After a trucking accident, there are generally a great deal of damages, including personal injuries, property damages, and intangible damages. Due to the sheer size and force of trucks, collisions involving these vehicles tend to be fatal or tend to cause extensive damage. Attorneys and insurance providers alike try to place a dollar value on the damage in order to reach settlements and in order to settle insurance claims. However, determining damages and placing a value on them after trucking accidents can be difficult. A great deal of evidence and property may have been obliterated, making it difficult to reconstruct an accident or determine exactly what happened. As well, attorneys and insurance providers tend to have different ways of evaluating the value of damages. In general, however, damages will include:

1) Property damages. If you have been in a trucking accident, you will want to recover for property damage. This can include the cost of repairing or replacing your car or vehicle, as well as the cost of replacing anything of value inside your vehicle. Property damage may include the loss, for example, of any gadgets, laptops, or digital cameras you may have had in your car at the time of the accident. As well, if a truck has crashed on your property, there may be in damage to structures, walkways, and driveways on your property. In this event, you may wish to recover for the damages not covered by your homeowners insurance policy.

2) Personal injuries. In addition to property damage, almost all trucking accidents cause severe personal injuries. These may include spinal cord injuries, broken bones, amputations, burn injuries, brain injuries, and other serious injuries. If you have been seriously injured in a trucking accident, you will be able to recover for medical costs, the cost of medication, rehabilitation costs, hospital stays, and other costs related to your personal injury.

3) Long-term costs of personal injuries. Many injuries have long-term costs. For example, you may not be able to return to work for an extended period of time and you may need to hire babysitters to care for your children if you are physically unable to do so. You may require around-the-clock nurse care or you may have other expenses that you will need to calculate in determining the damages caused by your trucking accident. Keep in mind that some serious injuries can take years or even a lifetime to recover from, so it is important to consider the total costs that injuries may incur.

4) Income loss. After your trucking accident, you are generally unable to work for at least some time. For example, you may lose work time while in the hospital initially recovering from your injury. In addition, you may be too traumatized to return to work immediately. In some cases, you may need rehabilitation or may even be unable to return to work due to permanent injuries. You may also need to take time away from work in order to attend doctors’ appointments, attorney appointments, and to attend to legal matters. A good Florida personal injury attorney can ensure that you are compensated for all of this income loss.

5) Medical costs. Medical costs after a trucking accidents can include a hospital stay, at-home nursing care, the cost of bandages, wheelchairs, and other medical devices. You may also incur costs if you need cosmetic surgery and other types of treatments not usually covered by health insurance. A good Florida personal injury attorney can help you recover money for these costs. As well, some specialized treatments are only available through travel to other states or even other countries. A good personal injury attorney can ensure that you have the financial resources after a trucking accident to pursue the best treatment possible so that you make the fullest recovery possible.

6) Intangibles. A trucking accident can affect your life in many ways and can therefore incur many intangible costs. For example, you may be in severe pain and may require renovations to your home in order to accommodate a new level of mobility. You may need to take taxis more often in order to get to doctors’ appointments after your accident if you are unable to drive a car. You may even need to pay for a therapist or counselor in order to get over the trauma of being in an accident. All of these intangibles and many others can add thousands of dollars to the cost of your injury. A good personal injury attorney can predict these expenses and can ensure that you are compensated for your losses so that you do not have to pay for these expenses out of pocket.