Serious road accidents: find out if you are entitled to compensation for damages
Have you had a particularly serious car accident and hurt yourself badly, or did it happen to someone you knew very well?
Do you want to claim damages for a road accident that covers both physical damage and compensation for moral damage?
Now you are confused, you don’t know what to do, there are many, too many things and you don’t even know where to start.
We will be by your side, and we will explain to you step by step what you need to do to solve your problems!
Who can claim damages
All those who have suffered damage following the road accident: the driver of the car or motorbike, third parties transported, pedestrians hit. More generally all those who have suffered damage from road traffic and who will ask for compensation for the accident.
What damages can you claim
The recoverable damages are substantially divided into PROPERTY DAMAGES and NON PROPERTY DAMAGES.
We speak of pecuniary damage when the person suffers an economic loss due to the road accident. Financial damage includes everything that can be quantified and monetised directly. Therefore it refers only to the patrimonial sphere and not to the damages suffered by the natural person.
Some examples of pecuniary damage
- Loss of income from work, whether performed as a freelancer (including freelance) or as an employee;
- the damage sustained by property assets, such as for example the car;
- medical expenses.
The financial damages caused by the road accident must all be assessed on the basis of certain documents, therefore:
- if the loss of income is requested, it will be necessary to produce the tax return or a document showing the work that had to be carried out;
- if damage to the damaged vehicle is requested, it will be necessary to produce the invoice or at most the estimate if the damage to the vehicle has not yet been repaired;
- if reimbursement of medical expenses is requested, it will be necessary to produce all the proofs of the medical expenses incurred following the road accident.
These are the damages deriving from the road accident that do not directly involve an economic loss, as they concern everything that can neither be quantified nor monetized directly. Non-pecuniary damages concern the person and not the assets.
Non-pecuniary damages are:
Biological damage
With biological damage we refer to the damage suffered to the physical integrity of the person, to one’s body. It is quantified on the basis of a percentage score assigned by the coroner.
If we consider that the loss of the life asset corresponds to the overall loss of 100% of physical integrity; the greater the damages suffered, the greater the percentage score assigned by the coroner.
In this way, the higher the percentage score, the higher the share of compensation for damages due to the injured party following the road accident.
Moral damage
The expression moral damage means the quantification of the suffering suffered by the injured party due to the physical injuries sustained as a result of the road accident.
It is generally considered that even persons emotionally linked to the person damaged by road traffic may have suffered non-pecuniary damage .
More practically, the moral damage consists in a personalization of the biological damage carried out by the judge. Therefore it can be assumed that the greater the physical damage, the greater the non-pecuniary damage. For example, the suffering suffered by a person following an ankle sprain will be different from that suffered following a road accident which resulted in a leg fracture.
While some judges uniquely identify non-pecuniary damage, others argue that it can be further subdivided, for example into the category of existential damage. However, the judges have not yet reached a definitive judgment regarding the items that make up the non-pecuniary damage. Your lawyer will be able to advise you in the best way on which damages to request, evaluating the individual case.
Psychic damage
Although some consider psychic damage as a category of moral damage, it would be more correct to include it within biological damage.
Psychic damage is the damage suffered by the injured person from road traffic or by a relative who, due to a serious harmful event, reports an alteration of the psychic state such that it can be evaluated by a psychiatrist, on the basis of a percentage score (as is already the case for biological damage)
