Our Motorcycle Accident Lawyers Identify the Most Common Causes of Multi-Vehicle Motorcycle Accidents.

What our motorcycle accident lawyers often find in jury selection is that the ordinary juror has the misperception that motorcycle riders are risk takers, and so they come into the case with the initial bias toward the assumption that negligence on the part of the motorcyclist is most likely the cause of the accident. However, according to the extensive research conducted by our motorcycle accident attorneys the most common cause of multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents is the inattention and negligence of the other driver, most commonly an auto driver.

What our motorcycle accident lawyers discovered upon reviewing the research, including the landmark study conducted by Harry Hurt of the University of Southern California, is that the most common causes of motorcycle accidents is auto driver inattention, specifically either in pulling out from a side street or turning left from the opposite direction into the motorcyclists right of way. According to our motorcycle accident attorneys research, two-thirds of all multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents are solely the fault of the auto driver, meaning without any fault on the part of the motorcyclist. And two-thirds of that number, or fifty percent of the total number of motorcycle accidents are due to auto driver inattention, again either “not seeing” the oncoming motorcyclist as the auto driver enters a street from a side street or “not seeing” the motorcyclist as the auto driver turns left into the motorcyclists right of way from the opposite direction. The auto driver’s explanation is almost always that he or she didn’t “see” the oncoming motorcyclist.

Our motorcycle accident lawyers have done original research to determine why it is that auto drivers don’t “see” motorcycles. For many years the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, NHTSA, took the position that auto drivers didn’t see motorcyclists because of a “lack of conspicuity” of the motorcycle. In our motorcycle accident lawyers opinion that was just a cop out by NHTSA, essentially an excuse for not doing what would be required in order to retrain auto drivers to “look” for motorcyclists when they engage in the driving behaviors most likely to result in auto accidents. All “lack of conspicuity” does for NHTSA is to shift the fault of two-thirds of all motorcycle accidents from the auto drivers who fail to “see” the motorcycle, over to the size of the motorcycle. But every motorcyclist knows that for a car to present a hazard to us that we can’t avoid either by braking or by swerving, the auto driver must out right in front of us, from a very short distance. Our motorcycle accident lawyers are convinced that “lack of conspicuity” of the motorcycle simply cannot account for auto drivers failing to “see” us at the short distance that would be required for them to create a hazard we can’t brake to avoid or swerve around.

Instead, what our motorcycle accident attorneys original research suggests is that the mental mechanism responsible for the auto drivers failure to “see” us at these short distances is an “inattentional blindness,” a widely accepted mental perception phenomenon widely discussed in the scientific literature. There are a number of factors leading to “inattentional blindness” that our motorcycle accident lawyers believe are responsible for the auto drivers failure to “see” oncoming motorcyclists. The two most prominent, in our motorcycle attorneys view, are “expectation” and “relevance.” The reason why auto drivers don’t “see” oncoming motorcycles is in part because they don’t “expect” to see a motorcycle, just because motorcycles are a less prevalent mode of transportation, and the science discloses that we are much more likely to “see” what we expect to see. The second reason why auto drivers don’t “see” motorcycles, on the basis of our motorcycle accident lawyers research, is that auto drivers just don’t see us as being as “relevant” as an oncoming car, truck or bus. We don’t pose a threat to the auto driver’s life in the same way that an oncoming car, truck or bus would pose such a threat, and therefore, in the competition for limited conscious attention, the oncoming motorcycle will not draw the auto drivers attention in the same way a larger vehicle would.

As our motorcycle accident lawyers will describe in other articles on the “solution to the obscene incidence of motorcycle accidents,” the real answers to reducing motorcyclist injuries is to focus on reducing accident, specifically by “motorcycle awareness” programs, also on retraining auto drivers to look for motorcycles, particularly when entering intersections and turning left at intersections, and then, more severe criminal penalties for auto drivers who commit “right of way violations” that result in the injury or death of a motorcyclist. In the foregoing ways our motorcycle accident attorneys suggest that the auto driver can be led to “expect” the oncoming motorcyclist, and to see the oncoming motorcyclist as “relevant.”

Ray Henke is a Motorcyclist, Motorcycle Accident Lawyer, and Lead Trial Attorney for the Henke Law Group.

Accident Lawyers Require Particular Experience for Auto, Motorcycle, Bicycle, Commercial and Big Rig Truck Lawsuits, Also Attorneys for Cell Phone Accident Liability, And Serious Injury Claims Such as Traumatic Brain Injury and Paralysis.

The job of the accident attorney is often thought to be no more complicated than demonstrating who ran the red light. In fact, accident litigation can be highly complex, indeed every serious injury lawsuit is complex, involving numerous experts solely to demonstrate general and economic damages. Furthermore, very different factors may determine liability in motorcycle and bicycle accident cases, cases in which a party was engaged in cell conversation at the time, cases involving violation of the federal and state regulations governing large commercial and big rig trucks. Solving the “collectability” problem to assure full compensation in serious injury litigation can involve a number of different strategies to establish vicarious liability upon others which the accident lawyer must adapt specifically for auto accident and big rig truck accident cases.

