If you’re seeking compensation for your injuries following a motorcycle accident, it’s wise to hire a lawyer with plenty of experience handling motorcycle cases. This is because motorcycle accidents differ from other road accidents in a few significant ways. With an experienced motorcycle accident lawyer in your corner, you’re more likely to overcome the particular challenges faced by injured motorcyclists and win fair compensation for your losses.
What Are the Benefits of Having a Motorcycle Accident Lawyer Who Has Experience in Your Type of Case?
Injured motorcyclists often have good cause to seek compensation from the other driver. One reason for this is that motorcycle accidents are more frequently caused by other vehicles. All drivers have a responsibility to drive safely with careful awareness of other drivers, including motorcyclists: when your vehicle is a car, a single moment of careless or distracted driving can see a motorcyclist seriously injured.
Distracted driving and turning left without properly checking the mirror are two of the main causes of such accidents. But in these cases, even though the other driver was to blame, proving their negligence is often a challenge requiring the help of a skillful motorcycle accident attorney.
Your Lawyer Gathers Evidence to Prove Your Claim
To win financial compensation for your medical bills and other losses requires proving the other driver’s fault. You must prove that the other driver acted with negligence, causing your injury. You must also prove that you were driving correctly according to local state laws and didn’t contribute toward your own injuries because of your own negligence.
This often requires a robust claim built upon very convincing evidence, which your lawyer can prepare for you. There are a few reasons that you need particularly strong evidence in personal injury cases involving motorcycles.
Motorcyclists Are Often Seen as Slightly Reckless
It’s unfortunate that a certain bias against motorcyclists often exists in jury members. People who choose to ride motorcycles are sometimes seen as daredevil types who might willingly take risks on the road or even drive recklessly.
As the injured motorcyclists, such a bias creates an uphill struggle to prove your innocence of negligence. Nevertheless, an experienced lawyer can accomplish this with detailed evidence, including the police report, eyewitness accounts, helmet camera footage, crash site photos and videos, and more. It’s often quite difficult for plaintiffs to gather all the necessary evidence on their own.
Eyewitness Accounts May Be Less Dependable
One important piece of evidence in many car accidents is eyewitness reports. But with motorcycle accidents, eyewitness accounts tend to be less reliable. This is because motorcycles move and react to danger and crashes in unusual and less recognizable ways.
Eyewitnesses and even police officers sometimes find it harder to state with conviction how the accident was caused. In a car or truck accident, on the other hand, it’s often far easier for eyewitnesses to recognize the cause of the crash.
The Value of Video and Accident Reconstruction Experts
One way an experienced lawyer can make up for a lack of solid eyewitness testimony is with any form of video. This might include nearby surveillance camera footage, helmet camera footage, and videos accidentally captured by eyewitnesses.
Another frequently effective form of evidence is to retain an accident reconstruction expert, who can thoroughly investigate and analyze the accident. They can then explain the event in step-by-step detail to the jury using visual aids, timelines, and even 3D models, to prove the at-fault driver’s negligence and also prove your correct behavior.
Proving Your Compliance With Road Safety Rules
When attempting to dispute your claim, the defendant’s insurance company might claim that you weren’t in compliance with state safety laws at the time of the crash. In Texas, lane splitting isn’t allowed, and all motorcyclists must wear a helmet, except in some specific circumstances. Your lawyer can help you prove your compliance with these and other rules.
Demonstrating Proper Vehicle Maintenance
Proving that you were in no way responsible for your own injuries also requires showing that your motorcycle was in good road-worthy condition. Your lawyer can help you prove that your tires, chain, headlight, taillight, and other vehicle parts were all well maintained. When all of these factors are properly demonstrated, it becomes far easier to prove liability and win a motorcycle claim.
Your Lawyer Ensures You Pursue Full Damages
Without proper legal guidance and representation, injured motorcyclists often fail to understand and pursue the full value of their claims. The damages you have a right to pursue may be more than you know.
Medical Expenses
Without the protection of a car’s metal frame, motorcyclists often suffer more serious injuries and more expensive medical bills. And in any personal injury claim, the more serious the injury, the more important it is to hire a good attorney.
With serious injuries, the cost of treatment might well continue into the future. This means you must accurately estimate and prove the future medical expenses resulting from the accident. If you fail to recover the full amount, your settlement money may run out before your medical bills do. Motorcycle accident lawyers have experience calculating and proving the future costs of medical treatment and can hire the right medical practitioner experts to help with this process if needs be.
Property Damages
Motorcycles are also more vulnerable to serious damage than cars in a collision. You may be facing expensive repair estimates, which should be recovered in full from the party who caused the damage.
Lost Wages
If you’re facing a period away from work because of your injuries, you may have lost a lot of income. If you’re seriously injured, your capacity to work in the future might also have been reduced. Once again, it’s usually best to have a skillful lawyer predict and prove these future lost earnings, perhaps with the help of a vocational expert.
Pain and Suffering
You may well be suffering a great deal of pain, emotional distress, and other losses that lack a clear monetary value. Injured motorcyclists without knowledge of personal injury law often find it hard to understand how to calculate these non-economic damages. Your lawyer can help ensure that you pursue full and fair damages for all the losses you’ve suffered and leave nothing on the table.
Your Lawyer Deals With the Insurance Company for You
When you’ve suffered an injury, the prospect of dealing with insurance adjusters and preparing for a possible lawsuit is rarely a pleasant one. A motorcycle accident attorney can step in and handle all communications with the insurer for you, from the initial accident investigation and filing of the claim all the way to the resolution of the case. The peace of mind this grants many claimants is an enormous benefit.
With specialist legal guidance from the very beginning of the claims process, you’re also more likely to avoid making costly mistakes. Your lawyer can answer your legal questions, explain what to do and what not to do, build a rock-solid case, negotiate with the insurance company, and represent you in court if a jury court case is required.
If you’ve experienced a motorcycle accident in Texas, contact Gamez Law Firm today at 210-951-2024 for a free consultation. Our experienced motorcycle accident lawyers can battle hard to win you fair compensation for all of your losses.