How To Claim For A Broken Leg Caused By A Road Traffic Accident
Have you broken your leg in a road traffic accident that wasn’t your fault?
Road traffic accidents (RTAs) can happen every day and often have a devastating impact on their victims. If you’ve fallen victim to someone else’s dangerous driving in an accident that wasn’t your fault, you deserve to be compensated for that.
Our panel of solicitors can offer free legal advice. If you want to claim for a broken leg, we can help.
This guide will explain how to identify a broken leg, the process of how to claim compensation on a No Win No Fee basis and why a personal injury solicitor can make this all a much easier process. We will answer the question of how much compensation you could receive for a broken leg and provide useful information to assess your own situation.
Call our advisors free of charge now on 0800 408 7825 to get the answers to your questions or to proceed with your claim.
Choose A Section
- A Guide On How To Claim For A Broken Leg In An RTA
- What Is A Broken Leg?
- Common Broken Leg Injuries Caused By Road Traffic Accidents
- Case Study – £60,000 Claim For A Broken Leg In A Road Traffic Accident
- General Damages Vs Special Damages
- Calculating Compensation You Could Claim For A Broken Leg
- Claim For A Broken Leg With A No Win No Fee Agreement
- How A Road Traffic Accident Solicitor Could Help You
- Speak To An Advisor
- Related Case Studies And Guides
- FAQs Broken Leg Injuries In Road Accident
A Guide On How To Claim For A Broken Leg In An RTA
A broken leg greatly impacts your life, and recovering from one can often be a frustrating and long-winded process. Broken leg and knee injury compensation amounts tend to reflect this due to the recovery time and the substantial change to your quality of life. The RTA in question usually needs to be of a significant nature to cause such an injury.
Under The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 (RIDDOR), companies need to report certain accidents to the Health and Safety Executive. While these are work-based injuries, some would have occurred with the use of vehicles. During 2019/20, over 7,000 leg injuries were reported in accidents at work.
It seems to indicate these types of injuries are more common than, for example, ankle or foot injuries. It also shows that, in almost 500 cases, it hasn’t just been one part of the leg that has been injured. This potentially makes these types of injuries more complex and harder to recover from.
This explains why it’s important to see if you are eligible for broken leg compensation payouts. It isn’t just because they take longer to recover from. They can also be more complicated.
So if you’d like to make a claim for a broken leg, get in touch with our team on the number at the top of this page.
What Is A Broken Leg?
Your leg is composed of the three longest bones in your body – your femur, tibia and fibula. When one of them is broken, symptoms can include severe pain, bruising, an inability to walk and the leg possibly being deformed. You could’ve suffered a hairline fracture to your leg or something more serious, like a compound fracture.
Depending on the severity of the injury, it could also affect your patella or pelvis. Therefore, it’s easy to see how it could leave you in a state of traumatic shock, as well as impacting your mobility.
The NHS states that the first thing the doctor will do is perform an x-ray to assess the damage. A splint will likely be fixed to your leg to ensure no further damage can be caused. A cast will be applied to restrict movement so the healing process can begin.
In severe cases, surgery may be required to fix the broken bone with metal wires, screws or rods. A cast will then be placed after the surgery has been successful.
An injury claim for a broken leg has many factors due to the recovery time that is required. A minor fracture can take 6 to 8 weeks to recover from, while a major one can take up to 6 months or longer. The recovery process is taxing on the body. Therefore, compensation for a broken leg claim can be potentially very high, taking into account any financial losses or expenses.
If you’re unsure if you can make a claim, please contact our advisors via the phone number on the top of the page.
Common Broken Leg Injuries Caused By Road Traffic Accidents
There are many different types of road traffic accidents because of the different types of people that use the road. Road users are made up of drivers, cyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians. According to information provided by the Department for Transport, there were just over 25,000 serious injuries on the roads in 2019 alone.
There are also many types of accidents that can lead to a claim for a broken leg. Such examples include:
- Head-on collisions
- Rear-end collisions
- Side-impacts (often referred to as T-bone accidents)
- Crashes while merging
- Multi-vehicle pile-ups.
