Traveling across the entire country where you’re currently residing by motorcycle might be the best idea that you’ve ever thought of in your lifetime. Time to slow down, cool breeze and fresh air recharging your senses, unfamiliar terrains waiting to get explored, and an overall sense of freedom: those are but a few of the things that make a cross-country motorcycle trip worth taking. But in the middle of your travel, you suddenly find yourself caught in an accident. To help you deal with its aftermath, here are some legal considerations for you to take note:
- Even if an approaching vehicle didn’t collide with your motorcycle at all, you could still hold its driver accountable for your accident.
The driver of a vehicle approaching you might not have seen you right away, so they decided to swerve away from you so that their vehicle won’t crash into your motorcycle. However, both of you collided against two separate utility poles. A non-contact collision like that doesn’t ensure that the driver of the approaching vehicle will get away scot-free, especially if you and your lawyer can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that their negligence caused your motorcycle accident to happen.
- You can also hold the manufacturer of your motorcycle or any of its parts liable for the accident that happened to you.
The motorcycle that you rode during your travels may have been sold to you long ago in excellent working condition. However, you eventually found out that the accident that you were in during your cross-country trip was a result of manufacturing or design defects that your motorcycle had.
- The manufacturer of your motorcycle should’ve voluntarily withdrawn it out of the market before you even had a chance to buy it. The same goes for manufacturers of any of the different parts of your motorcycle.
- But since you only discovered much later after the accident that your entire motorcycle was, in fact, defective, you can file a product liability lawsuit against its manufacturer. If a specific part turned out to be defective, you can sue its manufacturer too.
- If you committed negligence as well while riding your motorcycle, the amount of compensation that you’re supposed to receive for the injuries, damages, and financial loss that the accident caused, the amount you may get can be significantly reduced. Worse, you might not receive any compensation at all.
The catch though with making all those responsible for causing the motorcycle accident is that you shouldn’t have anything to do with it at all. Otherwise, depending on your state’s negligence laws, you may receive little to no compensation if you were also negligent while riding your motorcycle.
According to the Insurance Information Institute, roughly 90,000 motorcycle riders were injured after getting involved in an accident from 2012 to 2015. Riding a motorcycle can take a greater toll on both your body and mind, but the aftermath of getting involved in a motorcycle accident maybe even more so as there’s medical and repair bills, physical recovery, and even a possible risk of psychological trauma to deal with in its wake. The silver lining to all of this is that you can fight for your right to get justly compensated for the injuries, damages, and financial loss that the motorcycle accident caused by doing the above-listed legal considerations with the help of a lawyer.
