Why Being Injured On A Motorcycle Makes It Harder To Receive Compensation
If you were the victim of an accident while riding on a motorcycle, you may be worried about the uphill battle of receiving compensation for your injury. Here is why it's harder to receive compensation simply due to being injured by another person while riding your bike.
Motorcycle Riders Often Get Blamed For Accidents
One of the problems you're likely to run into when seeking compensation is that you are likely going to be blamed for the accident by the other driver's insurance company because being injured on a motorcycle leads to more expensive injuries than if you were driving in a car and the insurance company wants to pay out as little as possible.
For example, if you were rear-ended at a red light in a car, you likely have minimal bodily damages and property damage that needs to be paid out. However, being rear-ended on a motorcycle will put you at a higher risk of injury. The insurance provider may try to claim that you were negligent by stopping too short, not paying attention to your surroundings, or not taking steps to be visible to other drivers.
How Does Negligence Impact Your Injury Claim?
Most states use comparative negligence in vehicle-related injury cases, where an injured person can still seek compensation from the other driver as long as that other driver is at least 50% responsible for causing the accident. Your injury compensation may then be reduced by the amount of fault you hold in the accident. For example, receiving a $100,00 settlement while being 25% at fault would result in receiving a $75,000 settlement.
Some states have contributory negligence, where if you hold any percentage of fault in an accident you cannot receive anything as part of an injury settlement. As you can imagine, this makes it tough for motorcycle riders to collect compensation in these states, especially when there is already a bias against them due to riding a motorcycle. All the insurance provider has to do is prove that you hold less than 1% responsibility in your injury case to get out of paying a settlement.
This is why it is so important to have a motorcycle accident law service fighting on your side since you'll need all the help you can get to receive compensation. You now need to prove that you did everything correctly; otherwise, you could receive nothing or a much smaller percentage of the compensation you deserve.