What Happens If You Suffer Hearing Loss in a Car Crash?

You expected bruises and broken bones. However, you never anticipated losing your hearing in a car crash. Yet, ever since your car accident, you’ve experienced ringing in your ears, partial hearing loss, or complete hearing loss, and now you need to know what to do about it.

How Car Crashes Cause Hearing Loss

You could suffer a hearing-related injury because of a(n):

• Airbag deployment. An airbag may save your life. However, when airbags deploy, they may sound like an explosion occurred. The high decibel levels of airbag deployment can damage your ears.
• Traumatic Brain Injury. A traumatic brain injury can interfere with your brain’s ability to process sound. Additionally, the force that caused the brain injury could also damage the bones in your ear and interfere with hearing.

Your injuries may be apparent at the scene of the crash, or it may take some time for a doctor to diagnose your hearing issues.

What It’s Like to Live With Hearing Impairment

Every person’s experience with hearing loss is unique. However, every person with car accident-related hearing loss is experiencing a significant injury. Your life may be different in many ways, and you may suffer from:

• Tinnitus. Tinnitus is ringing, buzzing, humming, clicking, or other noise that only you can hear. It may occur in one or both ears. Tinnitus can interfere with your ability to think and hear, and it may be a permanent condition.
• Partial or complete hearing loss. You may experience partial or complete hearing loss in one or both ears. You may have trouble hearing certain sounds, focusing on speech in noisy environments, hearing speech at low sound levels, or hearing any sound at all. Hearing aids may or may not help with your hearing loss.

Tinnitus, partial hearing loss, or complete hearing loss may leave you unable to work, unable to enjoy the activities that you did before the car accident, and your relationships may suffer.

How to Protect Your Recovery From Car Accident Hearing Loss Injuries

Hearing loss may be one of your car accident injuries, or it could be your only accident injury. Either way, you have the right to recover damages if someone else caused your crash and hearing-related injury. If you pursue a legal recovery, then you may recover compensation for your past and future:

• Healthcare costs. Medical expenses include but are not limited to surgeries, hospital stays, doctors’ visits, medications, hearing aids, cochlear implants, assistive technology to help you hear, and speech and language rehabilitation services.
• Lost income. If you can’t work or if you can’t earn the same income that you did before your car accident-related hearing impairment, then you may recover for your lost income. Lost income includes not only wages, but also bonuses, raises, benefits, and income from self-employment.
• Out-of-pocket costs. If you need to hire people to help you or you incur any other costs related to your injuries, then your out-of-pocket expenses should be part of your settlement or court verdict.
• Pain and suffering. You may experience significant physical pain and emotional suffering because of your hearing loss or tinnitus. These damages may be difficult to value, but they are often a considerable part of your recovery.

Our experienced car accident lawyers can help you value your pain, suffering, and other car accident damages and fight for your fair recovery.

So far, we have helped more than 70,000 clients recover more than $1 billion in damages for their personal injury accident injuries. We are passionate about helping each of our clients get the full recovery that they deserve. Insurance companies know that we mean business and if they are unwilling to settle cases fairly, then we won’t hesitate to go to trial to get our clients the compensation they need.

Have You Been Injured In A Wisconsin, Illinois or Iowa Car Accident?

If you've been injured in a car accident you should speak to an experienced car accident attorney as soon as possible. You can contact us online or call our office directly at 800.800.5678 to schedule your free consultation with one of our car accident lawyers. We have been helping car accident victims since 1964 and service clients throughout Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa.