Road traffic accidents · Barcelona

How much am I entitled to for a road traffic accident?

There is no figure that can be given over the telephone without seeing the reports, and anyone who gives one is guessing. What can be explained, and what this page does, is exactly what that figure depends on: which heads make it up, where money is lost without anyone noticing and what should be done in the first few days. If you would rather we looked at it, the first consultation is free of charge.

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A collision between two cars on a Barcelona street at night, with the Guardia Urbana and an ambulance attending to an injured person

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If you already have the reports, call us and we will look at them

With the accident report form, the police report and the medical reports in front of us, we can say which heads apply in your case, what still has to be proved and whether what the insurer is offering is anywhere near. The first consultation is free of charge and it shows whether there is a case and what time limit is running. The fee is explained and agreed before we take the matter on, never afterwards.

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What decides the amount

What determines the compensation, head by head

Compensation for personal injury in road traffic accidents is calculated using the valuation system in Real Decreto Legislativo 8/2004, as amended by Ley 35/2015, known as the baremo de tráfico (the traffic injury scale). It is not a single tariff to be looked up on one line: it is a system of heads that are added together and proved separately. Knowing what they are is the difference between accepting the first thing offered and knowing what the offer leaves out.

The blocks that make up compensation under the traffic injury scale
Block	What it covers	How it is proved
Basic personal injury	The days from the accident until the injuries stabilise	A&E report, sickness and fitness-for-work certificates, follow-up reports
Particular personal injury	The days of temporary loss of quality of life, graded by the degree of limitation, and the days in hospital or of surgery	Medical records, hospital discharge reports and surgical protocols
Permanent effects	The limitations that remain after stabilisation, both functional and cosmetic, given points under medical tables and adjusted for age	A report from a doctor specialising in the valuation of bodily injury
Financial loss	Actual loss (the expenses) and loss of earnings (the income not received)	Invoices, travel receipts, payslips and income tax returns

The days: how many and of what kind

The first head looks like the simplest and is not. It is not a matter of counting "days off work" and nothing more: the law distinguishes basic personal injury (the mere passage of time until stabilisation) from particular personal injury, which grades the days according to how much quality of life has been lost, and which values days in hospital and days of surgery separately. The same recovery period can be counted almost entirely as serious injury or almost entirely as basic, and the difference between the two is not a small one.

What decides what kind those days are is the medical documentation, not what anyone remembers. Continuous, well-documented treatment (follow-up appointments, physiotherapy sessions, imaging) supports a long recovery period. Medical records with gaps of weeks invite the insurer to cut it back, and it does. That is why going to A&E on the day of the accident matters even when the symptoms seem minor: a gap of several days between the accident and the first medical attention is the argument insurers use most to dispute that the injuries come from the accident.

The count ends on the day of stabilisation or discharge, not on the day you feel well. And that date matters twice over, because it also fixes which tables apply and when the time limit for claiming starts to run.

Permanent effects and their points: this is where almost everything is decided

Permanent effects are the limitations that remain once no further improvement is expected. They are given points under medical tables and those points are adjusted for the injured person's age: the same limitation weighs differently at thirty than at seventy, because it will be carried for longer. Alongside functional impairment, points are given for cosmetic impairment, which is separate and which carries real weight where there are visible scars or a limp.

This is the critical point of the whole claim. Two medical reports on the same injuries can differ substantially in points, and every point translates into money. The insurer arranges an appointment for the injured person with its own doctor, and the report that comes out of it is what supports the offer that follows. Setting against it an assessment by a doctor specialising in the valuation of bodily injury, independent of the insurer, is usually what shifts the figure. It is not a formality: it is the central evidence in the case.

There are also permanent effects that call for looking ahead. Where the limitation is going to require ongoing physiotherapy, prostheses, technical aids or adaptations to the home, those future costs form part of the claim even though they have not yet been paid. If they are not claimed at the time, they are never claimed.

Loss of earnings: the income that is not received

This is the head that is most often forgotten. It covers the income lost while off work and, where the permanent effects prevent the person continuing in the same occupation, the future financial loss. For an employee with payslips it is easy to prove: it is enough to compare what was received with what would have been received. For a self-employed person or someone with irregular income it has to be reconstructed from tax returns, invoicing in earlier years and contracts, and that is where the claim collapses for many people who were in fact entitled to it.

It is not estimated by eye or accepted on the say-so: it is documented. Anyone intending to claim loss of earnings should start gathering that documentation from the outset, not once the insurer has already made its offer.

Expenses and damage to property

Actual loss covers the expenses the accident has made necessary: medical care, physiotherapy, prostheses, travel to appointments, and provision for future costs where the permanent effects require them. Damage to property is separate: repairing the vehicle or its market value if repair is not worthwhile, damaged personal effects (helmet, glasses, clothing) and towing and pound charges.

All of this is recovered if it is evidenced and lost if it is not. Keeping every invoice, every hospital car park ticket and every travel receipt seems excessive at the time and stops seeming so when it all has to be added up.

Who is liable, and in what proportion: contributory fault

Before calculating, you need to know who pays and how much they have to pay. Motor vehicle use is subject to a regime of strict liability for personal injury: the driver is liable unless the harm is due solely to the injured party's conduct or to force majeure unconnected with driving. That is why, where a pedestrian is knocked down, careless conduct on their part may reduce the compensation but rarely rules it out.

In a rear-end collision liability is normally attributed to the vehicle behind, for failing to keep a safe distance; it is a presumption that can be rebutted (unjustified braking, reversing, brake lights not working). With motorcycles the usual disputes are lane changes without checking the blind spot and doors being opened from parked vehicles. And with e-scooters and bicycles there is the added question of whether the vehicle complied with the municipal by-law, which can affect contributory fault.

