Statute of Limitations for a Baltimore Auto Accident Injury Claim

Statute of Limitations for a Baltimore Auto Accident Injury Claim

As avid followers of my blog, yelp page, and google plus page already know, I am a Baltimore Chiropractor that dedicates that majority of my professional time treating headaches, neck pain, and back pain in Baltimore, MD. About half of the patients that I treat have suffered from Baltimore auto accident injuries that have resulted in whiplash-type injuries to the neck.

I often tell these patients when they come in for an initial evaluation that time is of the essence. First and foremost, it is important for their physical recovery that we stage their injuries and begin treatment right away. Early intervention will help them deal with physical pain as quickly as possible and will help to make sure that scar tissue does not develop that would otherwise cause a long term problem in terms of range of motion or chronic pain.

Time is also of the essence for my Baltimore auto accident injury patients, from a legal perspective. Maryland law allows for two important statutes of limitations when it comes to Baltimore auto accident injury patients. The first deals with opening a PIP claim. In order to access personal injury protection benefits under an auto insurance policy, patients have one year from the date of injury to contact their insurance company and open a claim. You would be surprised how short a year is when you are busy working, providing for your family, getting treatment, and trying to put your life back together. I referenced in a recent blog post how a patient who had been hit while riding a light rail vehicle in Baltimore was able to open a PIP claim and get all of her injury treatment paid for just 2 weeks prior to her one year statute of limitations. She was so relieved to find out that she did not have to pay any copays or any money out of pocket to receive treatment in my office. She was so relieved, in fact, that she gave me a hug when she learned that her insurance would cover her bills!

The second instance where time is of the essence is with regards to the statue of limitations for filing a lawsuit for personal injuries. This is not my area of expertise since I am a treating Chiropractor and health care provider, not a Baltimore auto accident injury attorney. However, the law states that injured clients have up to three years (and not exceeding three years) to file a lawsuit if they intend to following a Baltimore auto accident injury claim.

Notice, that does not mean that a case needs to be settled, or that a lawsuit needs to have been resolved by three years time. Rather, it just needs to have been filed. Personal injury attorneys all the time explain to me how important it is for injured clients to begin their physical recovery right away. For the majority of clients in my office that resolve their complaints with treatment in a matter of weeks to months, this is not a major timeline that they should be worried about. But for the more catastrophic injury patients that have suffered brain damage, spinal cord injuries, etc, this time line may sneak up on them quickly.

I am not necessarily advocating that every patient involved in a Baltimore auto accident injury should hire an attorney when they are injured. Many of my patients do hire one, but that is completely their choice. What I am suggesting is that there are legal time limits that Baltimore auto accident injury patients need to be aware of in order to protect their rights once injured.

If you, or someone you know, has been injured in a Baltimore auto accident, do not waste time in getting the treatment you need to recover from your injuries. Contact Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic today at (443) 842-5500. We would be happy to help!

Dr. Gulitz

How Can I Receive Treatment Following a Hit And Run Accident In Baltimore?

As a Baltimore Chiropractor that spends the majority of my time treating whiplash patients in Baltimore, I have seen just about every type of scenario unfold when it comes to crashes. Typically speaking, if you are stopped at a red light, struck by another vehicle, and injured, it is ultimately the responsibility of the insurance company of the car that struck you to pay to fix your car, fix your body (medical expenses), pay for future medical needs if any, and to pay for pain and suffering (if any).

But what happens in the cases of hit and run accidents? We’ve all seen them on television. Maybe a drunk driver who has had a few too many drinks hits the bumper of a vehicle on the way home from the bar. Nervous that they may get a ticket or arrested for DUI they leave the scene of the crime without calling the police, and they leave the passengers of the car injured and alone. Obviously hit and run accidents in Baltimore do not always occur with intoxicated individuals. Sometimes drivers simply have not been carrying insurance and are too afraid to stop to report the collision, for fear of not having the money to pay to repair the vehicle.

In these instances where there is a hit and run (that is, one vehicle hits another and then does not exchange insurance information) there is auto insurance coverage available to injured parties in Baltimore. The type of coverage is referred to as uninsured motorist coverage, or UM coverage for short. This insurance is carried by every driver that has insurance and is mandatory under Maryland law. Vehicle drivers can purchase auto insurance limits up to, but not exceeding, the limits that they carry for liability.

For example, lets say I am driving a vehicle. I may be carrying 100k/300k limits of liability. I have to carry some uninsured motorist coverage (UM) by law. I may elect to carry limits that are 50k/100k, or, I can choose to purchase limits equal to, but not exceeding, my liability coverage, of 100k/300k.

In this example, if I am struck by a hit and run driver, If I elected to pruchase UM of 100k/300k, I would have access of up to 100k limits for my personal injuries, and up to 300k for the crash if there were other occupants in the vehicle with me.

I am not an auto insurance salesman in the state of Maryland. I can not give advice on how much insurance to buy. But most prudent people will maximize the amount of UM that they purchase in order to protect themselves in cases of hit and run accidents in Baltimore.

