Maine Car and Auto Accident & Injury Claims Guide
Most car accident injury cases are based on negligence.
Every driver has a responsibility to operate a motor vehicle with reasonable care. Depending on the circumstances, negligence may involve speeding, following another vehicle too closely, failing to yield, driving while distracted, ignoring a traffic signal, or operating a vehicle while impaired.
A successful negligence claim generally requires establishing that another party owed a duty of reasonable care, breached that duty, and caused an accident that resulted in injuries and damages.
While those concepts may sound straightforward, establishing liability can become complicated when drivers disagree about what happened or an insurance company argues that the injured person contributed to the collision.
This is one reason working with Portland auto accident lawyers may be valuable. An attorney can investigate the collision rather than relying solely on an insurance company’s interpretation of the accident.
Maine’s Comparative Negligence Law
One of the most important issues in a Maine car accident case is comparative negligence.
Under Maine Revised Statutes Title 14, Section 156, an injured person’s claim is not necessarily defeated simply because that person contributed to the accident. When damages are recoverable, however, they may be reduced to an amount considered just and equitable based on the claimant’s share of responsibility. Importantly, the statute provides that a claimant who is found equally at fault may not recover.
This rule makes disputes over fault particularly significant.
Imagine that an insurance company argues that another driver caused the majority of an accident but that you also contributed to what happened. Evidence showing exactly how the crash occurred could substantially affect whether compensation is available and the amount ultimately recovered.
Insurance adjusters may examine:
- Police crash reports
- Witness statements
- Photographs and video
- Vehicle damage
- Traffic signals and signs
- Skid marks and debris
- Electronic vehicle information
- Cellphone records when legally obtainable
- Medical records
- Statements from the drivers
A Portland car accident lawyer can gather and preserve evidence and challenge allegations that unfairly place responsibility on an injured person.
Maine Auto Insurance Requirements
Insurance coverage frequently determines how compensation is obtained after a Portland accident.
Under current Maine law, proof of financial responsibility generally includes at least $50,000 for bodily injury or death to one person, $100,000 when an accident causes injury or death to more than one person, and $25,000 for property damage. Maine law also specifies $2,000 in medical-payment coverage and $500 for towing and storage under the applicable financial-responsibility provisions.
Maine also has important uninsured and underinsured motorist protections. State law requires qualifying automobile policies to provide protection for insured individuals legally entitled to recover bodily-injury damages from uninsured, underinsured, and hit-and-run motorists.
These protections can become extremely important after a serious accident because even a properly insured driver may not carry enough liability coverage to compensate someone who suffers catastrophic injuries.
For example, an accident involving surgery, months away from work, rehabilitation, and permanent impairment can produce losses far exceeding minimum liability limits.
Our Portland auto accident attorneys can examine all potentially applicable policies to determine which sources of insurance coverage may be available.
What Should You Do After a Car Accident in Portland?
What you do immediately after a collision can affect both your health and a future insurance or personal injury claim.
First, get to a safe location when possible and seek emergency assistance when necessary. Injuries should always take priority over gathering evidence.
Maine law requires motorists involved in accidents resulting in personal injury or death to stop and remain at the scene and provide required identifying information. Applicable Maine law also addresses the exchange of registration, driver’s-license, and insurance information following accidents.
When your physical condition permits, useful steps after an accident include photographing the vehicles and accident scene, obtaining witness contact information, exchanging insurance information, and avoiding unnecessary arguments about who caused the collision.
Medical evaluation is also important.
Some accident injuries are immediately obvious. Others become increasingly painful over the hours or days following a collision. Prompt medical attention can help identify injuries and creates documentation showing when symptoms developed.
Keep records of medical appointments, bills, prescriptions, rehabilitation, missed work, transportation expenses, and communications with insurance companies.
Finally, consider speaking with a car accident attorney before accepting a settlement or signing a broad release.
Common Causes of Car Accidents in Portland
Portland combines interstate traffic, busy urban streets, commuters, tourists, pedestrians, cyclists, delivery vehicles, and challenging New England weather. Accidents can therefore occur for many different reasons.
Distracted Driving
A few seconds of distraction can be enough to cause a devastating collision. Drivers may become distracted by phones, navigation systems, passengers, food, entertainment controls, or objects inside their vehicles.
A distracted driver may fail to notice stopped traffic, pedestrians, traffic lights, or another vehicle entering an intersection.
