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[0:01] Welcome to the real people, real answers with Mike Rowland.
[0:07] Welcome to real people, real answers with Mike Rowland, where hard working people get clear answers after serious accidents and injuries.
[0:15] Michael Rowland is a managing partner at Roland & Younger, a North Carolina law firm with decades of experience helping people through life's most difficult situations.
[0:24] I'm Shameika Rhymes, and today we're talking about what you should do immediately after a car accident in North Carolina.
[0:31] Welcome Mike, how are you? Hey, how are you doing today? Doing well. Well Mike, to start, can you tell listeners a little bit about your background and what made you want to help people going through difficult situations like serious accidents?
[0:45] Sure, well I guess the background is that I always wanted to be a lawyer, at least as long as I can remember.
[0:51] And so, when I thought about being a lawyer, I wanted to be a small town lawyer, I wanted to have my own law firm, and that's exactly what I did. I started out in 1997, and so I've been doing it since then, and I grew up in Moore County.
[1:05] We service a lot of the surrounding counties around Moore County, and we've been doing it for decades. I brought on my business partner in 1999, and we've served about 65,000 or so people in a lot of different areas of practice.
[1:20] We're very proud of our service record. We've got great reviews because we believe in customer service. And when you're a small town lawyer, you do a little bit of everything, and so one of my big practice areas is personal injury, to handle a lot of other things as well, but it is a primary practice area for me.
[1:38] And when you're in small towns, you deal with everyday problems that everybody has, and unfortunately accidents do happen.
[1:45] Yeah, absolutely. So, if someone is just involved in a car accident in North Carolina, what should they be focused on in those first few minutes?
[1:54] Well, obviously, the number one thing is to make sure that everybody is okay as best you can. I mean, you need to make sure you don't have any serious significant injuries. If you do, you may need to stay put and wait for medical help.
[2:09] If you are able to get out without pain or any issues, then obviously you might want to get out of the vehicle because there could be problems with the vehicle.
[2:19] So, be very, very careful and use your good judgment in common sense, as far as that goes, as far as the immediacy dealing with the accident. Once everybody is stabilized, you want to call for help.
[2:31] And it may be nothing more than asking for a police report, an officer to come out to the scene, or there may be some medical treatment that somebody needs you or somebody else in the accident.
[2:41] And so, you need to call out for EMS and get the emergency services out there as quickly as possible. So, number one priority is get everything stable.
[2:50] And then once that's happened, if you can take photographs of the scene, I always recommend taking photographs of the scene. If you're not in the state of mind to do it and you can contact family or friends to come out there and meet you, have them take care of that. Here's the reason why.
[3:06] Once the day goes by, other things happen out on the scene. And so, you want to capture everything as early in proximity to the accident as possible if you can possibly do it.
[3:18] Now, if they're taking you away in an ambulance, the last thing in the world that you're worried about is the accident scene itself. But maybe family or friends can go back out there at that point and then take pictures of the scene, take pictures of the vehicles.
[3:31] If the vehicles are moved before you have had a chance to go to the scene, you can still after the fact have somebody go out and take pictures of the scene with you or you can go with them.
[3:43] You also want to make sure before your car is repaired or totaled, if it's totaled, pictures of the vehicle are taken, even if it's at the salvage yard or the tow yard or whatever it is, get those photographs, document everything.
[3:58] You have cuts, scrapes, bruises, swelling, anything like that, take photographs of those things. And I know those are the last things that most people are worried about.
[4:08] But somebody needs to take those pictures and capture that. And pictures, as they say, are worth a thousand words. They show the force of the impact. If you look at the vehicle, if you've got bumps, bruises and scrapes and cuts, that shows actual injuries.
[4:25] And so it's so important to do that early on. And I can tell you as a lawyer, there's a lot of times people wait, wait, wait, wait to go see a lawyer, which is fine. However, but at that point collecting evidence can be very hard for me as an attorney or any attorney.
[4:42] If weeks have passed by, the vehicle has already been taken away to a salvage yard or repaired, your bruises have started to heal or gone away. And at that point, it's hard to capture that.
[4:53] So you want to collect evidence or have somebody do it on your behalf as early as possible. Your focus should also be primarily to get healthy and get well. So I often tell my clients, even if they contact me early, let us deal with the mess, let us deal with the red tape.
[5:09] You focus on getting healthy. That's your number one priority. And that's what you need to be doing. And so we try to take away the stress, the worry, the what if. How do I deal with this? How do I deal with the loss wages? How do I deal with the car repairs? How do I deal with the medical bills? And who's going to pay for those medical bills? I try to give folks the opportunity to put that on me and my staff and my team and let them focus on what is most important for them.
