Sarasota Springs, Florida Car Accident Lawyer

Sarasota Springs occupies the block of east Sarasota framed by Bee Ridge Road, Beneva Road and Proctor. Inside it the streets are residential and quiet. The edges are not. Beneva carries north-south traffic the length of the county, and Bee Ridge carries east-west traffic to the interstate, and the crashes I am called about in Sarasota Springs nearly always happen where a neighbourhood street meets one of them.

I am David Harris. I have handled injury claims in Sarasota County since 2003.

Pulling out of a side street onto an arterial requires judging a gap in traffic moving at forty-five miles an hour or better, often with parked cars, landscaping or a bus shelter cutting the view to your left. The driver emerging carries the duty to yield. The driver on the arterial carries a duty to drive at a reasonable speed and keep a lookout.

What moves that argument is rarely testimony, because both drivers are honest and remember it differently. It is the physical evidence and any camera that happened to face the junction. Both decay quickly.

The other driver's insurer will often call within a day or two and ask for a recorded statement. You are not obliged to give one. Early statements are useful to them precisely because they are taken before you have seen a doctor, before the crash report is available, and while you are still being agreeable about a junction you drove through hundreds of times without incident.

The report is not available to them yet either. Section 316.066 of the Florida Statutes keeps a Florida crash report confidential for sixty days after filing, releasing it inside that window only to the people involved and their representatives. Sarasota Springs is unincorporated, so the report comes from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office.

Sarasota Memorial is the county's only trauma programme and is a short drive west. For anything less than that, an urgent care along Bee Ridge or your own physician starts the clock equally well. This is not medical advice, and I am not qualified to give it. It is a deadline, and it is the one people miss.

Florida's limitation period for most negligence claims is two years from the crash. That sounds generous and it is not, because the evidence that decides a side-street case is gone in a fortnight. The deadline protects your right to file. It does nothing to preserve the footage that would have proved your account.

The consultation is free and it is with me. I will tell you if there is nothing here worth pursuing. If there is, I do the work myself, and the fee comes from the recovery or not at all.