Every motorist knows that when fall arrives, it is time to keep an eye out for school kids walking and busing to school. For motorists, it can mean finding alternate routes to work in the morning because school buses make it difficult to get anywhere on time. Albany school buses are driven by trained drivers who come across a variety of obstacles every day. Despite their training and experience, people still find themselves involved in Albany school bus accidents.
An Albany school bus accident can be a complicated. Even if you have been in an accident with a school bus in the past, you will still need to hire an accident attorney to represent you. Filing a claim for a school bus accident can be complicated, and you want to be sure the insurance company offers you compensation that will help you recover from injuries as quickly as possible.
You Have Many Concerns After An Albany School Bus Accident
It takes time for you to hire a good school bus accident attorney serving Albany and get your claims filed. Once those claims are filed, it takes time for the insurance company to respond. You may start racking up accident-related expenses the day of the accident, which means that you will want an attorney who will prevent the insurance company from dragging its feet.
Medical expenses are going to be a concern after an Albany school bus accident. Even a collision at a slow rate of speed with a school bus is going to result in injuries. Your health insurance is not going to pay for your recovery from these accident injuries, so you are going to need your auto insurance company to respond as quickly as possible to your claim for damages.
What Causes An Albany School Bus Accident?
Albany school bus accidents are not common on the nightly news, so we tend to take for granted how safe school buses are. School buses face the same driving obstacles as other drivers along with a few more challenges exclusive to a school bus. The school bus drivers are trained and most of the time have bus monitors on board to help, but this is sometimes not enough to prevent an accident from happening.
Some neighborhoods are not designated truck routes with wide roads that can accommodate school buses. While school districts in Albany do what they can to keep the buses on truck routes, sometimes buses are forced to drive down residential streets that are barely wide enough for two cars. When the snow gets piled up on the side of the road and people park in the streets, bus drivers often find themselves getting into accidents because they don't have enough room to drive.
The weather in Albany can be treacherous for car drivers, which also makes it challenging for school bus drivers. A school bus is just as liable to slide through an icy intersection as a car, and a school bus can find itself out of control on streets lined with wet leaves during the fall. Albany roads can be unforgiving when the weather starts getting nasty, and that is bad news for school bus drivers.
When schools open in September, the Albany streets department may start working on road projects it wants to get done before the winter. The problem with road construction is that it can either make a bus route difficult for the school bus drivers, or create a situation where the school bus driver has to suddenly and unexpectedly change routes. Whenever a school bus driver is met with the need to quickly change where they are going, an accident is possible.
Why You Need A Lawyer
If you get into an Albany car accident, then the process is to file a claim with your insurance company and hope they pay your expenses. But with an Albany school bus accident, there are a lot of variable most people are unaware of.
An Albany school bus may be owned by a bus company, probably maintained by a separate maintenance company, and hired by the school district to carry kids around. When you get into an Albany school bus accident, you have to know which of these parties is considered negligent and how to approach filing your claim. It is a complicated process, and that is why you need an experienced school bus accident attorney serving Albany.
If it does come down to a situation where you need to sue someone for your expenses, an experienced attorney is going to know just what needs to be done. A school bus accident is not a simple situation that any motorist can handle on their own. There are many layers to these types of accidents and a lot of paperwork that has to be filed before the statute of limitations expires. An accident attorney serving Albany can take care of all of that for you and give you peace of mind.
When the Albany schools are back in session, that means that the school buses are out on the roads. With all of the challenges a school bus driver has to deal with, it is expected that there is going to be a school bus accident at some point. The best course of action for the car driver to take is to get in touch with an attorney and let that attorney handle all of the details.
Hurt in a School Bus Accident? Call William Mattar.
Our firm knows how to handle Albany school bus accidents. We have years of experience helping drivers to get maximum compensation after an accident with a school bus. Our legal team has spent years filing claims on behalf of clients who had no idea how the process was supposed to go. If you are looking for an Albany personal injury attorney, give our offices a call. We invite you to let one of lawyers explain how we can help.