“I wasn’t the one who caused this. So why am I the one paying the price?”
This is something I have heard, in different ways, from people I have worked with following a motor vehicle accident. They were not responsible for the collision, yet they were left managing its consequences: physical pain, disrupted routines, financial uncertainty, reduced independence, and the emotional work of trying to make sense of a life that no longer feels quite the same. Alongside the practical challenges of recovery, there is often anger. Not simply anger about what happened, but anger about the unfairness of having to live with consequences they did not choose.
When you are injured because of somebody else’s reckless driving, the question of responsibility can become difficult to separate from the experience of recovery itself. You may be trying to return to work, attend appointments, manage pain, or regain confidence behind the wheel, all while wondering whether the person responsible understands the impact of their actions. You may find yourself asking why you have to rearrange your life when someone else’s decision set all of this in motion. These are not questions that can necessarily be resolved by a physiotherapy appointment, a treatment plan, or an insurance payment.
As a counsellor who works with people recovering from motor vehicle accidents, I have become increasingly interested in this relationship between justice and psychological recovery. It is particularly relevant now, as Alberta prepares to transition to its Care-First automobile insurance system on January 1, 2027. The proposed changes are intended to improve access to treatment, provide more comprehensive benefits, reduce litigation, and make insurance more affordable. Those are important objectives, but I believe we also need to examine a less frequently discussed question: what role does the experience of justice play in how people make sense of an accident and its aftermath?
Why justice matters psychologically
When we talk about justice after a car accident, we often think about compensation, legal responsibility, and financial settlements. But justice can mean something more personal to the person who has been injured. It can mean having the impact of the accident acknowledged, having responsibility assigned, and feeling that the consequences experienced by the injured person are not simply being dismissed or left for them to manage alone.
Imagine having your physical abilities change overnight, being unable to participate in activities you once enjoyed, or spending months trying to return to a routine that used to feel effortless. Now imagine that the accident was caused by someone else’s actions. The physical injury is one part of the experience, but the knowledge that you did not choose this situation can add another layer of emotional difficulty. You might feel that your life has been interrupted without your consent, while the person whose actions contributed to that interruption appears able to carry on as before.
Research on traumatic injury has examined this experience through the concept of perceived injustice: the sense that one has been treated unfairly and is experiencing unnecessary suffering because of another person’s actions. Studies have found associations between higher perceptions of injustice and outcomes such as greater pain, depressive symptoms, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and poorer quality of life. These findings do not mean that every person who feels wronged will experience a difficult recovery, nor do they prove that legal action improves psychological outcomes. They do suggest, however, that perceived injustice can be an important part of the recovery experience and should not be dismissed as simply an unwillingness to move on. Research on traumatic injury and perceived injustice and longitudinal findings following traumatic injury provide useful context for this discussion.
This distinction matters because anger is often treated as an emotion that an injured person needs to get past. Yet anger can also communicate something meaningful: that a boundary was violated, that something important was lost, or that the consequences feel disproportionate to the person’s own actions. The task is not to encourage someone to remain angry indefinitely. It is to understand what the anger represents, what the person believes has been taken from them, and what they need in order to move forward.
When justice becomes a way of processing what happened
Not everyone who experiences a car accident seeks counselling. Many people pursue physical rehabilitation, consult their physician, or focus on returning to work and managing the immediate demands of everyday life. Counselling may not be something they consider, particularly when they understand their difficulties primarily in terms of physical injuries or practical disruption. Others may not recognise the emotional impact until they have been living with it for some time.
This raises an important question: where does the emotional processing happen for people who do not seek psychological support?
There is no single answer. People process difficult experiences in conversations with family and friends, through their own reflections, through community, and in many other ways. For some people I have worked with, pursuing accountability has also been part of how they make sense of what happened. I have heard people express a sentiment along these lines: “What happened to me was horrible, and I don’t want somebody else to have to go through it.”
That statement is worth sitting with. It may contain anger, but it can also contain a concern about preventing future harm. The person may want the driver responsible to face consequences, not only because they feel wronged, but because they want the seriousness of the behaviour to be recognised. They may want to believe that what happened to them matters beyond their own individual experience.
Legal action cannot be assumed to provide emotional closure, and accountability does not necessarily resolve grief, pain, or the disruption caused by an accident. But the pursuit of justice can carry personal meaning. It may be one way a person attempts to restore a sense of agency in a situation where so much has been outside their control.
This is where I believe the conversation about justice needs to become more nuanced. We should not assume that every person pursuing compensation is motivated by financial gain, just as we should not assume that every person who wants accountability is motivated by anger or revenge. People can have several reasons for seeking legal recourse at once: financial security, recognition of their losses, a sense of fairness, and the hope that another person will be held responsible for their actions.
Accountability, consequences, and the question of deterrence
There is also a broader social dimension to accountability. Road safety depends partly on whether people understand that their actions have consequences. Most of us learn about behaviour through experience, feedback, and the responses of the people and systems around us. When a person engages in dangerous driving, the question of what follows is not only relevant to the person who has been injured; it also matters to how society communicates the seriousness of that behaviour.
B. F. Skinner’s work on operant conditioning offers a useful way to examine how consequences can influence behaviour, provided we use the terminology accurately. In this framework, reinforcement refers to a consequence that increases the likelihood of a behaviour, while punishment refers to a consequence that decreases it. “Positive” means that something is added; “negative” means that something is removed. These terms do not mean good and bad. For example, negative reinforcement occurs when an unpleasant condition is removed and that removal makes a behaviour more likely to occur again. Negative punishment occurs when something desirable is removed in order to reduce a behaviour. Introduction to operant conditioning explains these distinctions.
It would be inaccurate to label a no-fault insurance system itself as negative reinforcement or negative punishment. Insurance rules are not a single behavioural experiment, and the effects of a policy depend on the consequences people actually experience and how those consequences influence their decisions. A more useful question is whether a change in the system alters the consequences that drivers anticipate when they make dangerous choices. If certain forms of civil accountability become less available, what other mechanisms will effectively discourage reckless behaviour and communicate its seriousness?
Alberta’s government says the Care-First model will continue to hold at-fault drivers accountable through higher premiums, with litigation remaining possible in specified circumstances, including certain serious or criminal driving offences. The question, therefore, is not whether the proposed system removes every form of accountability. It is whether the combination of consequences under the new model will be sufficient, proportionate, and meaningful, both for individual drivers and for the people who are injured. That is a policy question requiring evidence, not an answer that can be established by applying Skinner’s terminology alone.
As Alberta prepares for Care-First, what happens to the experience of justice?
As Alberta prepares to introduce Care-First on January 1, 2027, we need to consider not only how injured people will access treatment, but also how the changes may affect their experience of accountability and fairness. A system can be designed to make treatment more accessible and reduce the burden of litigation, while still raising difficult questions about how people make sense of being injured through someone else’s actions. Access to care and the need for accountability are not mutually exclusive, and both deserve a place in this conversation.
There are also important questions about how psychological recovery will be recognised within the new system, particularly when a person’s needs extend beyond physical rehabilitation. I will explore the mental-health implications of Care-First in a separate article, including the questions that remain about assessment, treatment access, and the process through which psychological support will be considered.
For now, I keep returning to one central question: when we design a system around recovery, how do we ensure that we recognise not just the injury, but the person living with its consequences?
The policy may change on January 1, 2027. The need to feel heard, to have one’s experience recognised, and to make sense of what happened will not disappear with it.
