I recently read a news post that discussed a major Orange County automobile crash with personal injuries on Kirkman Road in Orlando. Apparently, a black Cadillac was making its way southbound on Kirkman Road, when a silver van pulled up next to the Cadillac and began opening fire with a gun. The driver of the Cadillac lost control, crossed into northbound Kirkman, and crashed into a Toyota with four people inside. Video of the damaged Toyota shows how serious the impact was, and how lucky these folks are to be alive.
As an Orlando personal injury lawyer, my thought almost automatically go to the victims of this crash — the four unfortunate folks in the Toyota. Reportedly, at least two of them suffered significant injuries. I know from experience that these folks each only has $10,000 in Personal Injury Protection (PIP) benefits to cover their initial medical expenses. If they are seriously injured, and been taken by an ambulance to the hospital and received critical care, their $10,000 in PIP is already gone. How are these poor folks going to pay their remaining medical bills, lost wages, and the other consequences that are smacking them in the face right now — even though they’ve done nothing wrong.
Normally, they could go after, and make a liability insurance claim against the person or person who caused this crash. Unfortunately, this issue is a little cloudy at the moment. Nobody knows who fired the shots that seem to have caused the Cadillac to lose control. Nobody knows what the people in the Cadillac might have been doing at the time that the shots were fired, or whether they had liability insurance at all.
I am going to keep my fingers crossed that one or more of the folks in the Toyota carried Uninsured Motorist (UM) coverage as part of their automobile insurance package. Even if the folks who were injured did not own the Toyota they were riding in, their personal UM could be used utilized to compensate them. I wrote a book that explains in detail what Uninsured Motorist coverage is, and how it works. Download a free copy of my book, Asleep At The Wheel, to learn more.