Arguing about the split of liability is, in practice, arguing about money: the same injury with a share of the fault attributed to the injured person produces a different result. Where the person responsible had no insurance, is unidentified or the vehicle was stolen, liability falls on the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros (Spain's insurance compensation fund), with its own rules and time limits. And where the accident is due to the state of the road, the claim is brought against the public authority responsible for it, through the administrative route.

The insurer's reasoned offer

The system is designed to be resolved without litigation, and most matters end at the out-of-court stage. A prior claim to the insurer is compulsory before bringing proceedings, and from then on the company must make a reasoned offer if it accepts liability, or a reasoned reply if it rejects it, explaining why. Failing to reply, or replying without justification, has consequences: it triggers the special late-payment interest under insurance contract law.

A reasoned offer is compared head by head, never by the total. It often happens that the overall figure looks reasonable and that, once opened up, the loss of earnings is missing altogether, or the permanent effects are under-scored, or the cosmetic impairment has not been included. That is where it is decided whether to accept or to press on. And it is worth remembering that a signed settlement closes the claim, including losses that were not yet known about.

Which tables apply: those for the relevant year

The amounts in the scale are updated every year. The general rule is to apply those in force on the date the extent of the injury is determined, that is, at medical discharge or stabilisation, not those of the day of the accident. With injuries that take time to stabilise, the difference from one year to another is not negligible, and it is one of the reasons why a calculator published on the internet goes out of date without anyone updating it.

Frankly

Why no calculator is going to give you the right number

The internet is full of accident compensation calculators that return a confident figure without saying where it comes from. This firm has decided not to publish one of its own, and it is worth explaining why, because it says a good deal about how we work here.

The metro's road traffic accidents guide on this same website does not publish the amounts in the Ley 35/2015 scale, and the reason is twofold. First, because the tables are updated every year: a figure written today is out of date in January, and an out-of-date figure misleads whoever reads it. Second, and above all, because the points for permanent effects depend on a medical report, which is exactly the information no calculator can ask you for through a form.

The five things a calculator cannot know

How many points for permanent effects. It is the variable that shifts the result most and the one that can only come from a medical examination. Asking the person consulting how many points they think they have is not a calculation: it is asking them to invent the very figure that was to be calculated.

What kind those days are. Whether a recovery period is counted as serious, moderate or basic injury is decided not by the calendar but by the limitation evidenced in each stretch of it.

What percentage of liability is attributed to each party. That depends on the police report, the accident report form, the photographs and the witnesses. It is a matter of evidence, not of a box on a form.

What can be proved by way of loss of earnings. Two people with the same actual income recover different amounts depending on what they can prove with documents.

Which tables apply. Those for the year of stabilisation, which may be a later year than that of the accident.

With those five unknowns, any automatic result is a neat figure with an enormous margin of error. And the problem is not the error itself: it is that an estimate is read as a promise. Someone who has seen a number on a website makes decisions with it, accepting an offer because it "more or less matches", or turning down a reasonable settlement because they expected twice as much, and takes that decision at a moment when they are injured and in a hurry.

For what can be calculated, there are three free tools: the dismissal compensation calculator, the time limit checker and the documents checklist. Here, by contrast, the figure depends on the year's tables and on a medical report, so what is useful is what is set out above: knowing what it depends on and what to gather before the insurer puts a number on it.

The figure in a given case can only be estimated with the medical reports and the income documents in front of you. That is exactly what is done at the first consultation, which is free of charge.

Right now

What you can do today, without waiting for anyone

Gather the documents while you still can

The accident report form or the report of the Guardia Urbana or the Mossos d'Esquadra; the photographs of the damage, of the final position of the vehicles, of the signage and of the state of the road surface; the other driver's insurance details (company and policy number) and driving licence; and the names and telephone numbers of the witnesses, which is what is most often forgotten and what is most needed later. The documents checklist for accidents has the full list, tickable and printable.
See a doctor and do not interrupt the follow-up

An A&E report dated close to the accident is what makes it possible to attribute the injuries to it. From then on, every appointment, every physiotherapy session and every test builds the recovery period that is later counted. Gaps in the follow-up are paid for by the person who has them.
Do not sign yet

Do not sign an accident report form whose account you do not agree with: record your disagreement or do not sign it and take the details instead. Do not accept the first offer or sign any settlement before the final extent of the injuries is known. A settlement closes the claim even if permanent effects appear later, and it cannot be reopened. And do not sign anything from the insurer without having read it in full.
Notify your own insurer of the incident

The policy sets its own time limit for notification, usually a very short one. It is separate from the time limit for claiming against the person responsible and is lost just as easily.
Count the time limit, which is the first thing to expire

One year to claim in tort, counted from the stabilisation of the injuries and not from the day of the accident where there is bodily injury. It is the time limit that defeats the most claims. A conclusive claim interrupts the limitation period and restarts the count: it is worth leaving a record of every claim by burofax. You can place it on the calendar with the time limit checker.
Ask for an independent medical assessment before deciding

The company will arrange an appointment for the injured person with its own doctor. It is best to attend with the full medical history and, if the proposal does not reflect the actual permanent effects, to set an independent expert report against it. That is what supports the claim both in negotiation and in court.

This page is for information

What is explained here is the general mechanism of the scale and of a claim. It is not legal advice and does not replace the study of a specific case, and nothing written here predicts what an insurer or a court will decide. Each matter depends on the medical documentation, on the split of liability and on what can be proved.