A three-vehicle accident on State Route 125 in Santee sent three people to the hospital with critical injuries, according to official reports. The three vehicles collided and one rolled completely off the road and through a fence, landing on Mission Gorge Road. Officials extracted two males who were transported to an area hospital with major trauma.
The accident is under investigation. Police have not released any details of what may have happened to cause the initial collision.
When several vehicles are involved in a crash, particularly at high speeds, it is common for there to be serious or even fatal injuries. In many cases the victims are hit once in the initial impact and then hit again from a different direction, increasing the likelihood that they will suffer traumatic injuries.
According to information from the California Highway Patrol’s Statewide Integration Traffic Reporting System, San Diego County saw a total of 196 fatal crashes in 2011 and 12,542 injury crashes. Alcohol use was involved in 85 of the deaths. In addition, 45 pedestrians, 15 bicyclists and 50 motorcycle accident victims were involved in crashes in San Diego during that year.
It is clear that traffic accidents are a major cause of death and injury in San Diego. What many people do not realize, however, is that insurance companies are hard at work to be sure that the victims of these accidents do not recover any money for their injuries.
Many people simply do not want to believe that a company would deny due payments to a victim when that person needs to pay medical bills and may need money to live on during recovery from an accident. The truth is, however, that this happens every day. If possible, insurance companies will try to use any circumstance available to tell the victim that the accident was his or her fault and that the company will not pay.
Victims who are injured and need money immediately often panic and settle for very low amounts of money. This happens far more often than people realize.
It is important to protect your rights if you are the victim of a crash. Contact Daniel M. Gilleon in San Deigo for a consultation and find out about how to recover money from an insurance company or other source if you have been the victim of an accident.