Road rage is a drivers violent and reckless driving which causes intentional injury to another. This stems from the drivers inability to process anger in a safe channeled environment without causing injury or inconvenience to others. Road rage is a recently coined term and there are often serious back, neck, and head trauma cases as a result.

With any road rage injury case, when thinking about settlement value for pain and suffering (in Oregon state and Washington state) a skilled lawyer will evaluate whether there are enough facts to support an aggravated liability claim and possibly punitive damages. While most car insurance policies (in Oregon and Washington) cover only negligent injury causing behavior the question with any road rage injury case to be asked is whether there will even be insurance coverage as the policy might be voided if the car crash accident is intentional.

Punitive damage awards are usually added to the lawsuit with permission of the court and only upon a sufficient factual showing. In Oregon punitive damages awards partially go to the state and so given the complexity of punitive damages its best to confer with a seasoned injury lawyers at the earliest stages of the case.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Car Accidents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.