Injuries from car accidents can be devastating to a person's life. How an individual person is affected will differ from person to person. Accordingly, compensation for personal injury from a car accident in British Columbia depends on the individual and how the individual's life is affected.
There is no doubt that money does not fix an injured person's life – it's an imperfect replacement. That said, money (aka damages), is the way car accident victims are compensated for their injuries. Compensation is obtained from the at-fault driver, almost always paid from their insurance company being ICBC.
The goal of money compensation is to restore an injured individual's life as close as possible had the injuries not occurred. What this requires is an assessment of an injured person's losses.
Compensation due to injured persons in BC is assessed by personal injury lawyers and / or the court in categories. Those categories are as follows:
1. Pain and suffering;
2. Income loss;
3. Opportunity losses;
4. Medical and other expenses;
5. Home assistance.
Pain and suffering
This is perhaps the most imperfect compensator. How does one measure or put a price on an individual's pain and suffering? It's impossible, yet, British Columbia courts do it every day in an effort to provide and compensate something. Not only is money an imperfect compensator for pain and suffering, our laws developed in Canada to cap or limit the maximum amount of money paid for pain and suffering. Presently that cap is approximately $ 311,000. I say presently, because the limit is adjusted over time to reflect increases in the cost of living.
Income loss
Many car accident victims' working life is affected. Employment can be affected as follows:
Not affected – no time off work is necessary.
Temporary time off work.
Retraining for different work if injuries prevent returning to an original job.
Not able to work at all.
Assessing income loss is also no easy task for courts – especially if a car accident victim's future employment is uncertain. However, it's done with the help of medical and vocational experts who give opinions about returning to work, retraining, or whether a person won't be able to work at all.
When assessing income loss, both the past and future income losses must be tallied and attempt to compensate all the foreseeable income losses.
Opportunity losses
This loss is closely related to income loss, and is sometimes simply included in an income loss assessment. However, sometimes injuries cause someone to lose financial opportunities available and more likely than not obtained had the car accident not occurred. An example is losing the opportunity to be a concert pianist or professional sports player. Again, experts are hired to give opinions about the likelihood that an injured person would have achieved the 'lost opportunity' and then the amount of the loss is assessed.
Medical and other expenses
Injuries most often require treatment – whether massage therapy, physiotherapy, medication, surgery, or other forms of treatment – all of which cost money. Sometimes treatment is required in the future, after a claim is resolved. This means injured people are entitled to being paid back their accident-related expenses paid as well money to pay for reasonably foreseeable expenses.
Home assistance
Just like job ability, injuries can prevent people for taking care of their home and yard. Sometimes this loss is temporary, other times it's permanent. Again, with the assistance of medical professionals, injury lawyers assess what kind of home assistance is needed, for how long, and how much it costs.
Every injured person is uniquely affected from injuries, yet as you can see from the above, assessing compensation is distilled to the common life areas to everyone – pain and suffering, income, expenses, and home assistance. Is money a perfect replacement for what is lost after a car crash? Not at all; but it's the method of compensation used in BC