Speeding
Speed can contribute both to the likelihood of a crash and its severity.
A speeding driver has less time to recognize danger and a greater distance may be required to stop. When impact occurs at higher speeds, substantially more energy is transferred to vehicles and occupants.
Following Too Closely
Rear-end crashes are common when drivers leave inadequate following distance.
These accidents can cause neck, back, shoulder, head, and spinal injuries even when vehicle damage initially appears relatively modest.
Failure to Yield
Drivers may cause accidents by failing to yield while turning left, entering a roadway, changing lanes, navigating an intersection, or approaching pedestrians and cyclists who have the right of way.
Impaired Driving
Alcohol and drugs can affect reaction time, judgment, coordination, and perception. Serious crashes can occur when impaired drivers drift between lanes, speed, ignore traffic controls, or fail to recognize hazards.
Fatigued Driving
A fatigued driver may experience delayed reaction times, impaired concentration, or even fall asleep behind the wheel.
Snow, Ice, Rain, and Poor Visibility
Portland drivers are accustomed to difficult winter conditions, but familiarity does not eliminate responsibility.
Snow, freezing rain, black ice, fog, and heavy rain can make roads significantly more dangerous. Drivers should adjust their speed and following distance to conditions rather than simply relying on the posted speed limit.
Portland Roads, Highways, and Potential Car Accident Hot Spots
Portland’s transportation network contains a mixture of interstate highways, major commercial corridors, dense downtown streets, and intersections serving significant vehicle, bicycle, and pedestrian traffic.
MaineDOT maintains public crash-data tools that allow users to examine crashes, maps, and high-crash locations throughout the state. MaineDOT defines and tracks high-crash locations based on crash frequency and comparative crash rates rather than simply labeling every busy road dangerous.
Drivers should use additional caution in heavily traveled Portland corridors such as:
Interstate 295
I-295 carries substantial commuter and through traffic through the Portland area. Highway speeds, merging traffic, exits, congestion, and rapid traffic slowdowns can contribute to serious collisions.
Drivers should pay particular attention around entrance and exit ramps, where vehicles frequently merge or change lanes.
Forest Avenue
Forest Avenue is one of Portland’s major transportation and commercial corridors. It includes intersections, businesses, driveways, turning vehicles, buses, pedestrians, and changing traffic patterns.
Congestion and frequent turning movements can increase opportunities for rear-end, intersection, and side-impact collisions.
Washington Avenue
Washington Avenue has also received attention in Portland traffic studies. Historical traffic analysis identified portions of Washington Avenue as meeting MaineDOT high-crash criteria during the period studied. Because crash classifications can change as traffic patterns and roadway improvements change, current MaineDOT data should be consulted rather than assuming an older designation remains in effect.
Franklin Street
Franklin Street carries vehicles between I-295, downtown Portland, the peninsula, and surrounding neighborhoods.
Traffic studies have previously identified particular locations in the Franklin Street area as high-crash locations under MaineDOT methodology, including the Franklin Street/Middle Street intersection during the period analyzed.
Commercial Street
Commercial Street combines local traffic with commercial activity, tourism, delivery vehicles, pedestrians, and access to Portland’s waterfront.
Drivers should watch carefully for pedestrians, cyclists, stopped traffic, vehicles entering parking areas, and sudden turning movements.
Brighton Avenue and Congress Street
Major corridors such as Brighton Avenue and Congress Street carry traffic through areas containing businesses, residential neighborhoods, intersections, transit stops, and pedestrian activity.
Rather than assuming any particular intersection is currently classified as a MaineDOT high-crash location, motorists and researchers can consult MaineDOT’s current crash database, which provides community crash statistics and high-crash-location information.
Common Injuries After Portland Auto Accidents
Car accident injuries range from relatively minor conditions to permanent disabilities.
Common injuries include:
- Whiplash and other neck injuries
- Herniated and bulging discs
- Back injuries
- Spinal cord injuries
- Traumatic brain injuries
- Concussions
- Broken bones
- Shoulder injuries
- Knee and leg injuries
- Facial injuries
- Lacerations
- Internal organ damage
- Internal bleeding
- Nerve damage
- Burns and scarring
- Psychological trauma
The severity of an injury may not always be apparent immediately after an accident.
