Ask HN: Hit-and-run during an Uber ride

I was involved in a hit-and-run while in Uber on May 19th. My driver ignored my request to take the highway and went onto a local street, where it wasn't the best part of town. He was driving pretty slow, at around 30mph, when another car drove out of a ground level public parking lot at a very high speed and hit my ride on the front right corner. The car that hit us backed out and drove away before I even realized what happened. My ride's bumper fell out and it was smoking a lot, and I had hit the right side of my body pretty hard on the door and the left side of my face on the back of the front seat (I was sitting in the back on the right side). It was raining and I was shaking a lot and really didn't want to stand on the street where there were a lot of drunk people yelling at us, so I grabbed another Uber and left the scene.

I did report the accident to Uber right away on the app, took photos and videos of it, and thought they were going to contact me. They have only responded on the app saying their insurance would contact me in 2-3 business days but it's been a week and I haven't heard from them. I got bruises, external and internal, as well as a minor concussion. It's been hurting more but I currently don't have an insurance (life of an early stage startup founder...) and haven't gotten it checked yet.

What are the best next steps?

Thanks!

Also get health insurance. Not the answer you're looking for but in the US medical costs can ruin your life.

Most tort lawyers work on contingency, so you usually won't have to pay anything up front, though they will demand 30-50% of any payout you receive.

One of my taxi passengers was going to a Chiropractor. She'd lost her car in a car wreck caused by the other driver. The chiropractor paid her taxi fare, and billed the passenger's attorney for this and their fee. The passenger was previously not a Chiropractic fan, but the urgent care she'd gone to first basically ripped her off by charging lots of money for anti-inflammatory medication (which didn't help at all). She was feeling much better with regular treatments from her new Chiropractor.

(I personally have been to lots of Chiropractors. Some were pretty good, some were mediocre. Eventually I found some manual therapy systems that are more gentle and reliable. As one of the doctors I'd visited said, "all some people need is any kind of touch, which is why they love their massage therapist...")

(I bet Uber's founders were so annoyed when they realized they had to hire people to provide customer service. The transportation company I used to drive for has always had people to take complaints, and to deal with problems.)