Have you been a passenger on a bus which was involved in an accident? Have you suffered an injury as a result? If you have been the unfortunate victim of an accident that was not your fault then you could pursue a claim for compensation.
As a passenger, there is probably very little way you could be held at fault for the accident. So if someone else is at fault, you may have a valid claim for personal injury compensation against them.
Accidents involving a bus can leave you with painful injuries. The most common form of injury from road traffic accidents is whiplash. Whiplash is a term which is used to describe soft tissue injuries to the neck, back, and shoulders primarily. Whiplash injuries can cause pain and discomfort in the form of stiffness and aching.
The bus does not necessarily need to be in a collision for an injury to occur. A bus driver carrying out an emergency stop or pulling up sharply resulting in you being jolted forwards and backwards can be sufficient for you to sustain an injury. If they acted negligently and this was the cause of the injury, you should be able to make a claim. It does all depend on the circumstances though; if they slammed the brakes on to avoid hitting a person who had run out in to the road, they are probably not liable to compensate you. The emergency stop in this scenario can be seen as reasonable.
Most people won’t feel a whiplash injury until 6-12 hours or so after an accident – so you may not be aware you have received injury at the time of accident.
Most buses have CCTV which can be used as evidence. If a bus does not have CCTV evidence it may be necessary to prove you were travelling on the bus at the time of accident. This can be proven by a bus ticket. Another form of evidence is obtaining details of witnesses who were travelling on the bus with you at the time of accident.
If a bus has collided with another vehicle then you should have an almost guaranteed claim.
It is necessary to obtain as many details regarding the accident as possible which can include a description of the bus driver, the bus company, bus route, times, locations, and so on. This information is submitted through an online portal to the defendant insurers using a Claim Notification Form. Once submitted to the Defendant insurers, they have 15 business days to respond.
Within the 15 day time period the Defendant must admit or deny liability. If liability is denied then the claim will fall out of the portal. If it’s admitted, we can move on to settling a case. A medical report should be compiled at this time in order to assess the severity of the injuries received as a result of the accident. Once a medical report has been compiled this will allow us to assess to value of your claim in order to make a settlement as soon as possible.
