Quirk Accident & Injury Attorneys, APC, fights to get car accident victims the money they need to pay their hospital bills and reset their lives back to normal. Our skilled car accident lawyers offer free case consultations to all victims in Echo Park and Los Angeles. Contact our office to schedule a confidential case review as soon as possible.
There’s also no obligation to you or your family for this meeting. It’s a great opportunity to find out how to hold car insurance companies 100% responsible for your injury hardships.
Should I Call a Lawyer After an Echo Park Car Accident?
When victims suffer serious injuries in a collision and someone else is to blame, it’s a good idea to speak to a Lawyer. A serious injury might include broken bones, a brain injury, or a neck or back injury.
When serious injuries are involved, car insurance adjusters see rising hospital bills and begin seeking ways to limit the support victims receive. They resort to all kinds of tactics to pin the blame on an innocent victim or to downplay how badly someone has been hurt.
An Echo Park car accident lawyer protects you from this unfair treatment and builds a strong case that blocks these shady tactics. Effective legal representation is the only proven way to stop an insurer from robbing victims of the support they need to fully recover. Quirk Law can often win victims much more in compensation than they could win for themselves.
Pictured: Alvarado Street traffic at the Sunset Boulevard Intersection
Echo Park Car Accident Dangers
Los Angeles is known for its reckless drivers. Unfortunately, plenty of the hazards they create are easy to notice on Echo Park streets and highways.
A motorist on Highway 101 or the 5 can be staring into a cellphone screen instead of monitoring for traffic slowdowns ahead. This careless behavior can lead to a devastating rear-end collision. A speeding driver on a busy route like Alvardo Street can lose control and ram another vehicle or even a defenseless pedestrian.
Los Angeles and its many neighborhoods record far and away the most car accidents of any other city in the state. California’s Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS) reported that L.A. was the scene for nearly 11,000 serious accidents in 2024. Those accidents resulted in a tragic 229 fatalities.
Pictured: Route 110 Traffic Near Echo Park
Traffic Collision Statistics in Eastside L.A. Neighborhoods
The Eastsider covers the neighborhoods on the eastern section of Los Angeles, an area known as the “Eastside.” Researchers for the publication found that Echo Park documented at least 3 victims with severe injuries caused by car accidents in 2024.
Over a 5-year span (2020-2024), Echo Park counted at least 20 victims who suffered severe injuries in vehicle collisions. That puts Echo Park around the middle of a list of the Eastside communities with the most injuries from crashes. Boyle Heights had the most accident victims reporting major injuries over that span, with 148, followed by East Hollywood with 84.
Every trip you and your family make to work, to school, or to the park has a chance to end with a frightening collision. When careless drivers cause these impacts, they need to be held fully accountable for your medical bills, your lost time at work, and even the emotional trauma caused to you and your loved ones. An Echo Park car accident attorney can help deal with insurance claims, work to win the most possible for you, allowing you to focus on healing.
Common Causes of Accidents In and Around Echo Park
Each statistic equates to a real victim and families who must deal with the consequences. The decisions that drivers make on local roads are the biggest contributors to these crashes. Poor judgment and carelessness lead to the majority of impacts.
Here are just a few of the common causes:
- Speeding: Stopping distance is drastically reduced when a driver is exceeding the speed limit or driving too fast for traffic or weather conditions.
- Drunk Driving: We all know about drunk driving laws, but some people ignore them. Drunk driving often goes hand-in-hand with speeding.
- Distracted Driving: Both of a driver’s hands need to be on the steering wheel while he or she is paying attention to the road ahead. Being distracted with phoning, texting or an infotainment center while driving is one of the leading causes of car accidents.
- Failure to Yield: This might occur with a 4-way stop, a red light or even merging into a lane of traffic from an on-ramp. There are many other ways that a failure to yield might cause an accident.
- Following Too Closely: It seems as if everybody on a roadway around Echo Park is in a hurry. That causes some drivers to fail to maintain a proper interval between their vehicle and the vehicle ahead of them. That’s how rear-end car crashes occur.
California Traffic Laws Keeping Echo Park Motorists Safe
California Vehicle Codes are in place to keep drivers across the state. Unfortunately, not every Echo Park driver obeys these statutes and takes the safety of other motorists seriously.
Knowing the laws that apply to Los Angeles drivers can at least inform accident victims of their rights after suffering an injury.
These are just a few of the most important laws that every motorist should keep top of mind when they drive and when they are forced into an accident.
