With weather warming up in the Kansas City area, bicycle and motorcycle riders are hitting the streets. With an increased number of motorcycle and bicycle riders, comes an unfortunate rise in motorcycle and bicycle crashes. Having handled dozens of these crash cases in Kansas City throughout the years, I thought it would be helpful to write about some unique aspects of such cases. Hopefully, this will help you if you are one of the unfortunate victims of a bike or motorcycle crash.
1. Injuries are typically catastrophic.
Physics dictates that the impact between a car and a bike or motorcycle transfers tremendous amount of force onto the smaller object. This results in significant forces being transferred into the biker or motorcyclist. As a result, the injuries suffered by the biker or motorcyclist are usually quite serious, resulting in broken bones, torn ligaments, or even death.
2. Cases are tougher to win.
Juries do not view motorcycle or bicycle crashes from your perspective. Most jurors are car drivers before they are bikers or motorcycle riders. Most jurors don’t even ride bikes or motorcycles. As such, it’s hard to get jurors to understand a crash from your perspective. In fact, they usually hold you to a higher standard. This makes winning bike or motorcycle crashes even more difficult. You usually need a slam dunk case and no fault on your part to get decent money compensation in bike or motorcycle crash cases.
3. They are usually caused by some kind of driver distraction.
As with most crashes, the cause is almost always the failure of the driver to see the thing they hit. If they did see it, logic and reason would dictate that they wouldn’t hit it. Therefore, in any crash case, there should be an investigation into what caused the driver’s distraction. Most of the time, the driver is distracted by their phone.
If you’ve been in a motorcycle or bicycle crash and have questions about a possible claim for money compensation, Meyerkord, Russell & Hergott would like to help you. Please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ve been handling these cases for over 15 years and have the experience and knowledge to help.