Injuries sustained from such accidents could have you looking for free legal advice. The injury might not just involve you breaking your leg. Your hip joint could be affected, as could bones in your foot, such as your tarsals and metatarsals. And that’s not accounting for the psychological impact of being involved in a serious road traffic accident.
Do road users owe a duty of care?
Road users have a duty of care to prevent things like a car accident or any form of road traffic accident. The Highway Code has been put in place as a legal requirement for anyone using the roads. This is specifically to ensure that users are responsible and reliable when using them and strictly adhere to the rules. Accidents can happen when these rules are not followed.
How could drivers breach this duty?
If a car crash takes place, it’s likely that someone has breached their duty of care. Any driver, cyclist or pedestrian can act irresponsibly and potentially put others at risk of harm. This could be because they’ve crossed the road without waiting for a red light or a driver being on their phone and not paying attention to their environment.
If you’re seeking car crash compensation for a broken leg and the accident wasn’t your fault, get in touch with our personal injury claims team for free legal advice.
Case Study – £60,000 Claim For A Broken Leg In A Road Traffic Accident
Mrs Davies loves cars and loves her independence. Having driven from the age of 17, she had just started working in the role she’d always wanted: being a test car driver. She was a safe, responsible, careful driver with a clean record and an ingrained knowledge of Norwich’s roads. She knew how to manoeuvre out of difficult situations due to all these things.
There was one situation, however, that she wasn’t able to get herself out of.
How did Mrs Davies suffer a broken leg?
Having driven to the junction near where she works, Mrs Davies looked forward to another productive day. Other cars in front of her began to pull out. The traffic light still firmly being green, it was now her turn. She checked that the road was clear and turned right, following the car ahead.
Unfortunately, what she couldn’t have anticipated was a car speeding through a red light as the right turn arrow illuminated green. Upon seeing the car only a few seconds before the collision, Mrs Davies desperately attempted to turn away. There wasn’t enough time. There wasn’t anything she could do.
It was a head-on collision that left Mrs Davies in a lot of pain. She’d turned her car left as she’d tried to move away from the oncoming vehicle. This meant that the collision largely affected the right-hand side of her vehicle.
Mrs Davies’ femur broke as she suffered a serious compound fracture to her leg. It also resulted in bruising to her hip joint and pelvis. Many parts of the femur, including her femoral head, needed to be repositioned, meaning that surgery was performed before a cast was put over it.
She was not only suffering physically, however. As she began to recover, Mrs Davies began to develop depression due to being unable to work. She began researching to see if she could make a claim for a broken leg. It was then that she realised she could make a personal injury claim.
What compensation payout was Mrs Davies awarded?
Her personal injury solicitor was hired on a No Win No Fee basis. Very confident that her case was a winnable one, he also argued that she deserved compensation for special damages, such as Mrs Davies suffering from depression and being unable to work.
This lengthened the legal battle as her lawyer proved that the depression was directly linked to the injury. The defence eventually conceded upon her lawyer providing in-depth medical evidence about her current condition.
In total, she was awarded £60,000. This covered both general damages as well as special damages.
If you feel like you may be able to make a claim, please contact us using the details on the top of the page.
Breaking down their compensation settlement
You can see a breakdown of Mrs Davies’ compensation settlement below:
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The case of Mrs Davies is purely an example. It is based on our past experiences of handling and valuing claims and serves to illustrate how accidents can happen and how they are valued.
General Damages Vs Special Damages
Special damages are awarded for the financial consequences of your personal injury claim for a broken leg. They are designed to compensate you for the financial losses you may have had, both in the past and in the future, because of the injury.
Special damages could simply be for medication. It could, however, also be for things like loss of earnings, travel costs, treatment for mental health issues, such as depression, and loss of any future earnings. These things can greatly impact the compensation that could be awarded for a broken leg in a road traffic accident claim.
Supplying evidence, such as receipts, bank statements, and prescriptions will be important to recover these damages. Remember that broken leg compensation payouts can involve many different factors, so make sure to keep good records.