In addition to making a claim against your own insurance company for UM coverage, you can also make a PIP claim to pay for bodily injury and wage loss while treating.

Just like PIP, filing a UM claim in a non-fault accident can not raise your auto insurance rates.

Many people mistakenly believe that if they have been vicitimized and injured in cases of a hit and run in Baltimore that they do not have coverage available for them to receive treatment for their injuries. This is not the case, as I have described that both PIP and UM coverage will cover hit and run victims.

If you, or someone you know, has been injured as a result of a hit and run Baltimore auto accident, please contact Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic at (443) 842-5500. We would be happy to help!

Dr. Gulitz

Can Social Media Updates Ruin A Baltimore Personal Injury (Baltimore Auto Accident) Claim?

As most of my followers and readers are aware, I am a Baltimore Chiropractor that spends about half my time treating Baltimore auto accident injury patients. My patients typically present with post-traumatic headaches, neck pain, back pain, numbness and tingling into the arm, and numbness and tingling into the leg. Clearly these Baltimore auto accident injuries are not limited to these complaints, but these are the typical complaints that we see.

Back when I started as a Chiropractor in Las Vegas, NV in 2009 social media was in its infancy. Facebook was around and that was about it. I used to have patients ask me if I thought insurance companies were hiring private investigators to follow them and film them while they were treating for their auto accident injuries. I would tell them that I didn’t know and that it was my job to treat them for their injuries, and not to worry about who is watching them. I’ll admit that I did treat a few very high profile patients (heads of industry with severe brain trauma) that I am sure were being recorded by these defense insurance companies. By in large, although the insurance companies reserve the right to do this, they do not waste their time and resources on the vast majority of claimants (patients).

As the years have gone on and I moved my practice to Baltimore to treat auto accident injuries, I have seen a shift in increased personal injury case problems caused by the injured patients themselves. That is, as social media acceptance and penetration into our lives has increased, so have the number of personal injury auto accident claim denials.

Here’s how it usually works. A person is sitting at a stop sign. The driver behind them is texting or fumbling with their phone and before they know it, they rear-end the driver in front of them. The driver in front develops some neck and back spasms and presents for care within a few days of injury.

Before they present for care they “brag complain” on Facebook. The post looks something like this “I was rear-ended today luckily I’m not seriously hurt”. This is followed by tons of likes and shares and well wishes. This type of post is the dream of a defense insurance company, because they will find it and use it against the claimant if they come forward claiming injuries down the line.

Maybe a few days pass and the minor back spasms get worse. Or the patient develops numbness, tingling, or weakness down an arm. They either contact a personal injury attorney that refers the client to my office, or they find out organically on Google or Yelp.

We begin a standard course of treatment that involves passive and active modalities as well as spinal mobilization and manipulation. As several weeks pass the patient feels better until he or she eventually reaches maximum medical improvement. Now, of course, the entire time they are in my office they are posting selfies, updates, tweets, and snap chats about how they feel, how they are progressing with therapy, and how well their life is going. Maybe they are showing themselves partying with friends on the weekends while they are in care, or goofing around on some playground equipment on a weekend.

When that injured claimant then turns around and either submits their medical bills and records to the adverse insurance company on their own behalf or if an attorney does it for them, they are met with a denial. The claims adjuster has simply googles the injured claimant and found access to all of their social media accounts. They have plenty of updates, quotes, pictures and other forms of self-incriminating evidence to suggest that the patient was either not-injured or was less injured than they were lead to believe.

I have seen it hundreds of times. I typically recommend that patients, with or without legal representation, turn off or severely limit access to their social media accounts while they are actively treating and while their case is pending. I assure them that rather than worrying about the insurance company following them and spying on them, that the insurance companies now depend on patients to expose themselves with inconsistencies.

I know that it is hard to limit the over-sharing of our lives, but please, do yourself a favor. If you are injured in a Baltimore auto accident and are treating for your injuries, please do not post to twitter, facebook, snapchat, or any other social media sharing sites regarding the extent of your injuries. Anything you say will be used against you and you will wish you did not share your feelings on the matter. I recommend that you allow your treating Chiropractors, doctors, and professional representatives guide you through the process.

If you have been injured in a Baltimore auto accident, please disable your social media sites such as Facebook, twitter, and snapchat and then contact Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic at (443) 842-5500. We would be happy to help!

Dr. Gulitz

Will Self-Driving Vehicles Lead To The End of Auto Accidents?

We have all seen the futuristic films depicting cars that drive themselves. In these utopian societies no one has to own a car or pay for insurance. Instead, they just hail a cab when they need one and pay per trip. The driver understands their input and takes them wherever they want to go. Actually, the more I say it outloud, the more it seems like the future is here with ride-share applications such as Uber and Lyft. In my last blog post I discussed the tricky insurance situations that come into play depending on where in a “ride cycle” a driver and passenger find themselves. Check it out if you haven’t already, because you may be surprised that the vehicle you are traveling in is not properly insured if a driver is using his personal auto insurance in a commercial ride share situation.