Accident lawyers require a breadth of knowledge to effectively represent those injured in bicycle and motorcycle accident lawsuits, the latter often requiring experience with single track physics and the unique dangers of auto driver inattention to the smaller vehicles, particularly when entering or turning left at intersections, accounting for fully 2/3 of multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents without any negligence on the part of the motorcyclist. Bicycle accident attorneys must similarly be cognizant of the dangers posed to bicyclists as the result, for example, of not being able to “command a lane,” and so their vulnerability to parked auto drivers who may open their doors into the path of a bicyclist or pull out into traffic without recognizing that a bicycle is approaching. Our accident lawyers have provided separate pages for “Motorcycle Accident Lawsuits” and “Bicycle Accident Lawsuits” where the reader can learn more about the unique challenges that accident lawyers face in single track vehicle accident litigation.

Commercial and big rig truck accident lawyers also must have a breadth of specific knowledge to competently evaluate, prepare and prosecute truck accident lawsuits. Big truck accident attorneys need to become fully knowledgeable about the federal and state laws governing a broad host of safety requirements from the permissible weight of loads and how freight must be secured to the hours that big rig truck drivers may operate their vehicles between rest periods, the logs that must be kept, and the responsibilities of shippers. Because the driver will often have inadequate insurance to compensate the more seriously injured, and because most freight companies hire commercial and big rig truck drivers as “independent contractors” in order to attempt to limit their liability for the negligence of the driver, large commercial truck and big rig truck lawyers must establish the shipper’s liability on legal theories such as “negligent entrustment,” and “negligent supervision,” as examples. Our big rig truck accident lawyers explain more fully these concepts on our “Commercial and Big Rig Accident Lawsuits” page, but the shipping companies may be liable, for example, for negligent entrustment, for their negligence in failing to screen out drivers who lack drivers licenses or who were inadequately trained or who have a history of accidents or alcohol abuse. Negligent supervision would include failures to adequately inspect the trucks or freight, the manner by which freight is secured, as well as failing to maintain logs of driver hours, all of which may involve violations of federal or state law.

There are also investigative techniques that accident lawyers should follow including, for example, subpoenaing the cell phone records of the other drivers because all too often the other driver may not be seen to be using his cell phone while driving, and may not volunteer the information to the investigating police. Appropriately educated accident lawyers will be aware of the epidemiological and controlled experimental studies which have demonstrated that a driver while engaged in cell conversation is four times more likely to get into an accident. In a “he said, she said” accident, with no independent witness or where the independent witnesses are split, demonstrating that one party was under the influence of cell conversation may become persuasive evidence of liability. Often of crucial importance where the driver of the other car has insufficient liability coverage to compensate the victim, cell phone records identifying the other party to the call can provide the answer to the “collectability” problem. For example, if the driver was found to have been in conversation with his employer or secretary or a potential client or otherwise engaged in a business call at the time of the accident, the accident lawyer can assert “respondeat superior” liability to name the employer as a defendant in the lawsuit, permitting his client to recover against the employer’s insurance and assets.

Finally every serious injury case is complex litigation, involving the investigation and development of the evidence of the client’s general damages, which some lawyers refer to as “pain and suffering,” but which in most serious injury cases, in their largest part may be more accurately characterized as “loss of enjoyment of life” damages. Some injuries may be catastrophic, and our accident lawyers have provided specific information with regard to the presentation of “Traumatic Brain Injury Lawsuits” and “Quadriplegia, Paraplegia and Spinal Cord Injury Cases.” The qualified accident lawyer will commonly present damages in a serious injury case first through the testimony of his client, family members and friends with regard to the types of activities that the client enjoyed doing before his accident, juxtaposed against a professionally produced “Day in the Life” film, in which the client is accurately shown courageously meeting the huge challenges presented even to do the simplest things in his post-accident everyday life. In serious injury litigation, the accident lawyer must also have extensive experience presenting past and future economic damages, including medical and loss of earnings claims. Our accident lawyers provide a “Serious Injury Damages” page in which we discuss more fully the preparation and presentation of catastrophic injury cases. In almost every serious injury case the accident lawyer will be required to engage a host of experts, from physicians to “life care managers” to “rehabilitation experts” to forensic economists to establish the present value of the future medical expenses and projected loss of earnings.

So while the general public may have the impression that the accident lawyer’s job is no more complicated than proving who ran the red light, the truth is different. Accident litigation is as varied as the vehicles on the road, almost always complex, and can be particularly complex where the lawyer must learn single track vehicle physics, or assert the net of federal and state laws to trap a freight shipper despite its every effort to insulate itself from truck driver liability, as an example, or to assure that the seriously injured client is fully compensated for the full specter of his general and economic damages.