You're sitting there at the side of the road with another slack-jawed driver you've just engaged in a fender bender. Time was, you'd fumble for paper and pen and switch names and digits with the other bumper carsman for insurance deductible considerations to be figured out later. But now, a Newport Beach personal injury law firm has developed an iPhone app that helps guide drivers on what to do after an auto accident.
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Liane Yvkoff, who blogs about motoring, first shared the free Car Accident SideKick application for iPhone from Bisnar Chase with her CNET Car Tech readers. She writes:
In addition to an accident checklist, the free application can connect
the mobile phone owner to 911 emergency responders or direct them to
nearby hospitals. The app also has provides a flashlight tool, and can
record photos and audio statements that could later be used when filing a
claim. In fact, drivers can file accident claims with their insurance
company from the Car Accident SideKick.
So, there you have it: personal-injury lawyers in Newport Beach have developed something free and useful for stressed consumers without any consideration of a benefit for the firm itself, showing the world that trial lawyers can indeed have hearts that . . . uh . . . check that.
The app also includes a button that uses the holder's GPS location to search for local attorneys who specialize in car crashes. Wonder if Bisnar is first on the list?
“It's sort of like
match making for accident victims and personal injury lawyers,” Yvkoff observes. “And it
also takes the leg work out of ambulance chasing.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.