San Jose Personal Injury Attorney - Car Accident Lawyer

Michael Rehm - (408) 489-2007

Free Consultations

More than 2,400 miles of streets carry San Jose dwellers and visitors to all corners of the city. Some of those streets are crumbling. According to the city auditor, almost a quarter of the city's streets are in poor or failing condition. Potholes and other road hazards make traffic accidents more likely, given the difficulty of maintaining control of a vehicle on a bad road.

Traffic congestion in San Jose also contributes to traffic accidents. San Jose and the South Bay area rank as the fifth most congested traffic region in the United States. About 87% of San Jose's workforce commutes to work by vehicle each day, competing with nearly 200,000 commercial vehicles in daily use. Business travelers who rent a car to attend meetings share the roads with tourists and residents who visit the Tech Museum of Innovation, the Municipal Rose Garden, or the San Pedro Square Market.

Traffic leads to accidents, and accidents lead to frustrating disputes with insurance adjusters. San Jose Car Accident Lawyer Michael Rehm help San Jose collision victims cope with stress by negotiating with insurance companies on their behalf. We represent San Jose traffic accident victims who were injured in:

Car accidents
Truck accidents
Motorcycle accidents
Bicycle accidents
Pedestrian accidents

We also represent families of loved ones who were killed in San Jose traffic accidents.

San Jose Intersection Accidents

In urban environments, intersection accidents are a leading cause of serious personal injuries. Many intersection accidents occur when a driver tries to beat a light, doesn't see a red light, or makes a right turn on red without yielding to oncoming traffic.

According to one study, the most dangerous intersections in San Jose are interchanges:

Highway 101 at Tully Road
Highway 101 at Capitol Exp.
Highway 280 at Saratoga Ave.
Highway 280 at Byrd Ave.

For motorcyclists, however, the most dangerous intersections are those in which a driver makes a left turn in front of an oncoming motorcycle rider. A driver's failure to yield when turning left is the most common cause of motorcycle accidents in San Jose.

High-traffic roads are usually the most dangerous for bicyclists and pedestrians. The city has identified the intersections on these three traffic corridors are being potentially unsafe for bicycle riders and pedestrians:

Fruitdale Ave.
Hillsdale Ave.
Saratoga Ave.

When intersection accidents involve two cars, they can cause serious injuries. While crumple zones protect occupants in head-on collisions, there is no corresponding protection in a T-bone collision. Some cars have side-impact airbags, but many do not.

When intersection accidents involve motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians, the results are often fatal. When accident victims survive, they often suffer from catastrophic head or spinal injuries.

San Jose Rear-End Collisions

A rear-end collision can occur on any street. Rear-end collisions also occur in parking lots. The most common traffic accidents in San Jose are rear-end collisions.

Traffic congestion makes rear-end collisions more likely. Attention wanders during stop-and-go driving. Drivers pay insufficient attention to the road ahead. They may be thinking about work, programming a GPS unit, or reading an incoming text on a cellphone.

Studies prove that even low-speed rear-end collisions cause significant injuries. A collision of 10 mph can generate sufficient shear forces to cause whiplash injuries to occupants of a rear-ended vehicle. Those forces are even more substantial when the vehicle that fails to stop is larger and heavier than the rear-ended vehicle.

Neck injuries from rear-end collisions sometimes cause immediate pain, but it is common for the onset of pain to be delayed for up to 48 hours. It is important to see a doctor at the first twinge of pain, both to hasten recovery and to create medical records that will document the connection between the neck injury and the rear-end collision.

San Jose Traffic Accident Injuries

In the most recent year for which statistics are available, more than 5,000 traffic accident victims were injured or killed on San Jose roads. Some injuries are catastrophic, including:

Spinal injuries causing quadriplegia or paraplegia
Head injuries causing nerve damage
Limb amputations
Crush injuries that impair the function of vital organs
Eye injuries that cause blindness
Burn injuries that affect most of the body

While catastrophic injuries usually prevent accident victims from returning to their usual employment and often require a lifetime of care, other long-term or permanent disabilities can interfere with the accident victim's quality of life. Those include:

Facial disfigurement
Back injuries that limit the ability to bend or twist
Neck injuries that limit range of head motion
Knee injuries that limit the ability to squat, kneel, or climb
Eardrum injuries that impair the ability to hear
Chronic pain in any part of the body

Other common traffic accident injuries heal over time but cause temporary disability or significant pain, including:

Broken bones
Joint injuries
Burn injuries that are limited to one part of the body
Back pain
Neck and shoulder pain
Road rash (common in motorcycle and bicycle accidents)

Nerve damage and torn or stretched muscles, ligaments, and tendons are also quite painful. Whether those injuries will heal and how long healing will take tends to be unpredictable. It is important to follow a doctor's recommendations and to attend every prescribed session of physical therapy, even if the therapy is inconvenient or painful. Accident victims damage the settlement value of their cases when they stop receiving recommended medical treatment because insurance adjusters assume that the injury no longer bothered the victim.

San Jose Auto Accident Injury Compensation

An injury settlement attempts to restore the accident victim to the position the victim occupied before the accident, to the extent that money can do so. Compensation includes:

Replacement of lost income and anticipated loss of future income
Payment of medical bills and future medical expenses
The expenses of living with a disability, such as vocational rehabilitation, home aide services, and remodeling to accommodate a wheelchair

Money cannot take away pain, but financial compensation for pain, suffering, and emotional distress helps improve the quality of an accident victim's life in other ways.

When accident victims die in a San Jose collision, certain family members are entitled to wrongful death compensation. Eligible family members can receive the value of financial contributions and services (such as housekeeping) that the family member would have provided if he or she had survived the accident, as well as compensation for the loss of companionship and guidance that the victim would have given.