[5:38] Getting back to normal life, getting healthy. So those are some of the preliminary things. Obviously, you know, like I said, call the police. Have the accident report. Do
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those things to make sure you capture everything that you need to capture early on.
[5:52] Okay. Do you always need to call the police after a car accident? I know personally, I've been in, you know, some vendor vendors and it's like, oh, we just exchange info and go on about our businesses. We're busy. But, you know, then there's other times where it's like, okay, this one, I might need to call the police. So what problems can come up if you don't call them?
[6:12] Well, you get that question a lot and that's a fair question. And I'll tell you that that's an issue that happens a lot. People are in a rush to get back to work or they've got somewhere they've got to go. Seems like no big deal. Okay. Until it is. And so what happens is now you've left the scene, not anything has been documented except the exchange of information. And so then the other side has a different version of the story now.
[6:40] Your witnesses are gone. Nobody is there anymore. And now to he said, she said kind of deal. And now they're blaming you for the accident. When you know perfectly well that they did something that was negligent, they caused the accident. Now, they're contacting you and say, oh, I'm in a lot of pain. I'm needing some medical treatment. I'm going to need your insurance information so I can go ahead and file a claim. And you're like, whoa, wait a minute. Everybody was fine at the scene.
[7:09] And you were at fault. Well, now you're in a argument about who really was at fault. So I know it's a pain, but my lawyer advice is like, hey, call the police, get the report, get it documented. If there's witnesses, get their names and information. So there's no change of story later on.
[7:30] Okay. That's my hard advice on that. I know there's folks that won't listen. And you're going to probably regret it sooner or later if that if that's you.
[7:40] So what else should someone be documenting at the accident scene? If they may end up filing an injury claim later, I know you mentioned earlier, taking a lot to pictures. Is there anything else to document?
[7:51] If anybody stops and has seen what took place, I would absolutely recommend getting a name and a telephone number at the very least.
[8:01] If, you know, I understand number one priority is held and welfare and safety. But if you can't do that, have somebody do that on your behalf.
[8:10] Again, if they're willing to give a statement, have them give a statement of what they saw. Everybody's got a cell phone these days. So, you know, you could say, hey, do you mind if I record your witness statement, you could use your cell phone to do a audio video recording of their statement and have them put their name and information on there. So we've got the technology now that we didn't want to have. And so use it. Make it easy.
[8:36] That is a great idea. I've never even thought about that, but that it's like it's right you have your phone. So yeah, that makes sense. So how important is it to get medical treatment quickly, even if someone feels fine right after the accident and you know, sometimes it may be days later when they start to feel like, oh, you know, something could be wrong.
[8:55] So a lot of times in accidents where you don't have broken bones or really severe injuries, the adrenaline kicks in and you don't feel the pain that you're going to feel later.
[9:06] And so it's important to go ahead and get checked out as early as possible, whether it be at urgent care or the hospital or a fast med or something like that, your regular family physician get checked out as early as you can.
[9:20] And that establishes a baseline, but a lot of times people are very, very surprised. They were fine at the scene. The next day they wake up and they're struggling to get out of bed, everything hurts.
[9:31] And they feel like they got run over by a truck and maybe they did. But that adrenaline wears off and it's a lot of force, a lot of change of direction, a lot of change of force in a sudden time period.
[9:46] And so it's like your body and your muscles have just been ripped back and forth. And so there's obviously a lot of times like when you haven't worked out in a long time and you go to the gym and you really work out hard, you know, it felt good.
[10:01] You left and you felt good the next day, you're crawling out of bed, you're crawling to the shower. That sometimes happens in an accident.
[10:09] So you want to make sure you do the follow up and a lot of guys are hard headed. I'm hard headed. I hate going to the doctor, right?
[10:16] So, you know, do as I say, not as I do, right? But the reality is, if you are hurting after the accident, you need to document it. That's the evidence. The medical treatment is your evidence in terms of what happened. And it's kind of like the old saying, what is it?
[10:34] If you're in a forest and tree falls and nobody is there, does it make a sound? Well, if you haven't gone to the doctor and you don't have the evidence, then where you really hurt, that's the question the insurance adjuster is going to ask.
[10:46] So, go to the doctor, follow up, do the appropriate follow-ups that you need to do. And a lot of people are focused on, I need to get back to work. I need to put bread on the table. I need to make some money. Power bills do next week. I get it.
