You can still get settlement money even if you were not wearing a seat belt (in Oregon) since Oregon’s old automatic 15% no seat belt penalty is no more. Although not wearing a seat belt could reduce the settlement money award you get now by a maximum of no more than 5%. Fact situation analysis is always important for a good lawyer to do in any seat belt injury case especially in passenger ejectment cases.

Many seat belt issues arise with injured passengers who were riding in the beds of pickup trucks and get thrown out. Riding in the bed of an open pickup often causes serious injury like a broken leg or arm or even a head injury. The no seat belt analysis arises and can be met head on in cases where there are no seats available with belts so the only option for one to do is to ride in the pickup bed and in such a situation argument could be made that no seat belt penalty is permissible.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 10:03 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.