Chelsea Bus Accident Lawyer

The rules that apply to a bus claim depend first on where you were when the injury happened. A passenger is in a different position from someone outside the bus. A company or agency that carries paying passengers is expected to take a high degree of care for their safety, higher than an ordinary driver owes to other people on the road. That means a passenger does not always need a collision to have a claim. A hard stop that throws a standing rider to the floor, a bus that pulls away while someone is still stepping on, or doors that close on a person getting off can all be a failure of that duty.

People outside the bus are owed the ordinary care every driver owes, but a bus makes that care harder to give. It is long, heavy and slow to stop, and its driver sits high with large blind spots along both sides and at the back corners. A bus that swings wide to turn, pulls out from a stop without checking the lane, or runs a light to keep to its schedule can hit a pedestrian, a cyclist or a car that had every right to be there. In those cases the claim looks much like any serious traffic claim, with the bus company or agency standing behind its driver.

The next question is who ran the bus, because that decides which deadlines apply. If a private company operates it, the usual deadline to file a lawsuit is three years from the date of the injury. If a city, a town or a public transit authority runs it, a written notice of the claim usually has to reach the correct office within a much shorter period, long before any lawsuit is filed. That notice has to describe the claim properly. A late notice, or one sent to the wrong place, can end a case even when the agency was clearly at fault. Claims against public bodies can also carry limits on what can be paid and on the kinds of harm that can be counted, which makes it even more important to identify every other party who shares the blame.

Other parties often do. The driver’s employer is generally responsible for how the driver did the job, but it may not be the only one. A contractor that serviced the brakes or the doors, the maker of a part that failed, or another motorist who cut in front of the bus can each carry part of the fault. A bus may also be run by one company under a contract with a public agency, which can put private and public rules into the same case. Sorting out who did what decides which insurance pays and which deadlines have to be met.

Fault can be shared, and the other side will look for ways to share it with you. Your award goes down by whatever percentage of the fault is placed on you, and it is lost only when your percentage is higher than that of the parties you are claiming against. For passengers, the usual argument is that you were not holding a rail or were moving about while the bus was in motion. For people outside the bus, it is that you stepped out, rode or drove where the driver could not have seen you. The on-board video usually settles those arguments, which is one reason it matters so much.

The rules also shape how that proof is obtained. A bus operator keeps camera video, maintenance records, the driver’s work history and the dispatch log showing where the bus was meant to be and when. None of those belong to you, and many are kept for only a short time under the operator’s own schedule. A written request that they be kept is often the first letter we send. Some records held by public agencies can also be requested as public records, while others only come out once a claim or lawsuit is under way.

Early offers deserve care as well. An adjuster may call soon after the crash to take a recorded statement or to offer a quick payment, sometimes before your doctors know how serious the injury is. Anything you sign or say at that stage can be used to limit the claim later, so it is worth having those calls go through us.

Who ran the bus is often the one fact an injured person does not know. We can usually find it out quickly, and with a public operator that matters, because part of the answer depends on a deadline that started on the day of the crash.