[11:02] We all have those things, but this is a time to make sure that you slow down and you take care of yourself and you do the appropriate follow-up. Because if you don't, it could have some long term consequences.
[11:15] I can tell you, been doing this for a long time. Sometimes people have a situation where they think it's a simple auto accident, just a little bit of pain. And they don't do the follow-up, but on down the line they have further and further complications.
[11:29] And then when you have that gap in treatment, it is hard to get the insurance company to accept that treatment. Like, well, we don't know if you had an injury at work.
Maybe you had an injury at the gym. How do we know it's from our car accident?
[11:43] So, that's why you document it. Do your follow-up. And if you need physical therapy, get it. If you need chiropractic care, get it.
[11:52] If you need to just check back in the doctor's office six weeks from now for a follow-up, do it. I know it's hard. We hate to do the antibiotics.
[12:05] You know, we start feeling terrible. So, the first few days, it's easy. It's easy to take the antibiotics. But once we start feeling better, we're like, you know, I'm going to stop taking it, right?
[12:16] Well, what do the doctors say? Take it until it's done. Why? Because we don't want to have a relapse, okay? Make sure you reach maximum medical improvement before you stop your doctor's care. Do what the doctor says.
[12:30] They're the professionals at that. Not you or I listen to what they've got to say, follow through and wait until you've completed the treatment. That's so important.
[12:39] Okay. Well, can you share an example of a case where something a person did or failed to do right after a crash ended up affecting the outcome later?
[12:48] Oh gosh. I mean, I've got all kinds of horror stories. But I need to obviously protect client information. But the biggest problem is not going to get the follow-up care early on.
[12:59] Toughing it out, okay? You know, I'm a tough man. I'm a tough woman. You know, I'm not going to go to the doctor. It's going to pass. I've gone to work sick. You know, I've got to take care of the bills. And a month goes by. A month and a half goes by. And it's just not getting better. And now they finally decide they're going to go and get that medical treatment.
[13:22] That is a huge problem in these cases because then you leave the door wide open for the insurance company to say anything could have happened. And it's not our fault that, you know, you're in a situation now where you need medical treatment.
[13:37] And they want to try to, you know, blame you, blame work, blame something else other than, you know, they're, they're insured. And so that's, that's probably the number one problem that I see a lot of people take. Just being hardheaded.
[13:49] Okay. Well, how soon should someone talk to a lawyer after an accident if they think they may have been seriously injured?
[13:56] Here's what I would say. Once your medical treatment is stabilized, I would try to seek out an attorney and get some advice as early as you're able to or have a family member do that.
[14:09] Obviously, if you're somewhere around us, I would say, hey, give us a call, right? But there's a lot of lawyers around. And so find somebody near you that practices in this practice area has some knowledge about it and get some general advice.
[14:23] Most lawyers will do a free consultation on injury cases. We do a free consultation and we'll go over all the information. Obviously, you don't have to hire us if you don't want to.
[14:33] But I think what we give to folks is a team of folks that really know what they're doing. I've, I've been doing it for, I guess, I guess, almost 30 years closing in on that.
[14:44] And so I've got all those years of experience. I've got a great team that works with me and they have a lot of experience as well.
[14:51] And when, a lot of times you have the TV lawyers or the, or the big city lawyers and you're not getting the TV ad, you're getting somebody fresh out of law school.
[15:01] And I'm not trying to beat up on somebody fresh out of law school. Once I was fresh out of law school, but I've been doing it 29 years. And so you have a small town lawyer with hometown customer service with a team of folks that that work directly with me and are going to take care of you.
[15:18] Make sure you get that good service that we pride ourselves on. And so you're going to have those years of experience. But whoever you are comfortable with, whoever you trust, whoever's near you, that's fine.
[15:29] That's some advice. And then if you don't like them, give me a call. Right. So we'll take care of it. Right. But, but get the advice early on. And if you can before you give a recorded statement or tune in with the insurance company, it's really helpful to at least call around and get some general advice.
[15:48] These days, there's a lot of stuff on the internet too. You could do a little search and get some basic information. Be very, very careful about giving too much information to the insurance company before you educate yourself about the process.
[16:02] And I would really recommend not doing a recorded statement until you have a lawyer with you, present and available to be on the call with you.
[16:12] Thank you, Mike. This has been so informative and helpful about learning what to do immediately after a car accident in North Carolina.
[16:20] Yes, ma'am. Well, thank you for your time. I appreciate it.
[16:23] Well, that is it for this episode of real people, real answers with Mike Roland. If you have questions about your rights after an accident or need legal guidance, you can learn more by visiting rollin-yogger.com.
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