50–50 Claim for a Car Accident

In most road accidents, there is someone fully to blame. But every now and then, a genuine accident happens where both vehicles have been partly to blame. In these circumstances, parties may agree to split liability evenly between them.

An example of this could be a car park accident where two people pull out of a space at the same time but driving in opposite directions and bumping in to each other.  Another could be two vehicles changing lanes at the same time and crashing in to each other.

So if this happens, can you make a claim for personal injury compensation?

The good news is that you are still entitled to make a claim even if you are partly at fault. What will happen in a 50-50 claim is that you will be able to recover 50% of the compensation you are entitled to recover. You get 50% because you were only 50% not to blame. You lose 50% because that has been apportioned to you.

There can be other splits – if you were only 30% at fault, you would receive 70% of your claim.

Lawyers can still recover the full legal fees from the other side, so you shouldn’t face any extra payments or losses because of the split. The main difference is that you lose part of your compensation.