Google and other technology giants have been rolling out a different type of solution to congested roads – autonomous, or self-driving vehicles. They equip their cars (still in test mode) with dozens of cameras. Equipped with google maps, cameras, and engineering intuition these vehicles interact with the world around them in real-time. This allows for the vehicle to drive itself without human input. I’m not going to act like this isn’t insanely impressive. It is. The question, of course, is will self-driving vehicle lead to the end of auto accidents, and therefore, auto accident injuries as we know it?

I doubt it. On Valentine’s Day the first self-driving car caused a crash in San Francisco after striking a bus. You can read more about the incident here. While there have already been a few reported auto accidents involving Google’s self driving vehicles, it is the first one caused by the autonomous vehicle. In the past, the google vehicle was struck by various human drivers due to human errors.

In this instance the google vehicle stopped in a right lane. It sensed some sandbags near a storm drain and decided to hug the right side of the road. In so doing several other vehicles behind the google car drove past. The google algorithm calculated that a large bus would allow the google car back into its lane. But it was wrong. As the google vehicle attempted to merge back into traffic its front driver’s side (where the driver would be if the vehicle was not autonomous) struck the right side of the bus and bumped it at about 2 mph.

Google analyzed the data and determined that both the autonomous vehicle and the bus were at fault. The bus probably assumed that the google vehicle would stay where it was and the google mathematical assumptions thought that the bus would let it merge into the lane.

So what does this teach us? Whether it is human decision making or computerized assumptions, accidents, and therefore, injuries are always a probability. Google admits that it does not expect its vehicles to be perfect, but it does hope and expect to reduce the number of auto accident collision and injuries in the future.

Even if these vehicles were perfect in predicting behavior, it would take a very long time, perhaps generations, before humans voluntarily give up the thrill of driving and allow autonomous machines to take over. I expect there will be auto accident and auto accident injuries for many generations to come.

If you, or someone you know, has been involved in a Baltimore auto accident injury, please contact Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic at (443) 842-5500. We would be happy to help!

Dr. Gulitz

Ridesharing Apps like Uber and Lyft – Where’s the Insurance?

As a Baltimore Chiropractor that spends the majority of my work day treating auto accident injuries resulting from car crashes in Baltimore, I am starting to see a trend of more crashes involving passengers and drivers utilizing rideshare apps such as Uber and Lyft. I suspect this is due to more to the increased numbers of these cars on the road than it is due to the driving habits of these drivers.

We’ve all used them at one time or another. You take out your phone, summon a vehicle, it picks you up and takes you to your destination. All of this occurs without having to carry cash or without having to tip. It’s super convenient, easy and fun.

Some ride share drivers and occupants are not so lucky, however. As the saying goes accidents will happen and sometimes they do. Increasingly over the past year I have been treating patients that have been involved in accidents where they are passengers in these rideshare vehicles at the moment of impact. The question then becomes – who is ultimately responsible to pay for an injured occupant’s medical bills following a crash?

Insurance coverage is an ever-evolving industry and rideshare applications add a bit of wrinkle to traditional auto insurance. The typical private auto insurance that we purchase (from StateFarm, Geico, Traveller’s, All State, etc.) only covers drivers and their passengers during routine trips, not during a situation that is technically a commercial ride. That is, they do not cover private drivers that are driving other individuals for money. There is an entirely other form of auto insurance, commercial auto insurance, that is available for that use. As you might expect, commercial auto insurance is vastly more expensive than is private auto insurance. Many drivers for uber may be unknowningly driving you around in their vehicles and may technically be UNINSURED if they get into a crash with you as an occupant.

Uber recently released an infographic that explains which insurance company is “on the hook” to pay for injuries and damages and it depends on where the driver is in the “life cycle” of a ride.

a) Driver is offline. His or her private auto insurance is liable for injuries and damages.

b) Driver is online but has not yet accepted a ride. Uber provides $50k/$100k/$25k limits.

c) Driver accepts a ride and is “en route.” Uber’s limits of liability skyrock to $1M liability and $1M UM/UIM.

d) Driver picks up passenger and ultimately drops them off at their destination. The same $1M limits of liability are in play.

And for those avid readers of my blog that know how important PIP (personal injury protection) coverage is to your policy you will be happy to hear that PIP is a benefit that Uber does offer in Maryland. If you want to be extra safe and to make sure that you are always covered, there is nothing wrong with beefing up your personal PIP coverage, since you may remember that it travels with you regardless of whose care you find yourself in at the time of a crash.

Auto insurance and who is ultimately liable to pay for injuries is a tricky subject. I hope that this information has helped you determine where there may be some insurance money to pay for your care should you be so unlucky as to have been injured by or in an uber or lyft vehicle.

If you have been injured by a rideshare vehicle such as an uber, please contact Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic. We would be happy to get you started on the road to recovery.

Dr. Gulitz