Adding Insult to Injury:
Automobile Accident Claims in New York City
Car=bike/ped crash victims in New York are entitled to medical care under state law. The glitch is: No one has to tell you.
By Carol A. Wood.
Published by Dollars & Sense: Baruch College Review of Business & Society, on March 27, 2012.
Car crash victims are entitled to medical care under New York State law, regardless of fault or state of residence. Yet these laws are not publicized and are little known. This article examines the lack of official guidance on handling a crash and its aftermath, and the unnecessary financial loss and risk of harm it causes.
The article suggests that public officials take simple, inexpensive steps to address the problem, such as publishing information on medical, legal and insurance procedures that crash victims need. Officials can similarly educate the public at large about what to do, and not do, at any of the 78,000 crashes in the city each year.
The Injuries
Riding her bike home from a Brooklyn cafe on a hot June afternoon, Sarah Phillips carefully signaled and waited before turning onto Prospect Place. Next thing she knew, she was in an ambulance, both right shinbones fractured. “Wherever you’re taking me, it has to be cheap,” the panicked, uninsured art student told paramedics.
Dan Finton, an uninsured bookseller, had his leg broken by a hit-and-run driver on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan one Saturday night. He says he had no idea how he was going to pay his medical bills. He engaged a lawyer, who told him about a state insurance program for hit-and-run victims — but hospital administrators said they knew nothing about the program.
A woman who asked to be named only as “Deborah,” a 30-something consultant, was crossing the street on the Upper East Side when a livery cab backed over her to get a parking space. A crowd of people gathered, urging her not to move. At the hospital, Deborah was diagnosed with a head injury; she was unable to remember her relatives’ names, let alone navigate the insurance system. “Absolutely nobody explained these administrative things,” she says.
ABOUT EVERY SEVEN MINUTES, a car crash occurs in New York City that’s serious enough to be reported to the authorities. Although fatalities have begun to fall lately, the number of car crashes and injuries continues to rise, according to the state’s latest full-year data. More than 11,000 pedestrians were injured in 78,000 NYC car crashes in 2010, up 6.1 percent from the previous year, along with 3,500 bicyclists — up 25 percent. And while the number of severe injuries has fallen, nondrivers account for a higher percentage of them — 36 percent in 2007, up from 30 percent of in 2002. (The city’s Department of Transportation did not respond to several requests for more recent figures.)
Under two state insurance laws, all of these pedestrians and cyclists are entitled to medical benefits, paid by the driver’s insurer or an industry fund. But frequently, the victims don’t know about the laws. That’s because no government authority publicizes their existence. And insurance companies aren’t required to explain the laws’ provisions until the crash victim files a claim.
Increasingly in New York, both city and state governments are taking bold steps to improve the safety of public streets. City efforts to tame traffic began more than a decade ago — including redesigns along the notorious Queens Boulevard — and intensified in 2008 under a new DOT commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, with widened sidewalks and expanded bikeways, among other projects.
The trend gained steam in August 2011, when the state enacted a “complete streets” law that requires roadway planners to “consider the needs of all users…including pedestrians, bicyclists, public transportation riders, motorists and citizens of all ages and abilities, including children, the elderly and the disabled.”
From a public safety standpoint, these measures have begun to reduce casualties and promise greater benefits in the future.
The Insult
Yet legions of current crash victims remain neglected, and neither the state nor the city ensure that they receive the benefits they’re entitled to.
The state and city could begin to correct this problem simply by making basic information available. Even small changes — such as identifying and linking the state insurance laws on the 311 and 511 information portals — would help.
The laws are these: