While most bikers I know are cautious, safe drivers who take care of their bikes, these attributes often don’t matter when they’re trying to find a motorcycle accident attorney because they were involved in a nasty crash.
I can’t begin to tell you the number of times I have had motorcyclists in my office asking what they can do to recover compensation for their injuries. As a motorcycle accident attorney, and needing to know all the details of the accident in order to determine liability, I probe their driving record as well. Many of them are careful bikers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But, sad to say, most of the cases I see in my practice as a motorcycle accident attorney tend to involve the negligence of others and not the biker. So much for driving in accordance with the rules of the road, when others obviously don’t do the same. As my mother always said when I was growing up and out dating and using dad’s car: “Even though ‘you’ drive safely with safety in mind, that doesn’t account for the ‘other’ driver.” Never a truer word was spoken.
Over the years as a practicing motorcycle accident attorney, I have heard horror stories that would curl your hair. My heart goes out to all those bikers and their passengers who have been needlessly harmed by someone else’s negligence. This is one of the reasons I wanted to be a motorcycle accident attorney, because I could help others in a bind who were seriously hurt.
Many insurance companies and even other drivers figure a motorcyclist is usually the person who caused the accident. Just call this a motorcycle myth, and let me share some of my experiences as a motorcycle accident attorney with you.
The reality of motorcycle crashes is that just about a whopping one third of these wrecks are caused because the other vehicle turned into the biker’s path. While this may take place at slower speeds, this does nothing to reduce the bone crunching impact of the biker hitting the side of the car because they have no place else to go. They don’t have a steel shell protecting them like the car. In other words, even slow speed collisions cause serious injuries or death.
The hardest accidents to pick up after are the needless ones; the ones where the other driver was outright negligent. Over the years I’ve seen a lot of strange things when it comes to motorcycle accidents, and I can tell you that more often than not the other driver is negligent due to being under the influence of a substance (legal or illegal drugs, alcohol), driving without wearing their prescribed glasses, ignoring dangerous road/weather conditions and driving recklessly, falling asleep at the wheel or trying to boot a yellow light to beat the red. There are also those drivers who figure the traffic signals and road signs weren’t meant to apply to “them.”
The one thing a lot of people don’t take into consideration about motorcycles is that because they have two wheels, they need more maintenance and care than a car. I’ve heard this a lot during the course of my career as a motorcycle accident attorney. Maintenance of course, is either done by the biker if they are skilled enough, or by a mechanic.
If the mechanic doesn’t do their job properly and inspect the bike carefully and tune it up correctly with safety in mind, there is a good chance I will be seeing an injured rider in the course of my work as a motorcycle accident attorney.
If the mechanic screws up, the biker is at risk. It’s just that simple. Some of the mechanical failures I have seen over the years as a motorcycle accident attorney include not fixing misaligned tires, not fixing an engine problem, not correctly reading a tire’s tread and replacing a bald tire and not having the foresight to anticipate brake failures. Any one of those things could cause a whole lot of hurt or death for a biker.
It’s not just things mechanical that may be to blame for a wicked wreck. Look to the local road conditions and highway and road maintenance. If there are potholes, loose gravel, concrete chunks and other debris on the roads, guaranteed a motorcycle will skid and/or flip. This kind of stuff falls into a category referred to by a motorcycle accident attorney as local official negligence.
Let me get on my motorcycle accident attorney soap box for one moment. Please, wear a helmet, whether you like it or not. It saves lives.
