Motorcycle Accidents and Uninsured Motorists

August 26, 2016

Motorcycle Accidents and Uninsured Motorists

The Insurance Research Council estimates that 13% of all motorists, or one out of every eight drivers, are driving with no insurance. If you include the number of drivers who are underinsured, you can begin to appreciate the difficulty of collecting damages for property loss and personal injuries that you have suffered in a motorcycle accident. Statistics from the Arizona Department of Transportation show that in 2015, bikers in Arizona were involved in more than 116,000 crashes, and more than 36,000 of those crashes resulted in injuries. If you are in a motorcycle accident, instead of just being another statistical, you should retain a skilled lawyer to help you recover compensation for your injuries even if the other driver was uninsured or underinsured.

A skeptic will tell you that the odds are against you and that you simply should not ride, but the freedom that your bike represents and the hundreds of miles of open Arizona roads and Mesa-and-Phoenix-AZ-Motorcycle-Accident-Laywershighways will always make a stronger argument for riding. Your best preparation for riding where (like in Arizona) your odds of encountering an uninsured motorist are high is to review your own insurance to make sure that your own medical costs would be covered if you are involved in an accident. If your policies are confusing and you cannot get a straight answer from your insurance agent or the company’s help lines, you can consult with an attorney who will help you review and understand your policy. Some policies offer a separate insurance rider that increases your coverage when another party is uninsured or underinsured.

Phoenix Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

An experienced motorcycle accident lawyer can help you recover damages from another party for losses and injuries even if the other party has no insurance. A lack of insurance is not the same thing as an absence of assets. A driver can forego insurance out of forgetfulness or neglect. He might simply assume the risks of having an accident on a belief, mistaken or otherwise, that he can avoid a judgment against him if he has no money to pay the judgment.

As with all motor vehicle accidents, the first order of business after the accident is for you and the other driver to exchange contact information. By doing this, you will quickly determine whether the other driver is insured and what kind of insurance he has. Call an attorney as soon as is possible after the accident. If the other party does not have insurance, he might begin to take steps to hide his assets or to file bankruptcy to defeat any judgments that you might obtain against him. Involving your attorney sooner rather than later will prevent dissipation of any assets that might be used to pay your claims.

A good attorney will also know whether any other parties can be named in a lawsuit. Your motorcycle accident may have been the result, in part, of faulty roads, or by the negligence of a driver who was not involved in the accident but who created some unsafe condition. The sooner your lawyer can investigate the accident, the more likely it will be that he can find the correct parties to name in a lawsuit.

Arizona’s law enforcement authorities are working hard to reduce the number of uninsured and underinsured motorists on the State’s roads, but this problem will not disappear any time soon. The attorneys at Schenk Podolsky represent riders in Mesa, Gilbert, Chandler and the Phoenix metropolitan area to recover the maximum possible amount of monetary damages to compensate for injuries suffered in motorcycle accidents. Please see our website or call us to schedule a consultation on how we can assist you.

 

To learn more about What Topics are Involved in a Motorcycle Accident take a look at our blog post.

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