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From Road Traffic Injury

The purpose of this site is to help people to deal with trauma, especially with road traffic injury (I suffered one on 2015-03-30) and dealing with insurance company (in my case QBE - empire of evil at least in my view). My goal is to share my experience and knowledge I gained going through this terrible ordeal, so that other people can avoid needless suffering I am going through.

To use this site, you may dive straight into the subject that interest you. If you want to read my story from the start, then start with 2015-03-30 road traffic injury.

Information on this site

History

Hi, my name is Dr Alfonsas Stonis. I created my own site many years ago. The goal was to share some useful information, mostly from IT sector. After the injury I started getting frustrated with QBE insurance for not doing a thing required by law, like paying for basic treatment, I started writing about my experience. During the last several years it was attacked many times and ended up being down most of the time. One day I will restore it. So, now this site has two domain names stonis.info and roadtrafficinjury.net. My main focus is recovery from road traffic injury and all information on this site is about it.

Motivation

I got injured on 2015-03-30. I struggled with the consequences, PTSD being the main one. It has been a very difficult and painful road. For more than 8 years I have been suffering in complete misery, and it could have been very different. I needed support that I was not able to find while I tried to find it very hard. There are many things I wish I knew then. I do not think my story is unique. I think the lessons I have learned can help many people. I still need help. I lost 8 years of my life, that were meant to be the best years. It is a crushing fact. However, I am trying to re-frame/remake it so that it would be a very expensive learning experience that I can use to help other people. No one told me before, that personal injury lawyers are the same nasty as insurance or how debilitating PTSD is, or that you should not rely on the police and so on.

In short: I was not able to deal with it my self and I do not see it being possible without support. My story can be a big part of support for other people this is why I think it is crucial.

There were 3 important questions I had to answer before starting this project (creating a guide how to recover from road traffic injury):

  1. How much benefit can it bring to other people?
  2. Is there something I can do about it?
  3. Am I able to do it?

How much benefit can it bring to other people?

Life and health are the most important. However, it is hard to calculate. I do write mostly about money as it is easier to calculate.

My case. I was a very highly skilled software developer. I have a PhD in computer science. All got cut short. For the last 8 years I lived in misery and did not earn a single cent. While I would be easily earning $200k per year if not the injury. I have about $300k expenses related to the insurance claim with QBE. This took an enormous toll on my health. I got miserable compensation: $100k for loss of income for the last 8 years. Even in very pessimistic calculations legal fees were $200k too high and the compensation is just miserable. I would not go through this suffering even for $100M. That is my life, there will be no other and I lost such a huge part of it. Every day I am struggling with consequences, please check my diary for more details.

NSW. According to NSW Transport there have been 9582 serious injuries (hospitalizations) on NSW roads over the last 12 months. I assume the vast majority of them go through an insurance claim process, at least for medical bills. Maybe some of them have different insurance companies, maybe only QBE is so nasty. However, I think it is more likely that others cause some problems too. I have a very bad impression about personal injury lawyers. Unfortunately, all the lawyers I have been involved with were bad. Because I had problems with QBE and lawyers, I contacted many firms and found only one who seemed to be trustworthy and few potentially good, but I did not communicate with them long enough to say more. I have to find it, but I also saw statistics on some brochures that about 60% of people who had road traffic injury develop mental health problems, adding to their problems dealing with insurance. The problem is that it seems that over time personal injury claims become a closed area where even at the level of NSW personal injury lawyers, insurance lawyers and government officials know each other. They develop (business) relationships and start making deals, which in time become corruption. So, even hoping that about half of injured people do well it still leaves about 5000 people who go through a terrible process. My only hope is that not everyone runs into such scamming lawyers as I did.

This is only for road traffic injuries. Personal Injuries include other injuries covered by worker compensation and I believe these were much higher than road traffic injuries.

I do not dare to further calculate the potential impact as it is absurdly high.

Is there something I can do about it?

The most important thing I was looking for was reliable information about what to do after you got injured. I was looking for someone's story, who went through the same problems. And I could not find it. Imagine if I found it and it would have saved me a big part of 8 years of suffering and $300k in legal fees and loss of income for 8 years. I do not know how much I would have saved and recovered income, but I believe a lot. So, the information that I am writing here would have helped me a lot. The limited feedback I had from other people running through similar problems is the same - that would have helped them a lot.

I have further ideas on how I can help, but first of all I need to help myself. I need a good story about how I was able to overcome all these obstacles. I believe this can be of enormous help, but I need to choose what to focus first and that is helping myself.

Am I able to do it?

Before taking on this task I have to be sure I will be able to do it. I have worked on many large project scales at all stages of their implementation. I was working on one when I got injured. That I was planning to grow to a product that would scale worldwide. However, things have changed when I was injured. I am tired all the time and hardly manage a few productive hours per week. I am tired all the time and I make many mistakes. I am not able to hold any job and have failed even small projects. So, why should I be able to do this? Simply because I have no choice. In a very simplified explanation: one way to deal with PTSD is to face the situation in a safe environment, till it is no longer life crushing. So, I need to face it and win to get a feeling of safety back. Unfortunately, up till now it was mostly only crushing defeat. However, I hope that things will change. I noticed that when I have support, I can get a bit more productive. So, I need someone to help me on the way and I have a good chance to have a good result. BTW unfortunately it does not work when I try to do other unrelated tasks.

There is also the problem of me making logical mistakes that I was not able to prevent or detect on time. The only thing that helps to some degree is constant monitoring (someone double checking everything I do), but this is not a solution. I hope that in time it will get better or find some way to work around with some support.

It took me a long time to dedicate myself to doing this task. It is a difficult task. I was not sure if I would be able to do it and when I start something I have to finish it. However, I came to the point when I had no choice but to do it. So, I will do it with all my strength. It also is the only way where my terrible loss can be of some use.

When I was reading the book "The body keeps the score" I was finding it very relatable. There was one part where they wrote about war veterans. Most of veterans were tired exhausted and subdued, but when they start talking about their war experience they would become alive. I do a lot of errors and tired all the time. However, I hope that when I will be working on this project it will help me to focus better. Therefore while I failed at all other projects I have a hope that I will be able to do this one.

The importance of publishing my story

Creating this site has also personal importance. I use my story as an example, but it is also very important to tell my story. It is important for:

  • Recovery - telling my story helps to process it.
  • Safety - being able to share it with the world makes me feel safer.
  • Meaning - sharing it and potentially helping others to avoid similar problems gives meaning to my suffering.
  • Financially - among other things getting injured was a terrible financial loss. I believe that my story has significant value and therefore sharing it if I am lucky may bring some financial relief.

More details about personal importance in sharing my story at The importance of publishing my story.

Contacts

Please write to road.traffic.injury@gmail.com

I am especially interested in learning about two things:

  • other people experience. I believe there is a lot to learn about and the official information that you are able to find might not be enough.
  • about the good lawyers (specializing in personal injury law or dealing with exaggerated legal fees). I found exceptionally difficult to find lawyers who are trustworthy.

Copyright

While the site and information in it is for everyone to read and to learn from my experience and hopefully to avoid same or similar problems or find a way out of it, none of the content of this site should be copied or used somewhere else without prior written permission by Dr Alfonsas Stonis.

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