The amount of compensation you can claim can be reduced by a percentage if you weren’t wearing a seatbelt while travelling. This is because some or all of your injuries could have been avoided if you’d been wearing a seatbelt at the time of the accident.
Alternatively, your injuries could’ve been less serious had you been belted up, in which case you would have made a quicker recovery, had less time off work and needed less future care, treatment and rehabilitation.
If you weren’t wearing a seatbelt when the accident took place, the amount of compensation you can claim might be about 25% less than if you had been wearing one, but this will depend on the specifics of your claim.
You may be asked to accept that your mistake contributed to the outcome of the accident (this is known as contributory negligence) and means you may have to accept a lower settlement than you would have done otherwise.
If we can take on your case, we’ll investigate the extent to which the outcome of the accident was affected by you not wearing a seltbelt. After all, it may be the case that even though you did make a mistake by not wearing one, the injuries you sustained were the same regardless.
In that case, the fact you weren’t strapped in shouldn’t make a difference to how much compensation you can claim, and we may not recommend you accept contributory negligence.
Your Lawyer or Solicitor will work hard to maximise the amount of compensation, so it’s well worth speaking to an expert in handling road traffic accident claims. We can work with many independent medical experts who can assess your injuries and how they’ve affected your life, as well as engineering specialists, so we can build a case on your behalf.