How Failure-to-Yield Car Accidents Settlements Are Handled

Key Points

• Most Georgia failure to yield car and truck accidents and injuries happen as a result of distracted driving when an at-fault driver fails to see a stop sign, traffic light or your oncoming car or motorcycle.
• Evidence that can help you prove and win your car accident case can be found using police reports, body cams, patrol car cameras, witness statements and electronic data from the vehicles.
• You can choose to handle your own injury case, or hire a Georgia personal injury car accident Lawyer.
• You are entitled to compensation for your injuries, medical bills and lost pay if the other driver is at fault in a failure to yield crash.

In Atlanta, many car accidents occur at intersections or are caused by improper turns. This guide is designed to help you understand how “failure to yield the right of way” cases involving injuries are successfully handled in Georgia, providing insights into whether you should tackle the case on your own or consider hiring a skilled Atlanta car accident injury lawyer.

Georgia’s laws on yielding are clearly outlined in O.C.G.A. 40-6-72 and 40-6-73. Under these laws, any driver about to enter or cross a roadway from a non-roadway location must yield the right of way to oncoming vehicles. Essentially, this means drivers who are crossing intersections or making left turns must wait for approaching vehicles to pass safely before proceeding.

The obligation to yield is crucial for preventing accidents and applies universally to all vehicles, including motorcycles and bicycles. If a driver cannot complete a turn or cross an intersection safely, they must yield to avoid collisions. Understanding and adhering to these rules can be the key to navigating and potentially winning legal challenges arising from these types of traffic incidents.

Where Do Failure to Yield Accidents Happen?

By definition, “failure to yield” accidents occur when one driver fails to cede the right-of-way to another who legally has it in that specific situation. Here are several scenarios where failing to yield can lead to a serious accident:

• Exiting a Parking Area: This includes entering a highway or street from a parking spot, driveway, or another roadway.
• Four-Way Stops: Where all drivers must come to a complete stop and proceed in the order they arrived.
• At Intersections: This applies whether intersections are controlled by stop signs, traffic lights, or unmarked.
• Left Turns: Where drivers must yield to oncoming traffic and pedestrians before proceeding.
• Rear-End Collisions: Often occur in stopped or slow-moving traffic when drivers fail to pay attention or yield adequate space.
• Simultaneous Arrivals: When two drivers reach an unmarked intersection at the same time.
• Construction Zones: Where altered traffic patterns and signage require heightened attention and strict adherence to yielding rules.
• Pedestrian Crosswalks: Drivers must yield to pedestrians crossing the street, especially in designated crosswalks.
• School Buses: Drivers are required to stop when school buses are picking up or dropping off children, regardless of the direction of travel.
• Distracted Driving: Such as using a cell phone, which can lead to a failure to notice and yield to other road users.
• Emotional Driving: Frustration or road rage can impair judgment and lead to aggressive behaviors that ignore yielding norms.

Understanding these scenarios can help drivers anticipate and prevent accidents by respecting right-of-way laws and yielding appropriately.

What are the Primary Causes of Failure to Yield Car Accidents?

Negligent driving is the primary cause of failure-to-yield accidents, with the at-fault driver often being distracted and not fully focused on the road. Typically, these accidents result from behaviors such as:

• Distracted Driving: Includes general inattention to driving tasks.
• Using Hand-held Devices: This encompasses talking on a cell phone, texting, or operating other hand-held electronics while driving.
• Impaired Driving: Driving under the influence of alcohol, even at low levels, significantly increases the risk of accidents.
• Speeding: Exceeding the speed limit reduces a driver’s ability to react to traffic changes and yield appropriately.
• Traffic Complications: Bottlenecks and delays that may lead to frustration and rash driving decisions.
• Aggressive Driving: Frustration can escalate to aggressive driving behaviors, ignoring yielding rules.
• Mechanical Failures: Such as tire or brake malfunctions, which can prevent a vehicle from stopping in time.
• Adverse Weather Conditions: Wet or icy conditions can impair vehicle control, making it harder to yield effectively.

These factors highlight the importance of vigilant driving and adherence to traffic laws to prevent accidents and ensure road safety.

How Do You Prove a Failure to Yield Car Accident?