If you’re unsure what you can claim for under special damages, get in touch with our team for free advice.
Calculating The Compensation You Could Claim For A Broken Leg
Some companies use a personal injury calculator to help you work out your potential payout, but they can be unreliable and ineffective. If you’re eligible, our advisors, with vast amounts of experience, will be able to help make an accurate assessment.
General damages are more to do with the physical pain and mental anguish caused by the injury – how, for example, the hairline fracture to your leg has affected you physically (from a pain perspective), psychologically (your suffering), and your quality of life.
General damages are calculated differently from special damages. This is because your personal injury solicitor can fully calculate special damages once you’ve fully recovered. Therefore, as previously stated, this could take several months.
To work out the value of general damages, medical evidence is significant, especially for the likes of a broken leg compensation claim. Such evidence will help determine the severity of the broken leg and the recovery time. It will also help your lawyers prove that the injuries were caused by a car crash or road traffic accident. Medical evidence will also determine whether any pre-existing medical condition could have been worsened or accelerated by the accident.
This independent assessment will be carried out by a medical professional and will be arranged as close to your home as possible. It will not only help with your claim but show your prognosis. It really helps highlight the recovery process.
For guidance regarding this, you can call our personal injury claims team using the phone number above to be put through to one of our advisors. They will then help you determine if a personal injury solicitor is needed.
Claim For A Broken Leg With A No Win No Fee Agreement
No Win No Fee agreements are often referred to as Conditional Fee Agreements. They are designed to make legal cases like, for example, an injury claim for a broken leg, more cost-effective for claimants.
This is because agreements like this mean that no legal fees are paid upfront to your personal injury solicitor. There will be no legal fees to pay to them during the entire claim. And if the claim fails, you won’t be responsible for any of your lawyer’s fees.
If the claim is successful, your solicitor will deduct a small, legally capped percentage from your compensation as payment. This will help cover their legal costs.
For more information on No Win No Fee claims, get in touch with our team.
How A Road Traffic Accident Solicitor Could Help You
If you want free legal advice about receiving broken leg and knee injury compensation, our panel of solicitors will be more than happy to help you. They’re reliable, professional and well-versed in dealing with any personal injury claim.
You could be connected with them once you speak to one of our helpful advisors.
Speak To An Advisor
Our advisors will tell you quickly and efficiently if you’ll be able to make a claim. Our panel of solicitors will then be able to help you on a No Win No Fee basis.
We can get you through to a personal injury specialist in moments. Don’t wait – if you want to see if you can claim for a broken leg, use the contact details below!
- Telephone number – 0800 408 7825
- Live chat which you can see on the bottom right of your screen.
- You can also contact us through our website.
Related Case Studies And Guides
Please find below useful links if you require more information regarding car crash compensation for a broken leg.
Visit the NHS website to get more information regarding broken leg injuries.
View the latest report from the Department for Transport regarding road traffic accidents in Great Britain.
Visit the Highway Code website to understand more about road traffic safety and your responsibilities on the road.
Please read our guide for more information regarding how to claim compensation for a car accident.
Please take a look at our guide regarding how we deal with personal injury claims.
View this page if you have had an accident at work and are looking for compensation.
FAQs Broken Leg Injuries In Road Accident
Can you break your leg in a car accident?
As a car accident can cause very severe injuries, you can break your leg if you’re involved in a particularly dangerous one. If you feel like you have suffered any kind of injury from a car accident, get medical advice, and if the accident wasn’t your fault, seek legal advice too..
What type of fracture is most likely to occur in a car accident?
There are many types of fractures that can occur in a car accident. During an RTA, leg bones (like the fibula and tibia) can be injured or fractured. If this has happened, you may want to claim for a broken leg. Neck, back, and arm injuries are also common.
What benefit can I claim for a badly broken leg?
This depends a lot on your current work situation and what your current employer offers. If unsure, you should speak to your employer. If you’ve injured yourself at work, you may be able to claim for Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit.
Guide by DY
Edited by NG