Your UVA Student Was Injured: A Quick Guide For Parents

You’re hours away, maybe even on the other side of the country, and your phone rings with a number you don’t recognize. Your son or daughter has been hurt — hit by a car while crossing the street near Grounds, knocked off a bike on JPA, or struck while riding an e-scooter near the Corner. You don’t know Charlottesville. You don’t know who to call. And you’re trying to figure out how to help from hundreds of miles away.

Take a breath. Here’s what you need to know.

Quick Answer: First Steps for Parents

1. Make sure your student gets medical care first — UVA Health’s Emergency Department provides Level 1 trauma care. This hospital is one of the best in the region and has world-class specialists.
2. Call UVA’s Care and Support Services (CASS) at (434) 924-7166 — available 24/7 to help coordinate support and connect your student to campus resources.
3. Start documenting — ask your student (or a friend with them) to take photos of the scene, get the other party’s information, and get the responding officer’s name and report number, if it’s safe to do so.
4. Don’t give a statement to any insurance company until you’ve talked to someone who can advise you.

For a legal consultation with a personal injury lawyer, call (434) 817-3100

Medical Care and Campus Support

UVA has several resources built specifically for situations like this:

• UVA Health Emergency Department provides Level 1 trauma care for serious injuries.
• Student Health and Wellness (SHW) on Brandon Avenue handles primary care, physical therapy, and case management once your student is stable.
• After-hours nursing line: (434) 297-4261 — for urgent medical questions when SHW is closed.
• CASS on Call: (434) 924-7166 — this is the number to know. CASS provides 24-hour crisis management and incident response, and can help coordinate everything from medical follow-up to notifying professors.

Academics: Don’t Let the Semester Become a Second Crisis

Once the immediate medical situation is handled, academics are often the next worry. UVA has systems for this too:

• Student Disability Access Center (SDAC) can set up temporary accommodations — extended deadlines, alternative testing arrangements, or other adjustments — while your student recovers.
• CASS can help verify an extended absence with professors if your student is hospitalized, so you’re not the one tracking down five different instructors.
• If the injury creates a financial strain, UVA’s Hoo Needs Help Emergency Funding program may be able to assist.

A Word on Medical Information and Privacy

If your student is 18 or older, you may not automatically be able to get information about their condition or treatment from hospital staff. Federal privacy law (HIPAA) generally requires your student’s authorization first, even if you’re the one paying the bills. If your student is able to communicate, ask them to verbally authorize the hospital to speak with you, or to sign a simple authorization form. This is worth sorting out early, before you’re trying to get answers from a nurses’ station 300 miles away.

How These Accidents Usually Happen Around Grounds

Charlottesville is one of the most walkable college towns in Virginia. Unfortunately, that also means it’s a town with a lot of foot, bike, and scooter traffic mixing with cars on busy corridors like the Corner, West Main Street, JPA, and the Downtown Mall area. The accidents we see most often involving UVA students include:

• Pedestrian accidents — students crossing busy streets near Grounds, often in crosswalks, struck by distracted or speeding drivers. Learn more about pedestrian accident claims in Charlottesville.
• Bicycle accidents — collisions with vehicles, “dooring” incidents where a parked car door opens into a bike’s path, and crashes at busy intersections. More on bicycle accident cases in Charlottesville.
• E-scooter accidents — whether your student was riding a scooter and was hit by a car, or was a pedestrian struck by a scooter rider on a sidewalk, these cases have become increasingly common as scooters have become part of daily life around Grounds.

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What Parents Should Know About Virginia Law

Here’s something that surprises a lot of out-of-state families: Virginia follows a strict rule called pure contributory negligence. In simple terms, if your student is found to have contributed in any way to the accident — even 1% — Virginia law can bar them from recovering any compensation at all, regardless of how seriously they were hurt or how much the other driver was at fault.

Many states don’t work this way, so families are often caught off guard when an insurance adjuster raises this early — sometimes within days of the accident. This is exactly why documentation matters so much in the first 24–48 hours. We’ve written more about how contributory negligence works in Virginia and the exceptions that may apply.

What to Do Next

• Get your student to a medical provider, even if injuries seem minor at first — some injuries (especially head injuries) aren’t obvious right away.
• Call CASS at (434) 924-7166 to get connected to campus resources.
• Preserve evidence early: photos, witness names and numbers, the police report number.
• Keep a simple record of medical visits, missed classes, and any costs that come up.
• Before speaking with any insurance adjuster — yours or the other driver’s — talk to an attorney familiar with Virginia law. A quick conversation with our Charlottesville personal injury lawyer team can prevent a misstep that’s hard to undo later.

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We’re Here to Help

MartinWren, P.C. has represented UVA students and families in pedestrian, bicycle, automobile, and e-scooter accident cases throughout Charlottesville. We know the area, we know the local hospitals and police departments, and we know how Virginia’s contributory negligence rule plays out in real cases. If your student has been injured, we’re happy to talk through what happened and help you understand your options — at no cost.

We are local. We know Charlottesville, and we know UVA. And we can help.

Call us at (434) 817-3100 for a free consultation, day or night.

Call (434) 817-3100 or complete a Case Evaluation form