An Atlanta attorney specializing in failure to yield accidents can significantly increase your chances of winning your injury case. However, you have the option to handle the case yourself, though it presents challenges. Insurance adjusters and defense attorneys may attempt to blame you partially or entirely for the crash. If you’re interested in learning how to effectively investigate and resolve your case, the following insights may be beneficial.

Failures to yield often stem from distractions such as using a cell phone, eating, adjusting the radio, or conversing with passengers, leading to serious accidents. These lapses in attention can result in anything from minor fender-benders to severe high-speed collisions, sometimes with fatal outcomes.

After an accident, the opposing driver and their insurance company may attempt to dodge responsibility by claiming poor visibility or accusing you of speeding. Expect attempts to shift blame onto you.

To counter these claims, it’s crucial to start gathering evidence promptly to prove the other driver’s negligence caused the accident. While the police report is a valuable resource, other types of evidence are also accessible if you know where to look. Here are some items you might consider collecting:

• Mobile Phone Call Logs: These records reveal the timing and duration of calls. By comparing them to 911 and responder records, it’s possible to demonstrate that the other driver was on the phone just before the crash, indicating distraction.
• Cell Phone Data Use Records: These can show whether the other driver was watching videos, reading emails, or gaming at the time of the accident, which would point to distraction as a cause of failing to yield.
• On-Board Electronic Data: Similar to an aircraft’s black box, this data can disclose the vehicle’s speed before the crash, when brakes were applied, the moment airbags deployed, and seatbelt usage, helping to establish the circumstances of the accident.
• Post-Collision Inspection: Inspecting a vehicle after an accident can identify if poor maintenance, like faulty brakes or tires, contributed to the incident, supporting claims of negligence.
• Pictures/Video: Capturing images or video of the accident scene, vehicle damage, and any injuries helps preserve critical evidence. Photos can also assist in analyzing the other driver’s reaction time and speed.
• Historical Weather Records: Weather conditions play a crucial role in accidents, especially in claims involving poor visibility or slippery roads.

Wet or icy roads make stopping or changing lanes safely more difficult. Documenting the weather conditions at the time of the accident can be extremely useful in proving your claim. Past weather records are also available online for most locations.

Evidence You will Need to Prove your Failure to Yield Case and How to Obtain It

After a right-of-way related accident, you may need some of the following information or tools to get the evidence you need to prove your injury claim.

• Speak to Eyewitnesses and Get All Written and Recorded Statements
• Eyewitnesses to your failure to yield accident may have crucial details you missed, such as what the other driver was doing just before the incident, like running a red light or making an unsafe turn. Collect contact information from all passengers in the involved vehicles and bystanders, which can be invaluable for statements or testimony later.
• The police report should also have witness statements and contact information. Additionally, police dispatch records might list witnesses who reported the accident.
• Consider evidence from body cams worn by responding officers and patrol car cameras, which are typically active during emergency responses.
• Ambulance and EMT reports are also key as they often include firsthand accounts of the accident scene, providing strong evidence of the events.
• Security cameras in locations like mall parking lots or intersections may have recorded the incident. Securing this footage can be critical in substantiating your claim.

Collect the Police Reports and 911 Audio

In Georgia, you may obtain these reports and records through the Georgia Open Records Act. Using this law, you can obtain documents and evidence such as these:

• Body-cam footage from first responders. The statements people make in the aftermath of an accident such as those caused by failure to yield can be very telling.
• Intersection-cam images where they are available
• 911 Audio – This can give you witnesses statements you might not otherwise get

Subpoena Cell Phone Records and Data Plan Information:

When you file a civil suit against the at-fault driver, the court can supply you with a blank subpoena form that, once completed, can compel the defendant to turn these important records over to you.

Get Weather Information:

If road conditions or poor visibility caused by weather could have been a factor in the failure to yield that led to your accident, it’s helpful to know that the Federal Government’s weather department keeps track of these things. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, provides these records according to date and zip code.

Vehicle Electronic Data and Accident Reconstruction

While police officers or state troopers sometimes download the electronic data from crashed cars and trucks, they do not do so in every case, or even very often. However, you or a car accident lawyer may hire an expert witness, known as an accident reconstruction expert, to locate and download data from a vehicle’s electronic control module.

