The state Supreme Court has issued a ruling to help victims to be able to better access cost coverage.
This month, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled to make it easier for pedestrians struck by vehicles to be able to have their medical costs covered by auto insurance.
The ruling was meant to help reduce the number of barriers in the way of victims having costs covered.
It isn’t uncommon for auto insurance companies to initially deny claims filed by pedestrians because they aren’t passengers in a covered vehicle. Therefore, while they were still injured in a vehicle collision, they faced substantially greater struggles to have their medical costs covered. The same could be said for cyclists struck by cars.
The state Supreme Court has now ruled in favor of people outside the covered vehicle who are struck by an uninsured driver or who are injured in a hit-and-run. The ruling states that in these cases an individual’s own policy will provide coverage.
The ruling removes an important barrier to being able to access coverage from one’s own auto insurance.
Now that the precedent has been set in the state, people who are injured when hit by a car driven by someone uninsured or who drives away without leaving contact information can use their own coverage.
Still, it’s important to remember that this is only one of several challenges that people could face when trying to make this type of claim. That a victim could indeed file the claim for this purpose is one thing. There remain additional steps that will often need to take place in order to ensure the insurer will deem the injuries covered. For instance, victims will typically need to prove that they are entitled to receive an auto insurance payment for accident injuries.
The new ruling is in its early days, so the shape it will take as victims file claims will be defined with time. That said, the initial barrier has now been removed, allowing those victims to know that the effort is one that they are entitled to make and insurers are required to honor that.