Adrenaline and shock can temporarily mask pain. Some symptoms may develop or become more noticeable after the accident.
For this reason, injured motorists should take new symptoms seriously and obtain appropriate medical care.
How Is a Portland Car Accident Claim Investigated?
A strong personal injury claim begins with understanding what happened.
Our Portland car accident attorneys may examine evidence from multiple sources depending on the case.
The investigation may include reviewing the police report, inspecting photographs, interviewing witnesses, examining vehicle damage, obtaining surveillance or traffic-camera footage when available, reviewing medical documentation, analyzing insurance policies, and consulting appropriate experts in more complex cases.
Serious crashes sometimes require accident reconstruction.
Reconstruction professionals may evaluate vehicle positions, impact points, roadway evidence, photographs, measurements, electronic information, and other physical evidence to develop opinions concerning how a collision occurred.
Evidence can disappear quickly. Vehicles are repaired, video recordings can be overwritten, witnesses become harder to locate, and roadway evidence disappears.
Early investigation can therefore make an important difference.
Dealing With Insurance Companies After an Accident
Insurance companies investigate claims with their own financial interests in mind.
An adjuster may contact you shortly after an accident and ask questions about what happened, your injuries, prior medical conditions, or your recovery.
Statements made early in the process may later become significant.
You should provide required information to your own insurer, but be cautious about giving detailed recorded statements to another driver’s insurer without understanding the implications.
An insurer may also offer an early settlement.
A fast settlement can sound appealing when medical bills are accumulating and you are missing work. However, accepting a settlement generally requires resolving the covered claim. If injuries later require additional treatment, the claimant may not be able to simply reopen a completed settlement because the condition turned out to be more serious than expected.
A car accident law firm in Portland Maine can evaluate an offer in light of documented medical expenses, future treatment, income loss, pain, impairment, insurance coverage, liability evidence, and other relevant damages.
Compensation Available After a Portland Car Accident
Every case is different, and compensation depends on the evidence and circumstances.
Potential damages may include compensation for:
Medical Expenses
A claim may involve emergency treatment, hospitalization, surgery, diagnostic testing, physical therapy, medication, specialist treatment, rehabilitation, and other medically necessary care.
Future medical expenses may also become relevant when injuries require continuing treatment.
Lost Income
If injuries prevent someone from working, lost wages may form part of a claim.
Severe injuries can also reduce a person’s future earning ability. This issue is particularly important when an injury prevents someone from returning to the same occupation.
Pain and Suffering
Physical pain and the effect injuries have on daily life can be significant components of a personal injury claim.
Permanent Disability and Impairment
Catastrophic injuries may result in permanent physical limitations, neurological impairment, paralysis, chronic pain, or loss of mobility.
Property Damage
A claim may also involve repair or replacement of the damaged vehicle and other personal property.
The appropriate categories and amounts of damages depend on the individual case.
Maine’s Deadline for Car Accident Injury Lawsuits
Deadlines are extremely important in personal injury cases.
Maine’s general civil statute of limitations provides that civil actions must ordinarily be commenced within six years after the cause of action accrues, unless another law provides a different deadline.
That does not mean an injured person should wait six years to contact an attorney.
Different circumstances can involve different rules or deadlines, and claims against governmental entities can present special requirements. More importantly, waiting can make an accident substantially harder to investigate.
Witnesses move. Memories fade. Vehicles are repaired or destroyed. Businesses overwrite surveillance footage. Physical evidence disappears.
Contacting a lawyer early gives the legal team an opportunity to identify and preserve potentially valuable evidence.
Why Hire Portland Car Accident Lawyers?
An attorney’s role involves much more than filling out insurance paperwork.
Our Portland car accident attorneys can evaluate liability, identify applicable insurance coverage, collect evidence, document damages, communicate with insurers, analyze settlement offers, and prepare a case for litigation when appropriate.
Legal representation can be particularly important when:
- Liability is disputed.
- The insurance company blames you for the accident.
- You suffered serious or permanent injuries.
- Multiple vehicles were involved.
- The responsible driver was uninsured or underinsured.
- Future medical treatment is expected.
- You cannot return to work.
- A commercial vehicle was involved.
- The insurer denies or undervalues the claim.
- The accident resulted in a fatality.
Because Maine’s comparative negligence law can prevent recovery when a claimant is equally at fault, evidence concerning responsibility can have major consequences.