If you can prove the other car did not hit its brakes or was moving or turning at the time of the collision, this may help you win your accident case and receive a fair injury settlement.

How Certain Injuries are Caused When Someone Fails to Yield

Depending upon the direction from which the other car is coming, the size and weight of the vehicle, and the speed at which they are moving, the severity of the injuries can vary significantly. The laws of physics always apply in collisions – the energy from the other car is transferred to yours at the moment of impact. The faster and heavier the vehicle is, the more violent the forces of the impact are. Here are a few of the injuries that we commonly see in failure to yield accidents.

Whiplash Caused in Failure to Yield Collisions

This type of injury is caused by the force of inertia. When your car is hit, the energy from the moving other car is transferred to your car, it can cause your head (The human head weighs approximately 10-11 pounds) to be violently thrust forward and backward again in a whip-like motion. Your neck was never meant to be subjected to such intense forces, so injury is likely. In cases of whiplash, or neck sprain, the injury can feel well again after a few weeks of medical treatment. There are cases, though, when victims will have lasting pain and discomfort in their neck, shoulders, and upper body.

This violent forward and backward movement of the head and neck can also lead to other soft-tissues injuries as well as fractures elsewhere in your body. The muscles, tendons and ligaments in your shoulders, back, arms, elbows, wrists, hands, ankles, knees, hips and thighs can all suffer. Traumatic forces like these can cause even more serious injuries including spinal cord damage. Some of these injuries will rely upon your doctor’s examination and treatment records.

Spinal Disk Damage as the Result of a Violent Impact

In a violent collision, your body and those of your passengers can be tossed around inside the cab of your vehicle like rag dolls. These powerful forces that can cause whiplash and back strains can also inflict serious damage to spinal discs and vertebra. Spinal discs are structures that act as “cushions” between the spinal vertebras. In any forceful impact, these little shock absorbers can be jarred out of place or mashed so violently that the disk bursts, squeezing the inner “jelly” out through tears in the rubbery outer structure. This is known as a ruptured or herniated disc.

Commonly Seen Wrist, Shoulder, Hands and Arms Injuries Caused by Powerful Failure to Yield Collisions

If your hands are holding the steering wheel at the moment of the collision, sprains and fractures to the bones in your wrist, hands or arms happen frequently. Rotator Cuff or other painful injuries to the shoulder can also happen as a result of the impact. This is especially true if you see the other car coming and instinctively brace yourself for the impact.

Knee and Ankle Injuries Common to Failure to Yield Accidents

When the energy in a moving vehicle is transferred upon impact to another vehicle and the human beings inside, terrible injuries can be the result. The forces behind the impact depend upon the speed and the weight of the car or truck that hits you. This can result in chain reaction impacts to feet, knees, hips, and back. Collisions can also cause knees to hit the dashboard or an ankle to strike or be jammed into the pedals or floorboard, resulting in injury.

Traumatic Brain Injury as a Result of Impact to the Head

Too often a person’s head forcibly hits the steering wheel, the dashboard, the windshield, door posts, or side windows in a violent impact. Concussions and/or serious brain trauma can be the immediate result to blows to the head.

The brain itself, which floats in fluid inside the skull, can be banged around sufficiently in an accident to cause the organ to crash against the inner walls of the skull. Collisions in failure to yield accidents and the intense jolting movement associated with them can easily cause head Traumatic Brain Injury, TBI, which could be significant enough to cause permanent disability.

Receiving Treatment after an Accident caused by Another Driver’s Failure to Yield

Your vehicle liability insurance doesn’t cover injuries to you and your passengers. You may wonder how you will manage to pay for your medical care after you’ve been in a collision such as a failure to yield can cause.

Using Your Health Insurance After a Car Accident

In Georgia, you are responsible for your immediate medical care after you’ve been injured. Initially, personal or health insurance through your employer works for this if you have it.

Medical Payment Insurance

Med-Pay, also called Medical Payments Coverage is an insurance policy that is meant to cover medical treatment for you and your passengers after an accident where injuries occur. This type of insurance coverage takes care of these expenses no matter who is at –fault or has been negligent.

