If you’ve been injured in a crash, the St. Louis car accident lawyers at Roach Law Car Accident Lawyers are here to protect your rights. Call (636) 519-0085 today for a free consultation with our experienced legal team.
Police officers analyze car accidents in St. Louis, Missouri, focusing on driving errors, weather, and road conditions. Some defense strategies attempt to blame the car color. Because Missouri follows comparative negligence, shifting blame can reduce compensation. Our attorneys work to ensure you recover the maximum possible damages.
How Roach Law Car Accident Lawyers Can Help After a Car Accident in St. Louis, MO
When you’ve been hurt in a car crash, you need a St. Louis personal injury lawyer you can trust.
Our attorneys have over 30 years of combined legal experience assisting accident victims in St. Louis, MO, in their pursuit of compensation after a car crash. We’ve won hundreds of millions for our injured clients.
Following a car accident caused by another driver’s carelessness, our team can provide the following legal support:
- Discussing your accident and identifying possible avenues for compensation
- Collecting documents and other evidence to bolster your claim
- Negotiating with the other driver’s insurance carrier to settle your case
- Taking the driver to court if their insurer refuses to offer a fair settlement
Insurers will cite almost any reason to deny injury claims, including vehicle color. Contact us to schedule a free consultation with a skilled St. Louis car accident attorney and find out how we stand up to the insurance companies to seek fair accident compensation.
Car Color Studies
Evidence is critical in car accident cases. If a driver wants to argue that car color caused a collision rather than their negligence, they must have an expert witness to support their claim. Experts are allowed to render opinion-based testimony. For example, a psychology expert could testify that your car had a higher risk of being hit because it was blue.
Expert testimony must be based on sound scientific principles. In most cases, this means that the professional presenting the testimony must have scientific studies to support their opinion. In the case of car color, the research is either contradictory or supports the argument that car color is irrelevant in determining crash risk.
Case in point: Researchers at the University of Dayton examined nearly a million crash records in Ohio. The study focused on the color of the victim’s car and disregarded the color of the at-fault driver’s vehicle.
Based on this analysis, the researchers found no statistical connection between the color of the victim’s car and the likelihood that they would be hit. In other words, all colors had the same overall crash risk.
Liability for Accidents Involving Visibility Issues
Most crashes in Missouri occur in good lighting conditions.
According to Table 1.11 of the Missouri Traffic Safety Compendium, statewide crashes in 2023 occurred during the following lighting conditions:
- 98,641 crashes during daylight
- 21,933 crashes at night on lighted roads
- 16,239 crashes at night on unlit roads
- 853 crashes at night with unknown lighting
- 448 crashes with unknown lighting
- 62 crashes during other lighting conditions
Focusing solely on incidents where the lighting conditions were known, just under 72% of crashes occurred during daylight, and just under 28% occurred at night.
Similarly, according to Table 1.9 of the Compendium, 99,717 crashes happened during clear weather. This means roughly 69% of crashes occurred without precipitation, fog, or other weather conditions that could interfere with driver visibility.
Thus, the number of crashes in which visibility might have played a role is relatively small. Even when visibility poses a problem, the liability for a crash depends on the other driver’s actions in light of those adverse conditions.
For example, imagine getting hit during a rainstorm. The other driver might claim they couldn’t see your gray vehicle because of the dim light and heavy rain. In response, your injury lawyer would point out that the other driver should have slowed down or pulled over if the storm was so bad that they couldn’t see your vehicle.
In other words, any conditions in which your vehicle “disappeared” will probably also mean that the other driver should have proceeded much more carefully (or stopped driving altogether). If they continued driving in adverse conditions, they’re probably responsible for hitting your vehicle.
Contact Our St. Louis Car Accident Lawyers for a Free Consultation
Car color is often used to distract from the at-fault driver’s negligence. Contact Roach Law Car Accident Lawyers for a free consultation with our St. Louis car accident attorneys to learn how we can keep the insurer focused on the at-fault driver’s actions when handling your claim for injury compensation.