If you ride on the streets and highways enough, you’ve come across a bumper sticker (or stickers) encouraging you to “look twice” to “save a life” when it comes to motorcycles. This is always good advice. Motorcycles, due to their smaller size relative to cars and trucks, are more easily overlooked by other drivers on the road. Motorcyclists, due their vehicles’ exposed nature, are more at risk of catastrophic or fatal injuries when the drivers around them don’t exercise proper care and don’t diligently maintain the necessary lookout. If you have been hurt aboard a motorcycle, make sure you have the legal representation you need from a skilled San Mateo motorcycle accident attorney in order that you can get the compensation you deserve.
An August crash is just the latest tragic reminder of these truths. Two men aboard motorcycles were traveling northbound on Highway 1 near Big Sur early one Monday afternoon. At around the same time, a woman who had parked her Honda vehicle on the west side of Highway 1 began to execute a U-turn. In the process, she turned into the path of the two motorcyclists, according to a Monterey Herald report.
The Honda crashed into both motorcycles, who were believed to be traveling at about 55 mph. The older motorcyclist suffered minor injuries, but the crash killed the younger of the two men. “Alcohol or drugs are not believed to be a factor in the accident,” according to the report.
According to weather.com, the skies were sunny and clear in Big Sur that Monday. That fact, combined with the absence of drugs/alcohol as a factor, should tell you just how easy it is to overlook a motorcycle… or even two of them. The news report on this accident would seem potentially to point toward a Honda driver who was completely sober, and was driving in broad early-afternoon daylight, but nevertheless still managed to miss two motorcycles traveling down the road at a legal speed and, as a result, drove into their path.
The news report seems to indicate potentially that the Honda driver’s negligence caused the crash. Even if the facts might seem initially to be strongly in your favor, it is important to be ready from the very start to fight aggressively, through skilled legal counsel, for the compensation you deserve. There is often a powerful bias against motorcyclists, and that bias may influence the police accident report, even in the face of facts that point toward error(s) by the car or truck driver.
How to maximize the usefulness of your injury lawsuit
An experienced motorcycle accident attorney will understand the importance of placing investigators at the crash scene just as soon as possible in order to get the best forensic evidence from the accident scene. Additionally, an experienced attorney will recognize that the right accident reconstruction expert can make a huge difference in your case, and ensure that the expert(s) who will be offering opinion evidence on your behalf are specialists who understand motorcycle crashes extremely well.
Just putting together proof of liability isn’t everything, though. Motorcycle accidents often inflict life-altering injuries. A motorcycle accident may have killed or permanently disabled a family’s primary or sole breadwinner, triggering the millions of dollars of financial harm. To get that award, though, your case may need experts who can provide persuasive opinions about just how much, in terms of potential lost future earnings, your family has been damaged.
Whether your motorcycle accident case requires a medical expert, an accident reconstruction expert, a vocational expert, all of the above or none of the above, it will always need a skilled attorney to help you ensure you are getting everything you should from your lawsuit. Count on the skilled San Mateo motorcycle accident attorneys at the Law Offices of Galine, Frye, Fitting & Frangos to provide you with that kind of legal representation. Our attorneys have many years of experience helping injured motorcyclists and their families to use the legal system to get results. To set up a free consultation with one of our helpful attorneys, contact us at 650-345-8484 or through our website.
A Driver’s U-Turn Leaves One Motorcyclist Injured and One Dead in California