CVC 20001 – The Driver’s Duty After an Accident
CVC 23123 – Distracted Driving Laws
CVC 23123.5 – Proper Use of Cellphone In Car
CVC 20008 – When do I need to report an accident?
Section 23153(a) – Driving Under the Influence in California
Health and Safety Code 1799.102 – Good Samaritan Law
Pictured: Glendale Boulevard and Alvarado Street traffic
How to Get an LAPD Accident Report After an Echo Park Accident
After an accident in Echo Park, you may have to rely on an LAPD collision report to prove you weren’t to blame. If you have a lawyer, your attorney will secure a copy of this report for you. If not, you’ll need to secure the report for yourself.
If a Los Angeles Police Officer investigated your accident, you’ll be directed to the LexisNexis BuyCrash website to obtain your collision report. You’ll select the state of California and the LAPD jurisdiction, and then you’ll be asked to enter information about your accident. That will include the accident report number that the officer should have provided. Your BuyCrash report will cost you around $11.
For more information on how to obtain your report and how to request it by mail, visit the Los Angeles Police Department website.
What Should I Do After an Echo Park Car Accident?
A scary collision can leave you shaken up and perhaps dealing with a painful injury. But if you are left strong enough, and the scene is secure, the moments after a crash will be the best time to collect the evidence you’ll need to build an accident claim.
Try to gather these details after an accident:
- Call 911. Get checked out by paramedics and go to the hospital if necessary. Give the LAPD or the California Highway Patrol a full account of what happened so they can create an accurate accident report.
- Take pictures of everything at the scene. Show the damage to vehicles. Show street signs and lane markings that are related to what happened. Take photos of any visible injuries you have.
- Get witness contact information so your Car Accident Lawyer can secure testimony from them later.
- Get insurance and driver’s license information from the other motorists unless the investigating officer provides it to you.
- Scan the area for the presence of any security cameras nearby. These cameras may have captured what happened, and your lawyer can request footage before it’s deleted.
- Alert your car insurance provider about your accident.
- Schedule an appointment with your own doctor. Get any new pain that arises the next day checked out. Follow your doctor’s orders.
- Contact a skilled attorney. Allow your attorney to get started on a full investigation into your accident while the evidence is still fresh.
Earning Support for Echo Park Car Accident Victims
When filing your claim, it’s critical to include a list of every hardship you and your family have endured since the accident. Your lawyer can help you get totals on your medical bills and the care you may require in the coming months. Your lawyer will also help you list off the physical and emotional damages you’ve had to cope with and may continue to cope with.
Everything must be mentioned in your claim, because any hardship left off is something a car insurance company can ignore.
These and other factors will determine the size of your car accident settlement check:
- Support for current medical bills and future healthcare costs
- Lifetime support for any permanent disability
- Support for the pain victims endure in crashes and through recovery
- Support for the emotional trauma caused by a major accident
- Loss of enjoyment of life
- Loss of consortium (loss of intimacy with a partner)
- Reimbursement for lost paychecks and benefits at work
Frequently Asked Questions
How long can I wait to file a car accident claim?
Two years. California allows personal injury victims up to two years to file an injury claim. Waiting beyond this deadline will usually mean that car accident victims lose all chance of getting help with recovery costs.
Can my family ask for support after losing a loved one to a fatal car accident?
Yes. Families seek support for things like funeral costs and leftover medical bills by filing a wrongful death claim. This claim also seeks financial assistance so the family can replace the income the deceased may have provided to support close relatives. The lost emotional support that family members will have to cope with in the future can also factor into the size of a settlement check.
Where will I find the money to pay a car accident lawyer?
If you feel Quirk Accident & Injury Attorneys can help you improve the outcome of your injury claim, you don’t need to worry about how you’ll pay us. We don’t get paid unless we win your case for you. Then our fee comes out of the settlement you receive from an auto insurance company.
Contact an Echo Park Car Accident Attorney as Soon as Possible
Schedule a free case review with our Echo Park Car Accident Lawyers here at Quirk Accident & Injury Attorneys, APC. We can talk about what happened, how it happened, and how it has affected you or your loved one.
Let us examine your case and go over how much it may be worth. If you accept the first offer a car insurance company sends you, you may end up with far less than you need to pay for your recovery. Once you’ve signed off on a settlement offer, any additional medical problems that arise or additional time you must miss at work become your financial responsibility.
You want to avoid talking about settlements with an insurance company before you’ve spoken with an experienced lawyer. Contact us for a free consultation so we can get a head start on your case. There’s no obligation for this meeting, and anything that’s discussed is completely confidential.