Not wearing your seatbelt can lead to life-changing personal injuries if you
are involved in a car accident. Contrary to popular belief, failure to
wear your seatbelt does not prevent you from recovering personal injury
compensation if another driver causes an automobile accident. Automobile
insurance adjusters may attempt to persuade you that you were negligent in not
wearing your seatbelt, but this is not the law in North Carolina. The car
accident personal injury lawyers of Maginnis Howard can help you recover the
fair compensation to which you are entitled, regardless of whether you were
wearing your seatbelt at the time of your automobile accident.
The North Carolina statute mandating that motorists wear a seatbelt provides
that “[e]vidence of failure to wear a seat belt shall not be admissible in any
criminal or civil trial, action, or proceeding except in an action based on a
violation of this section …” This law effectively means that in any
personal injury trial, the jury is not allowed to hear any evidence whatsoever
that the plaintiff was not wearing a seatbelt at the time of the car
accident. This is true even in a wrongful death action based upon an
automobile collision.