How Weather Can Impact Your Minnesota Car Accident Claim

Poor weather conditions contribute to countless automobile accidents every single day, but they can also impact how injury awards are paid out in the event you and another driver are trying to figure out where blame lies for an accident. Although Minnesota is considered a No Fault state when it comes to car accident insurance claims, if damages exceed a certain limit, you may need to take the other driver to court in order to collect a full payout, and weather can certainly impact how a comparative fault rating is determined. Below, we take a closer look at how weather can impact your car accident injury claim in Minnesota.

Weather And Comparative Fault Car Accidents

The weather could be a major contributing factor to your car accident, but that doesn’t mean you can actually blame the weather for the accident. No court is going to place 30% of the blame on one driver, 30% on the other driver, and 40% on the weather. That’s because drivers are required to maintain reasonable control of their vehicle at all times, including in bad weather.

You may have poor visibility due to fog, extended stopping distances because of wet tires, lose control of your vehicle because of a patch of black ice or be blinded by a bright sun, but in the eyes of the law, you’re still the one at fault. In poor weather conditions, you’re expected to maintain a safe driving distance because of poor visibility or inhibited braking ability. You have a duty of care to drive safely, and you can’t place the blame on the weather even if it makes it harder to drive safely.

With that said, your injury attorney will absolutely review the weather conditions on the day of your accident to see if it can be beneficial to your claim. For example, if you rear ended someone who parked illegally under an overpass during a particularly bad storm, your lawyer may argue that the other driver actually failed to uphold their duty to drive safely, as parking in an unexpected and illegal location when visibility is low created a much larger hazard. Similarly, if you struck a pedestrian that dashed across the middle of the street because they didn’t want to wait in the rain and failed to cross at a crosswalk, they may hold much more of the liability than in a standard pedestrian accident claim.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that there was actually very little that you could do to prevent the accident due to an issue with the weather. If a tree branch falls on your vehicle or debris from a tornado damages your car or causes an injury, this could be considered an “Act of God.” Again, you can’t just say all weather events are an Act of God and were unavoidable, because although weather may have played a factor in your accident, it’s likely that traveling at unsafe speed, poorly maintained tires or other controllable factors played a role in your accident, and you can’t blame God for that.

Dean and his team will review your accident and go through all potential claim options with you. If weather played a role in your accident and we believe the insurance company is trying to weasel out of a fair payment by shifting blame onto you, we’re here to fight for your rights. They may try to use the weather to raise your comparative fault rating, and we’re here to combat that narrative and ensure you get every penny you deserve from your car accident case.

For more information on how weather can impact your car accident claim, or for help making a strong case to the insurance company to collect money you’re owed after a car accident, reach out to Dean and the team at Margolis Law Firm today at (952) 230-2700.