Please see 3 common motorcycle accidents that happen often and may help you with your potential case. If you were involved in a partial fault motorcycle crash, you may still be entitled to compensation for your injuries. Call for a free consultation.
3 Common Motorcycle Accidents
1. Partial Fault Motorcycle Accident
Under New York law, even if you’re partially at fault for causing an accident it doesn’t extinguish your right to recovery. There’s a thing called comparative fault, which means that more than one person can be responsible for an accident. Many times, jurors are left to determine how much a car was responsible for the accident and how much a motorcycle was responsible for the accident. You may have done something in operating your motorcycle. Say that you were doing 52 miles an hour in a 45 mile an hour zone and a guy pulled out in front of you. Maybe you were doing something wrong because you were going a little fast, but still, this guy should have been aware of his surroundings and not pulled out in front of you. That may be a situation where you have two people held accountable. Just because you may have done something wrong doesn’t extinguish your rights, and you should still talk to a lawyer because we can help weed those situations out and make sure that you get a recovery.
2. Run Off the Road Motorcycle Accident
Many times, drivers of motorcycles are forced off the road by other vehicles – because maybe that other vehicle didn’t see them – and they’re injured. The question becomes, can you recover in that situation? If there was no contact between the vehicle and your motorcycle, and that vehicle takes off and leaves the scene and we never find out who it was, you may be out of luck because there are provisions in the New York State Law that says unless there’s contact between a vehicle and the motorcycle – and we don’t know the identity of that vehicle that may have ran you off the road – then you’re going to be in trouble. It’s important to try to at least get some identification of that vehicle. If that does happen to you, maybe there’s some video in the area. Many people have their own home security systems that have video and show the road, and it might be the difference between finding a car and not finding a car. Many times, there isn’t contact with the motorcycle, but the motorcycle has to take evasive action and ends up in a ditch, seriously injured. We want to make sure that we can find that vehicle – especially if there’s no contact – to make sure that you’re compensated.
3. Hazardous Road Motorcycle Accident
Many times, motorcycle accidents happen because roads are poorly maintained. When that happens, you have to make sure that your investigation is done even quicker because usually you’re talking about a municipality being responsible for what happened in the roadway. A municipality has an obligation to maintain the roads so you have to make sure that you identify which municipality owns the road. It sounds simple, but it isn’t always simple sometimes. Sometimes you have municipalities caring for and having maintenance contracts on certain roads, and things of that nature, so we need to identify that. We have to file what’s called a notice of claim with the municipality to make sure that they’re on notice of the claim, and then you might only have a year and 90 days from the date of the accident to file your lawsuit. We want to make sure those things are done in a timely fashion. The big thing, too, is we want to get an investigation done. If your injury was caused by a hole in the road, or your injury was caused by some construction activity that was going on in the road at the time, we want to make sure that we can identify who these construction companies were, that caused your accident.
We had a case like that recently where we got an investigation done right away and we were able to determine the exact construction company that put down the loose stone on the roadway, and we ended up getting a nice recovery for a client. It’s important to get those investigations done early so we can identify who is responsible for the defect in the roadway.
Contact Our Hamburg Motorcycle Accident Lawyer Today!
Were you or a loved one seriously injured in a crash and have more questions about 3 common motorcycle accidents? Contact a Hamburg motorcycle accident lawyer at Chiacchia and Fleming today for a free confidential consultation and case evaluation. Let our experience work for you.
Like Us on Facebook
Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel