury claim
- Head injury claims
- Scarring, broken bones
- Back injury claim
It’s worth realising that wearing seat belts is an important criterion for assessment of eligibility for damages in such cases; and if you were wearing one, if appropriate, during the accident you increase the possibility for successful damages.
Passengers in buses do not have to have seatbelts fitted by law, of course, so the risk of passengers being thrown around or even ejected in the event of a bus crash, and subsequently injured is great; and so the likelihood of passengers being eligible for compensation is high in the event of a crash.
Duty Of Care – Passenger Road Traffic Accidents
The driver of the vehicle you were travelling in as a passenger is bound by duty of care and other drivers and road users are too.
If you experience an accident and it was someone else’s fault, whether you were a bus passenger injured in an accident, a car passenger, a taxi cab passenger, a motorcycle pillion rider passenger, or a passenger on a bus, or any other form of public transport, you could receive a hefty compensation award, depending on your injuries and distress.
In the majority of cases the insurance company of the person at fault will pay out but even in the case of an uninsured and untraceable driver causing an accident it is still possible to claim via the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB).
The MIB deals with over 30,000 claims every year from victims involved in accidents with uninsured and hit and run drivers.
Uninsured and untraced drivers kill 160 people and injure 23,000 every year.
You Are Entitled
The main thing to understand as an injured passenger is that the case will be covered by the relevant vehicle insurance cover or the MIB will handle it. As a passenger you have the same entitlement to compensation as anyone else, and as already outlined, you may be in a stronger position compared to many other personal injury claims due to the nature of ‘being a passenger.’
Car insurance covers the driver for claims from people in the event of an accident, including passengers travelling with the vehicle. Even if the driver responsible for your injury is your wife, husband, son, daughter or a close friend, their vehicle insurance is there to pay out. To find out if you can claim compensation for your injury sustained while you were a passenger speak to a lawyer soon.
