[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation

driver turned left

A-Pillar Blindness.

It's a common thing and more people need to be made aware of it. Glad you're ok.

Definitely sue. You don't know how this will affect you long term. Years from now, a pinched nerve can render your arm un-useable.

As someone who knows someone who was killed as a pedestrian crossing the road…it is not your fault. Don’t forget that fact. Trauma does weird things to our brains even without head injury. Don’t feel guilty about pursuing a lawsuit either. It was the other person’s responsibility to be watchful and follow traffic laws…and they failed. Repercussions are normal in such circumstances even if it is an honest mistake. Hope that you don’t feel any more pain or have more unseen issues. Sometimes these things take time to surface. If you feel unexplainably sleepy at any point, don’t hesitate to see a doctor. Sometimes head trauma isn’t obvious. Wish you the best and hope you recover quickly and thoroughly.

Lawyer here. Bud, your shoulder will never recover fully from this. Shoulders are terrible joints. The bones are just sort of there, not really attached to the rest of your skeleto. Talk with your Ortho about the probability that you will need a total shoulder replacement at some point in your life because of not just the broken bone and the healing processes to come, but also the damage to the surrounding soft tissue.

Plus the ambulance ride, hospital visit, and ensuing treatment, is going to take up time and money and it should not be yours. As you noted, it's really just insurance paperwork, at the end of the day. Call a good lawyer.

You seem like a really kind and thoughtful person. I hope you make a full recovery and go on to a wonderful life.

I think I’d rather get hit by a car than hit someone with my car.

Banger.

Glad to hear the driver stopped. I hope your recovery is smooth and there are no long lasting problems.

My daughter was struck by a car last week, while on a pedestrian crossing. The driver (after being chased down by another teenager) stopped, talked to my daughter, and then drove off. She collapsed once the adrenaline wore off, and we spent the evening in the hospital while they checked her over.

Driver deserves a few slaps for stopping after being chased down, and then making the decision a second time to drive off instead of calling emergency services.

It's the responsibility of driving a car to make sure the space the car is going into is empty. They didn't do that and caused you bodily harm. I got hit by a careless driver last year, and have successfully filed a personal injury claim and have pressed for a criminal case. Don't give them the benefit of the doubt.

Did you survive?

I was T-boned on my motorcycle. Like you, the driver had no malicious intent and I felt kind of bad for her as well because hitting someone is traumatic too. I tumbled about 60' down the road and spent half a day in the trauma unit in the hospital getting tests and images. Her insurance was not enough to cover all my medical. After about 6 months of care which hit around $200k her insurance was tapped out. I did sue her insurance company but there wasn't a lot there to get due to Michigan insurance laws. I didn't sue her but I did get what I could from insurance. She may be screwed trying to get car insurance in the future but I'll never walk normal again and may never be able to work in my field again. Don't leave yourself short. The future issues may be worse than expected.
My son had a similar accident to yours. His shoulder and elbow were pretty mashed up and he is pretty much back to normal now. Hopefully your recovery is as good as his was. Being young helps healing a lot.

I don't know if i'd rather be hit than hit someone, but not wanting to find out is definitely one of the reasons I don't want a license.

I have had two work place injuries, one still affects (effects?) me today 20+ years later (I am slowly going blind because of an eye injury). I wish I had not blown it off when it happened. I was encouraged to sue, but it seemed like a lot of trouble for not a big deal back then. If I knew how bad my eye sight was going to be I would have sued for sure.

I truly have no ill-will toward that person because shit happens

They were reckless and didn't care to drive safely in an area where they should have even paid extra attention.

Glad you’re alright! I’m lucky to have driven for years and never done harmed anyone in a collision. If the person’s insurance goes up, well, there’s a reason they do that.

I was lightly struck by a guy at a crosswalk in a busy commercial district… walking on the sidewalk, saw this car apparently coming to a stop and walked out into the crosswalk, but he went a little far. He barely tapped me and I sort of fell o to his hood. It was this old black dude. Not much to say so I just waved and kept going.

sue that fucker for my friend rosalie who got hit in a crosswalk by an old rich guy in maryland and the cops refused to do anything about it

This terrifies me lol. My work is only a mile away, basically down the street but I hate walking there. I have to cross multiple busy roads that are like 40mph, but people frequently speed around 60mph. The pedestrian stop signals are super slow and the one time I used them it took 15 minutes, no shit, I timed it.

So I would have to jay walk, three 4 lane roads, all 40mph everyday, just to walk a mile to work.

There is a faster route but there's no sidewalk, and there's A bridge that forces you onto the road. Safe to say I don't walk that either.

The walkability is so bad, you have to drive somewhere to walk and exercise.

Obligatory /c/fuckcars

Glad you're OK, but definitely get as much as you can from the insurance. Drivers are REQUIRED to pay them hundreds each month for this reason. So make them pay up now that they are needed.

When it comes to deciding what to do, try to think about what advice you'd give a best friend in your situation and consider following that yourself. You can work with your lawyer to figure what's reasonable to expect, but don't feel bad about making sure any future treatment is covered. Be kind to yourself while you recover, and take medical advice seriously. As someone with a few traumatic head injuries, I'm glad to hear you won't have to deal with that at least. Best wishes for your recovery.

If you have a case you should sue. Someone totally fucked you up due to their own carelessness whole driving a dangerous vehicle. Sue them if you have a case and let the court decide what's fair.

“But you’re still coming to work, right?”

I got knocked off my bike by a driver in 2016 and it was simultaneously among the worst and best things to ever happen to me. It was very stark how little influence I could exercise over the car. I mean, it weighs a lot, so of course, but I was quite suddenly confronted with it.

Very gruesome description so stop reading if you've not got the stomach:

I landed face-first and the brunt was taken by my front teeth. Imagine the bit where the gum ends as a fulcrum, and my bodyweight against the road surface pushing the bits of the tooth you normally see inwards, so the roots of my teeth tore through the bone and gum holding them in place and through my upper lip. I got whisked to A&E, stayed the night in hospital, couldn't work for a few months, had to see a psychiatrist and a solicitor and all the rest, then I ended up getting a tidy sum for the trouble, wrenching me out of poverty with the same kind of alacrity my teeth had wrenched themselves out with, which felt indescribable.

Like you, I wasn't at all spiteful towards the driver, because it was after all an accident, one that could've been prevented but fine, c'est la vie. The driver was a woman but the insurance policy was under a man's name, and the story of what happened had changed between the accident itself and the insurance, so he's a massive cunt anyway. Then someone from the insurance company was getting paid to make sure I'd be paid as little as possible, so whoever's decided that's a good job for someone to have is a massive cunt. Then the detective who was investigating laughed at me when I told him the road where a witness lived. "Do you expect me to go knocking on doors or something?" I said something like "isn't that detective work?" I don't have enough middle fingers for that cunt.

So I hope you get a little bit of solidarity from my anecdote and a nice windfall down the line.

I'm really sorry. Not that my opinion by itself matters in this context, or should, but I'll just go ahead and add to the list of people agreeing that you should sue. You never did anything to deserve this and you sure don't deserve to pay for it. I would recommend, perhaps, talking to a therapist at some point—probably after all of this has somewhat settled. Something like this could very well end up affecting you long term psychologically. I really hope everything works out for you as well as it possibly can, though, at any rate. Like someone else already said here: you seem really nice. Take care, please.