Understanding how the law applies to your Illinois car accident
If you have been involved in a car accident in the state of Illinois, you will have some legal rights that protect you and give you the opportunity to file for damages. However, you will also have several responsibilities relating to the incident that are important for you to fulfill.
After you have been involved in a car accident, you have the responsibility to file a crash report in most situations. You will need to file a crash report if the crash resulted in more than $1,500 of damage to property, an injury to a person, or the death of a person. It is important that this report is filed with the Illinois Department of Transportation within 10 days of the incident.
How do at-fault laws work in the state of Illinois?
As state laws go, Illinois car accident laws are typical of the rest of the country. Illinois is an at-fault state, which essentially means that the person or parties responsible for the car accident are liable to pay damages. This payment of damages will be conducted through the at-fault party’s insurance company, assuming that they are fully insured.
Additionally, the state of Illinois follows modified comparative negligence laws. This means that when multiple parties are deemed to be at fault in an incident, each party will be proportionally responsible for the damages based on how much they were determined to be at fault.
How do modified comparative negligence laws work in practice?
If there were two parties involved in an accident and both were deemed to be partially at fault for the incident, they will each be assigned a percentage relating to how much they were at fault. For example, one party might be 25 percent at fault and the other party 75 percent at fault. In this case, each party will be proportionally responsible for the total damages resulting from the accident.
It is important that you equip yourself with knowledge about the law in Illinois after your car accident. By doing this, you will be able to take action and successfully gain back the damages that you deserve.