Atlanta Car Accident Lawyer Shane Smith, an Atlanta Personal Injury Attorney who limits his practice to Car Wrecks, Car Accidents, Personal Injury, DUI Victims, Slip and Falls, and other injuries relating to Back and Neck Injuries
Most people believe that if you are involved in a car accident and somebody hits your vehicle that you are automatically entitled to a rental vehicle. This is not exactly the case. Georgia personal injury law states that you are entitled to the loss of use or reimbursement of you car rental expenses. The reason I say reimbursement is because some insurance companies will not put you in a rental car after a car accident. They will then force you to rent a car and submit the expenses to them for reimbursement. Be careful doing this. Prior to renting the car you need to ensure that the insurance is right and will pay the full cost of the vehicle. In other words, if the car costs thirty dollars a day you need to ensure that the insurance company will reimburse you thirty dollars a day. Sometimes their rates are lower. You will then have to ask the insurance company which company they work with that has rates that are below the amount.
Sometimes the insurance or the rental car companies require a credit card to rent a car. This is the rental cars' procedure. We cannot force them to issue you a car without a credit card. Another issue that comes up with rental cars is the insurance the rental car companies try to force you into purchasing at the desk. This is generally unnecessary if you had full coverage prior to the collision. If you have full coverage, this means your vehicle was insured if involved in a car accident, whether the car accident is your fault or someone else's. This type of insurance normally will roll over to a rental vehicle. Just check with your insurance company. If you did not have this type of insurance and only had liability then you will have to get some sort of insurance to drive the vehicle. Otherwise the vehicle will not be protected if you caused the wreck.
The reason the insurance company does not have to pay for this type of insurance is because you did not have it before the car accident. The only difference was it was your vehicle not the rental companies. If you did not have full coverage, one option to check is with your credit card company. Many times if you pay with a major credit card, a perk that you receive is that they will cover the vehicle if there is a collision. Check with your credit card company and see if you have this option. If for some reason you do not have to rent a vehicle, you can ask the insurance company for loss of use for the time period your car was being repaired. This is normally somewhere between ten and thirty dollars per day. This is only available if you did not have a rental car.
For more information on your rights after you are involved in a car accident in Atlanta or Georgia please check out Atlanta car accident lawyer Shane Smith's website here. Find tips regarding how to settle your property damage claim or what to do if you were hurt in the car accident. Attorney Shane Smith practices all types of personal injury law, but the bulk of his law practice is car accidents in Atlanta and Georgia.