Your Bike Accident Claim: How to Determine Liability...

A motorcycle or bike accident claim is immediately at a disadvantage in insurance settlement negotiations. Adjusters often have the same attitude many other people have regarding this mode of transport...

"Motorcyclists are reckless and bicyclists are careless."

Preconceptions like this make your bike accident claim an uphill battle from the start. Fortunately, there are ways you can quickly turn it around.

First of all, the rules of the road apply to bikes the same as they do to four-wheeled motor vehicles. This is especially true for motorbikes. Bicycles are different because when the cyclist can't keep up with traffic, they must keep to the right side of the road. If the road has a special bike lane, then the cyclist must stay in that lane.

In a motor bike accident claim, one thing the rider should do is present their own good and safe driving record to the insurance company. If they can find witnesses to back up their safe record, that will also help. If applicable, they can stress that they've been riding a long time, and that they ride often.

The idea is to take away the insurance company's ability to present the rider as reckless. Aside from that, the motorcyclist will have to be much more diligent in presenting a clear and effective argument against the other driver.

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A case of liability that's unique to motorcycle and bike accident claims is something called lane splitting. Normally this happens when there's slow moving traffic and the cyclist decides to ride between two lanes of slower moving cars.

In a lane splitting situation the cyclist is likely to be found at fault. Few states have laws against this maneuver, but most all of them consider it an illegal action.

The cyclist can argue that the driver who struck them was partially at fault, but it's rare that the other driver is shown to be completely at fault.

The flip side of this scenario is when a bicyclist is staying to the right of the road, per the law. They'll face obstacles, like parked cars, that force them to move to the left into the traffic lane, and that is allowed.

When the car driver behind the bike doesn't allow the cyclist to safely make this maneuver an accident is likely to happen. If this occurs, the driver is the one being negligent, just like in a rear end collision.

This comes back to the idea that the cyclist has just as much right to the road as the driver of the car. In the next section we'll look at specific rights a cyclist has, and how this can effect an insurance claim.