If Necessary Pay at Each Visit

If you are financially able to pay the medical bills after each visit following your failure to yield accident, the bills won’t mount up. However, this is usually the most expensive way to get medical care after your crash since it represents a big out-of-pocket expenditure.

Medical Treatment on a Lien

A medical treatment lien is one solution if you have no health insurance to cover your post-accident expenses. A growing number of doctors will agree to a lien against your eventual accident compensation. Not only does the doctor feel more confident treating you with a lien in place, you can stop worrying about the bills when you should be healing.

Legal Loans

Some lending companies will make loans for expenses due to an accident if you promise to pay when your settlement is complete. Legal loans are becoming popular and are an increasingly common way to pay for accident-related expenses and medical bills

Medical Financing

Much like legal loans, some lending companies are prepared to advance money on the strength of your case with your promise to pay when your settlement comes in. It may even be possible to find a company that won’t require collateral. Medical Financing can be found and secured online or with the help of a personal injury lawyer.

Agree to Make Monthly Payments to Health Care Providers

Medical practitioners are known also accept regular payment arrangements for those who have no other health or Med-Pay insurance available.

Your Options For Medical Care for Accident Injuries When Another Driver Fails to Yield the Right of Way

Hospital Emergency Room

The hospital emergency room is equipped for treatment after an accident. Treatment is provided for your injuries whether the collision just happened or occurred previously, but the sooner you get treatment, the better.

If you are experiencing neck, back, or shoulder pain hospital staff may provide imaging tests such as x-rays or CT scans, and perhaps medication for pain or infection at the emergency room.

After diagnosis and treatment of serious, urgent injuries including broken bones or internal injuries, you will either be admitted to the hospital or released with recommendations for a check-up with a doctor or clinic later.

See the Family Doctor

Immediately after the failure to yield accident, if are not badly injured or in acute pain, you might be able to avoid the emergency room and, as an alternative make an appointment with your family doctor. Nevertheless, you should do so as soon as possible after your accident. Your physician will document your injuries and suggest treatment options. A primary care physician will sometimes prescribe physical therapy or other treatment for soft tissue injuries including whiplash. If you are in acute pain or have tense, bruised muscles after the collision your doctor might send you home with prescription medication to alleviate the symptoms.

Emergent Care Facilities for Non-life-threatening Injuries

These clinics are geared for emergency care. Following a failure to yield collision they can be handy as an alternative to the ER if your injuries are not life-threatening. No appointment is necessary and they are able to provide simple care after you’ve been hit by another car that did not yield the right of way. Some of these facilities even offer imaging services like MRIs and X-rays to document injuries.

Orthopedists and Other Specialists

If bone, joint or ligament damage is diagnosed present following an accident caused by someone’s failure to yield, you may be referred to an orthopedic doctor or other specialist for evaluation or treatment. Don’t forget, it’s important to follow your doctor’s instructions to the letter. Even if you don’t have health care insurance, you should do whatever is necessary including physical therapy or other treatment in order to properly treat and heal your injuries.

Chiropractic Care

A chiropractic doctor is another health-care option following an accident. Your chiropractor can provide you with the necessary physical examination and documentation of your injuries. Chiropractic care offers therapeutic options for stiff, sore bodies. Particularly if you see a chiropractor regularly, this continuity of treatment has benefit.

Your Medical Care and Your Compensation for Common Failure to Yield Accident Injuries

What is your claim worth? After a failure to yield accident, you will eventually want to know the answer to this question. Each accident case is different and there are no exact answers but, as a rule these cases have a foundation based upon the severity of injury and the amount of time it will take for your life to resume some normalcy.

Muscle Strains and Sprains

If you have a whiplash diagnosis, or suffering from a sprain or strain elsewhere in your body, but are expected to recover in a few weeks with little or no subsequent treatment, your case will have a smaller monetary value than a more debilitating injury that would require treatment for months, or even years.

Most sprain-strain cases have a settlement value that includes medical bills, and lost pay, with a supplemental award for short-term pain and suffering.

