Pedestrian accidents are becoming deadlier each year.
The latest statistics are astounding, with 7,148 pedestrians struck and killed in the United States in 2024 alone. That is equivalent to filling 30+ Boeing 737 jets with victims.
Insurance companies are no fools, and they understand that without the proper legal assistance and direction, they can make victims lose even when their cases are completely valid.
Pedestrian accidents are highly complex, and any variable ranging from the severity of injuries to who was truly responsible for the crash can be questioned.
For these kinds of cases, it is essential to have the right witnesses who support and validate a client’s claims.
It can make all the difference if you hire a pedestrian accident lawyer in New York City or another state.
What You’ll Discover:
- Why Expert Witnesses Matter in Pedestrian Cases
- Types of Expert Witnesses Used in These Cases
- How Expert Testimony Strengthens Your Case
- The Process of Working with Expert Witnesses
Why Expert Witnesses Matter in Pedestrian Cases
When a motor vehicle hits a pedestrian, the two parties may not be in agreement as to who is right and who is at fault.
Most pedestrians cannot just provide evidence through camera recordings of the accident. The scene is only the injured pedestrian’s word against the driver’s word.
And to make matters worse for the victim, even the most intelligent jury members cannot put all these technical information about medical, engineering, or accounting issues in a simple sentence that they can clearly understand. This is because most jurors do not possess the right technical information.
This is where an expert witness comes in.
The fact is that expert witnesses are experts in their fields and as such they have the specialized technical skills, knowledge, and experience to an extremely high degree.
In this sense, an expert witness’s job is to provide an objective, fact-based opinion to the court of law and the jury which often results in providing the facts in layman’s terms that the latter can readily understand.
Unlike normal witnesses who are only privileged to provide the court of law with information that he or she directly witnessed, expert witnesses, on the other hand, are allowed to provide their opinion in the court.
For instance, an accident reconstruction expert can view the car involved in the case and then go to the witness stand and give an opinion on the approximate speeds that the vehicle was moving at the time of the accident. With this fact, it then becomes clear how the victim was injured. This in a nutshell is the role of an expert witness in these kinds of accident cases.
Types of Expert Witnesses Used in These Cases
There is a wide range of expert witnesses, and each of them is different from the other in several ways.
They have their specialties, and it is the lawyer who must come up with which expert witness to hire.
It is only when the expert witnesses provide their assistance with medical cases that medical expert witnesses are needed. For the most part, these experts are the most important in pedestrian accident cases.
Medical Experts
Here is how a medical expert witnesses can benefit a case.
- They provide assistance with regards to the description of the injury as well as the nature and cause of the injury.
- Furthermore, they also explain the type of treatment that a person may need in order to get better and this may include future medical procedures.
- In the same breath, economic experts take charge of matters such as the future value of money for medical needs.
It is only in this way that lawyers can get to convince the jury members that the expenses are legitimate. One of the most important roles played by the experts in these cases is the long-term life-care plans. In this case, the plan is meant to prepare and create for the future needs of the victim for a variety of reasons. These reasons may include:
- home, and vehicle modifications
- equipment, medical needs
- therapy in future
- pain and suffering, and more.
Mental Health Experts
It should be noted that these injuries are often times complicated as they can result in major psychological effects to a victim. As such, a victim may suffer from PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder. Due to this, it is always important for a lawyer to find mental health expert witnesses. This becomes more and more important as it will help in supporting the injuries that are mainly psychological in nature. This also then plays a major role in the effect the injury has on the victim.
How Expert Testimony Strengthens Your Case
It is important to note that expert witnesses do not only play the role of providing their help to strengthen the case. They also play other very important roles which may include the following.
Establishing Causation
Establishing causation is the number one most difficult thing when it comes to this type of case. In this case, this means that insurance companies can try to play their game by trying to claim that the injuries that a person is complaining of, pre-date the accident or it may also have resulted from some other activity.
It is the role of the experts to work their magic in such a case and prove to the jury that this is not the case. This is through the use of scientific facts, technical information, as well as the medical information.
Quantifying Damages
For a layman, he or she may not understand what he or she is eligible for after an accident. As such, the only way to prove and show how much money your case is worth is to have some sort of an economic analysis. This is the primary role that an expert witness has to play.
It is important to note that by the time this type of analysis is done, all the important issues that a person will need after the accident has taken place are also taken into account.
The most common types include lost wages, loss of earning capacity in the future, loss of benefits, the worth of pain and suffering, as well as the impact that the accident had on a person’s quality of life.
There is no better place to strengthen your case than to go and talk with an accident injury lawyer in NYC or anywhere else in the United States.
The Process of Working with Expert Witnesses
Working with expert witnesses needs to be done with a lot of care and caution. It must be done strategically.
Some of the processes that are involved are as follows.
Selection and Qualification
It is only when the lawyers have the appropriate documents in the most appropriate formats that it becomes their role to be able to pick the expert witness for the case at hand. Once the lawyer has presented a person as an expert witness, it then becomes his or her role to qualify this person for the case at hand.
Preparation and Review
This is the point at which the expert witness goes over all the important issues that he or she needs to consider when looking at the case and as such:
- Accident reports
- Witness statements
- Medical records
- The physical evidence that has been collected
Report Writing
It is the role of the expert witness to come up with the appropriate and well-written report for the case at hand. It then becomes the responsibility of the lawyer to use this report at the point of presenting the case.
Trial Testimony
At the same time, it is important to note that it is the duty of the expert witness to give a testimony in court.
During this process, the witness must explain the results that he or she obtained from the report that he or she had written during the trial process.
Real-World Impact of Expert Witnesses
Recent statistics show that 48% more pedestrians are being killed now compared to a decade ago. These cases often involve complex factors like poor lighting, distracted driving, or vehicle design issues.
In one recent case, a pedestrian was hit at night on a poorly lit street. The driver claimed the pedestrian “came out of nowhere” and wasn’t wearing reflective clothing.
Here’s how expert witnesses turned the case around:
- A lighting expert showed that proper street lighting would have made the pedestrian visible
- An accident reconstruction specialist proved the driver was speeding
- A biomechanics expert explained how the pedestrian’s injuries were consistent with a high-speed impact
- An economic expert calculated over $2 million in lifetime damages
The result? A substantial settlement that covered all of the victim’s current and future needs.
Wrapping It All Up
Expert witnesses in these kinds of accident cases are not just helpful but are absolutely necessary.
The complexity of the cases in which medical, accounting, or even engineering plays a vital role makes it the case that it is necessary to have a set of people to explain this technical information to an individual or a jury who does not understand it. This makes these witnesses vital in every process that they get to take part in.