The bad news first: South Dakota's minimum liability limits are small

If the other driver only carried the state minimum, you are probably looking at a 25/50/25 policy.

That means $25,000 for one injured person, $50,000 total per crash, and $25,000 for property damage.

A bad wrong-way highway-entry crash can burn through $25,000 before you finish the first round of treatment.

An ER visit at Avera St. Luke's. Imaging. Follow-ups. Physical therapy. Maybe a neck injury that keeps flaring up every time you lift groceries, load kids into a car seat, or drive over frost-heaved roads outside town. That money disappears fast.

So yes, if the other driver's insurer is telling you the policy limit is only the South Dakota minimum, that may be true.

But that does not automatically mean $25,000 is all the money available.

The next place to look is your own policy

This is the part a lot of people miss, especially when they are juggling everything alone because their spouse is active duty and gone, training, or deployed.

Your own auto policy may have underinsured motorist coverage.

That coverage is meant for exactly this kind of mess: the at-fault driver has insurance, but not enough of it.

If your bills are ten times higher than the other driver's limits, the real fight usually shifts from the wrong-way driver's insurer to your own insurance company.

And your own insurer is not your friend here. Not really.

It may act polite. It may sound helpful. It may still spend months digging for reasons to pay less.

Wrong-way on-ramp crashes usually create strong liability evidence

A driver entering the highway the wrong direction from an on-ramp near Aberdeen is not a close call on fault.

That matters.

If this happened around the U.S. 12 and U.S. 281 corridors, or one of the Aberdeen bypass access points, the physical layout can help prove what happened. Entrance ramps are designed one way. Signs, lane markings, gouges, debris fields, vehicle damage, and the first officer's scene notes all matter.

South Dakota winters and shoulder seasons matter too. Around Aberdeen, a day can swing from 50 degrees to blowing snow in hours. Insurance companies love to mumble about weather, visibility, or slick pavement as if the weather caused somebody to drive the wrong damn way up a ramp.

Usually, it didn't.

If the driver came up an on-ramp facing traffic, that is the centerpiece of the case.

One year later is not "too late" just because you're still treating

Plenty of people are still hurting a year later.

That is normal in serious crash cases, even if it's miserable.

Back injuries, shoulder injuries, post-concussion symptoms, and numbness that comes and goes do not care about the insurance company's preferred timeline. Military spouses get hit especially hard by this because life does not pause. The service member's schedule doesn't slow down. Child care still has to happen. Moves still happen. Paperwork still lands on your lap.

The insurer counts on that exhaustion.

South Dakota generally gives injured people a limited window to bring a lawsuit, and a year is usually still within it. The bigger danger is not "waiting too long" by a few months. The bigger danger is settling too cheap before the full picture is clear.

Once you sign off, future treatment is your problem.

Here's where more money can come from

If the at-fault driver only has minimum coverage, the recovery picture usually comes down to a few places:

• the other driver's liability limits, your underinsured motorist coverage, med-pay if you bought it, health insurance, and in some cases whether anyone else owned the vehicle or bears legal responsibility

If the wrong-way driver was borrowing a car, was on the job, or the vehicle was owned by someone else, that matters. Not every crash is just "one driver, one tiny policy."

And if there were multiple injured people in the car, that $50,000 per-accident cap gets split up. That gets ugly fast.

The military spouse problem is real, and insurers exploit it

A civilian claims handler may not understand what it means when your spouse cannot just take leave to sit in Aberdeen and help sort records, repairs, child care, and appointments.

You may be doing this between PCS planning, DEERS paperwork, school pickups, and trying not to miss treatment because missed treatment gets used against you.

The insurance company will say gaps in care mean you "must be better."

Sometimes the truth is simpler: nobody was available to watch the kids, or you could not drive after the crash, or you were handling everything by yourself.

Document that.

Keep the appointment history. Keep the mileage. Keep the notes about bad days. Keep the explanation for treatment gaps. In a place like Aberdeen, where winter roads can turn ugly and specialists may not be right around the corner, access problems are real.

If the bills are ten times the policy, the paper trail decides everything

At this point, the case is less about arguing over who caused the crash and more about proving the damage.

That means medical records that actually describe your limitations. Not just "pain 6/10." It means notes showing you still cannot sleep normally, sit through a drive, carry laundry, or handle stairs without your back giving out. It means showing what this crash changed.

That is especially important when the other side knows its policy is tiny and your own carrier is staring at an underinsured motorist claim.

Around South Dakota, people are used to being told to tough it out. On roads packed with Rally traffic in August or empty county stretches with no lights and no shoulder the rest of the year, that attitude can get people through a lot.

It can also cost them money after a crash.

If the wrong-way driver's policy is small, your case does not end with that limit. The real question is whether your own coverage, the ownership of the vehicle, and the medical proof back up the full amount of the harm that is still following you around Aberdeen a year later.