National seat belt awareness is just around the corner and its time to review what happens if you have a car accident in Oregon and Washington and there is an issue of someone not wearing a seat belt.

Prior law in Oregon was an automatic reduction of 15% liability if there was proof you were not wearing a seatbelt. Current Oregon and Washington state law is that the issue is one of contributory or comparative negligence. This means your settlement monies will be reduced by a jury as they see if and it the case settles is a matter of fact and negotiation. I have seen a lot of cases where car accident ambulance people mistakenly think the car accident victim was not wearing a seat belt when they really were. In such cases its best to get second hand witnesses in car accident seat belt issue cases to refute any inference of seat belt non use.

Seat belt do cause injury such as bruising from lap and shoulder belt. You should take photos of the bruising as bruising is usually not evident to those rushed ER doctors who are trying to triage multiple people at multiple times. Buckle up and safe summer driving.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 11:46 am and is filed under Seat Belt Laws. 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.