You may have felt confident that you were exercising pedestrian safety by walking within a designated sidewalk. However, you may unfortunately still get injured if the potential hazards reside on the sidewalk. You may especially be prone to this if you walk outside soon after poor inclement weather conditions have swept through your area. With that being said, please continue reading to learn what to do if you slip and fall on a sidewalk due to a weather-related condition and how one of the experienced Bergen County slip & fall accident attorneys at McNerney & McAuliffe can help you bounce back.
What weather-related conditions might cause me to slip and fall?
Say that there was heavy snowfall in your area. Well, when the snow clutters sidewalks, it may cause uneven surfaces that make it more difficult to keep your balance. This may be made worse if there is poor overhead lighting on the street or from neighboring properties and you cannot see where you are stepping. Thus, you may ultimately slip and fall.
Uncleared snow may turn into ice if the weather remains below freezing. Obviously, ice offers less friction between the ground and the bottoms of your shoes. And even if you are overly cautious, you may be unable to detect black ice with your naked eye and still injure yourself.
Last but not least, even standing water after heavy rainfall may be dangerous. This is because you may be unable to reasonably and safely walk through this water and you are forced to walk alongside the road shared with vehicles. Sadly, especially if it is dark or the heavy rainfall ensues, a driver may not spot you on time and collide into you. Or, over time, standing water may corrode the foundation of the sidewalk, causing it to crack or cave in on itself eventually. This goes back to uneven surfaces that prompt you to slip and fall.
What should I do if I slip and fall on a sidewalk due to a weather-related condition?
You may understand that nobody holds the power to control the weather. What they can control, though, is how soon and how thoroughly they clean up their sidewalks from weather-related conditions in the aftermath. Importantly, your town or county may enforce certain guidelines on how quickly snow, ice, and other weather-related debris should be removed from their premises. As for public properties, the town or county should have protocols for hiring removal services.
With that, you must document when the weather event happened, and then when your slip and fall accident occurred. If you believe that there was an unreasonable gap in between, then you may have adequate grounds to sue a property owner or town or county entity for negligence. It is worth mentioning, though, that you may be subject to a quicker turnaround time when taking legal action against a governing entity. This is because you may only have 90 days from the date of your accident to submit a Notice of Claim with them.
All of this to say, you must be fully equipped to enter your upcoming personal injury claim proceedings. Your preparation is not complete without hiring one of the skilled Bergen County personal injury attorneys. Contact McNerney & McAuliffe today.