Car Accident Compensation

If you’ve been in a car accident, regardless of whether you were at fault or not, you have to submit an application for personal injury benefits to the insurer of the most-at-fault vehicle (even if that’s your insurer) within 28 days to ensure you receive income support payments from the date of the accident. Even if you were at fault, if you were injured in a motor accident, you can claim treatment costs and, depending on the circumstances, you may be eligible for income support payments for six months after the accident. Just be aware that the claim form needs to be submitted together with a Certificate of Capacity filed by your doctor, so it’s important to see your doctor as soon as possible after the accident.

If you were not mostly at fault in the accident and you have a “non-minor injury”, then you will be able to claim benefits beyond the first 6 months, and you may also be entitled to claim lump sum damages for pain and suffering and your past and future economic losses. Your treatment and care expenses are covered for life.

A claim can be made up to 3 months after an accident, although past weekly payments will not be payable if the claim is made more than 28 days after the accident. Claims made after 3 months will be accepted if a full and satisfactory explanation as to why the delay occurred is provided. However, these processes can stretch over long periods of time and they may not be successful. 

When we operate motor vehicles on the road, we’re under obligation to take reasonable care to avoid injuring other motorists, passengers or pedestrians. So if a driver fails to exercise reasonable care while driving, for example by disobeying traffic rules, their behaviour may be considered negligent. In this case, their CTP insurer may be liable for any lump sum damages suffered by the injured person as a result of the negligence of the owner or driver of a motor vehicle.

Car accidents can be messy and quite difficult to deal with, in both the literal and bureaucratic sense. So depending on the situation you may benefit from obtaining legal advice before lodging any claims. A specialised lawyer can not only help you make sense of the lengthy paperwork involved but also help make you aware of – and get – what you’re entitled to depending on your circumstances.

To prove a driver’s negligence in a car accident, you have to first of all show that there was, in fact, a duty of care to be upheld. In the context of operating a motor vehicle, for example, this would describe the driver’s responsibility to take reasonable care to avoid harming other people on the road by obeying traffic rules. Next, you need to prove they were engaging in neglectful behaviour, thus ‘breaching’ said duty of care. This could include:

• Running a red light
• Not watching for pedestrians at a crossing
• Speeding 
• Not keeping a safe distance from other vehicles, cyclists or pedestrians
• Failing to give way
• Losing control of a vehicle
• Failing to repair defects in a vehicle.

As the claimant, you then have to show that this driver’s actions have in fact caused you harm or measurable loss. Should that be the case you may be entitled to compensation.

Sometimes it can be difficult to identify the vehicle at fault, for example when a guilty driver flees the scene, or when the driver does not realise they’ve caused an accident. Just because you cannot identify the at-fault driver does not mean you cannot claim. In this situation, a claim must be lodged with the Nominal Defendant who will allocate the claim to a licensed CTP insurer. The same laws apply as in any other motor accident, except that you must show that you have made reasonable attempts to identify the at-fault vehicle. This is known as “due inquiry and search”.