Chiropractic Care

Chiropractic treatment can help to restore motion and minimize swelling in just about any area of the body impacted by a violent collision. It is especially helpful for the neck, back, shoulders, and hips. The manipulation your chiropractor does increases the circulation to the injured areas generally helps you to heal more thoroughly. Again, the severity of the injury and the length of time you must have treatment by chiropractic doctors will factor into your settlement amount.

Physician and Physical Therapy

If your injuries can be successfully resolved by a doctor using physical therapy, the length of time the treatment will take will bear heavily upon your compensation. Physical therapy, depending upon the nature of the injury, may take weeks or months to be effective. Because your injuries and your treatment may cause you to lose work, these lost wages will also be added to your compensation package when the failure to yield accident settles.

Injections with Permanent Issues

Steroid injections for a permanent injury that will not resolve itself are quite common. Following accident-caused injuries to joints including vertebrae, as well as shoulders, knees, ankles, and wrists, injections can be necessary for pain relief. Your lawyer will include the cost for ongoing injections as he calculates the worth of your injuries as brought about by the failure of someone to yield the right-of-way.

Surgical Intervention with a Permanent Impairment

You may expect your case to have a larger value in accidents where injuries require surgery or will not heal over time. When it’s determined that future injections or radiofrequency ablation, (RFA) are required to treat pain, for example, the value of the case will be greater. Cases like this will not only include your current medical bills, but may also include compensation for future expenses associated with expected follow-up care, diminished mobility and radical changes to your ability to earn money. In accidents where the other driver failed to yield as required by law, the compensation grows with the severity of the injuries.

Best Ways to Recover Maximum Value in an Accident Claims Involving Failure to Yield

In order to obtain full and fair compensation for your losses when failure to yield factors into your injuries, there are certain steps you should take to protect your claim.

It is counterproductive to exaggerate your injuries or try to make them seem worse than they really are. Nevertheless, you should always guard against making your claim look less severe by skipping doctor appointments or treatments. Also, beware of talking about your accident on social media, or engaging in activities not approved by your medical care team as such activities can diminish your claim.

First, See a Doctor

If you are injured, don’t delay in going to the doctor or hospital. Delay in seeking medical help can make winning your case more difficult. Insurance companies like to claim that you were not badly injured. If you delay going to the doctor, you should be prepared for the insurance adjuster to claim that your injuries were minimal or were caused by something other than the failure to yield collision.

Meeting or Speaking with Insurance Adjusters

Insurance company representatives will attempt to question you about your injuries. You may want to ease your mother’s worries after an accident by telling you are “fine” after your crash, but if you say such things in public, on social media or to an adjuster, it will appear to diminish the severity of your injuries, making a full and fair settlement offer more difficult.

Adjusters, Lawyers, Judges and Juries Value Crash Cases Involving Failure to Yield in Different Ways

Insurance Adjusters:

If there is minimal damage to your vehicle, insurance adjusters will use that fact to argue you were not badly injured. We know that this is not always true, as car bumpers are manufactured to withstand much of accident impact. People sustain damage more easily than cars do. However, when the visible damage is minimal, expect the insurance company to put up a fight.

Insurance companies also look for any possible pre-existing condition you might have. In order to minimize your claim they frequently claim that your age and your lifestyle are to blame for your injuries. You may hear arguments that you are injured because you are older, because you participated in college football, or enlisted in the armed forces. Such tactics are employed in order to make your injuries look less valuable. You may derail these tactics by producing detailed medical records and testimony from doctors.

Lawyers:

For accident cases caused by failure to yield, motor vehicle accident lawyers usually begin by looking at previously settled similar cases from the past. In this way, lawyers find what claims like yours have settled for and what Jury Verdicts for similar injury cases have been and will use this as a starting place for settlement negotiations.

Judges:

Similarly, judges look to previous cases for a ‘ballpark’ value. They look at similar circumstances and injuries in order to gauge the value of your claim.

Juries:

Jurors take their jobs very seriously. However, in recent years Jurors are also usually cautious and skeptical. They want to know that you have been injured, and will expect you to prove it to them. Although it is possible to win a Jury Trial when the damage to your vehicle is barely visible, in general Juries appreciate graphic photos that depict plenty of damage and obvious injuries.