Motorcycle Accident Injuries
Motorcycle Accident Injuries
Fort Lauderdale Motorcycle Accident Lawyers
Motorcycles are some of the most dangerous vehicles being driven on the road. While driver experience and attention promote safer motorcycling, accidents do occur due to negligence on the part of another motorist. It has been found that motorcycles are more accident-prone than any other motor vehicle, claiming over 5,000 lives every year. If you or a loved one were involved in a motorcycle accident in Fort Lauderdale or elsewhere in Florida, contact an experienced motorcycle accident attorney at our law firm today for a free consultation about your case.
Motorcycle Accident Injury Statistics
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that fatal car accidents reached a historical low in 2008. However, the most troubling information from this study revealed that during that same time period car accident deaths decreased, and motorcyclist deaths more than doubled between 1999 and 2008. The reason for the dangers involved with this recreation is due to the design of the motorcycle, which offers little to no protection to the driver in the event of an accident. Motorcyclists, with the little protection they receive from helmets and riding gear, are at the mercy of the road should they ever find themselves in an accident.
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Catastrophic Motorcycle Injuries
The damage that ensues during a motorcycle accident is almost always catastrophic. Since there is little protection offered by the actual vehicle and motorcycles are designed to be quick and light, the most seemingly insignificant elements can cause a high-speed accident with serious ramifications. The driver of the motorcycle is subject to broken bones, traumatic brain injury, paralysis and even death.
Catastrophic injuries are known as such for their extensive damage and possibly permanent implications. Traumatic brain injury is one such injury that affects more than just the damaged part of the brain. Because the brain is involved in the control of almost every other body function, traumatic brain injury can hinder an individual’s overall ability to live life. Traumatic brain injury can cause difficulty in comprehension, memory loss, mood disorders and even paralysis.
Great guys who take their job seriously. They took care of me when I had my accident and made sure I was walked through 100% of the way.
– Joshua M.
Another catastrophic injury that is common to motorcycle accidents is spinal cord injury. Trauma to the spinal cord can lead to paraplegia or even quadriplegia. Partial or total paralysis can be permanent if the injury is severe enough and can cause difficulty in other vital functions such as breathing and sensation.
The high impact of motorcycle accidents also causes great trauma to other parts of the body and can be extremely damaging to the bones of the body. Fractures and breaks are some of the most common motorcycle injuries, ranging from mild to severe depending on the speed and intensity of impact. While broken bones are common injuries and usually treatable, many severe breaks will never reach the point of full recovery.
Road Rash
One injury that is exclusive to motorcycle injuries and bicycle injuries is road rash. Due to the open design of motorcycles, accidents often cause the driver to be thrown from the vehicle or caught underneath it and dragged along the asphalt of the road at the speed of the motorcycle before the accident. Protective clothing is little to no match for the high speeds of motorcycle accidents, which means that the driver is likely to experience extensive abrasions and road burns.
While the term seems as if it implies only superficial injury, road rash can be extremely damaging to internal layers of skin. Much like burns, road rash is categorized in degrees based on how deep the damage goes. While first-degree road rash is considered a mild injury to the top layers of skin, second and third-degree road rash requires extensive medical treatment. Second-degree road rash occurs when the skin breaks and leaves the inner layers exposed. Third-degree road rash reaches through all five layers of skin and even the muscles beneath. This degree of road rash often requires surgery and is subject to immense scarring and disfigurement.
over
10+
of Millions Recovered
Contact A Fort Lauderdale Motorcycle Accident Lawyer For A Free Consultation Today
The seriousness of motorcycle injuries calls for extensive medical treatment and long periods of recovery. Some of the most serious cases of traumatic brain injury and spinal cord damage may even cause permanent injuries that keep the victim from returning to their life and work. When motorcycle accidents cause such injuries, the victims of the accident will find themselves facing extreme losses on top of the pain and struggle of being injured.
If you were injured in a motorcycle accident and are not facing the high costs of the damage, the Fort Lauderdale personal injury attorneys at Ace You Case, P.A. want to help you recover the compensation you need to meet those costs. We understand that hospital bills, property damage and the losses incurred from the inability to work can reach unbearable heights. That is why we believe that innocent injury victims of motorcycle accidents should be provided for with the means to recover as fully as possible and be compensated for the pain they have been forced to endure.
Plantation Personal Injury FAQs
When Is It the Right Time to Call a Personal Injury Lawyer?
The right time to call is as soon as possible after your accident. There are many reasons why you need to begin the legal process as quickly as you can. The legal process may even begin without you, with many calls from the insurance company trying to either rush you or to pressure you to give a statement. They may try to catch you unaware and trick you into compromising your legal rights. Hiring an attorney could prevent this from happening.
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Equally important, as time passes from the time of your accident, the evidence that could help your claim can become harder to find. People might quickly clear the scene of the accident, and you may lose the ability to contact witnesses. The witnesses that you have may begin to lose their recollection of what they saw. When you hire a personal injury lawyer, they will get to work immediately to gather the evidence before it is lost.
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Calling a lawyer to get started on your case is a crucial step in the legal process. Knowing that you have someone on the job with the experience and tenacity to fight for you can give you at least some peace of mind during an undoubtedly difficult time.
How Do Insurance Settlement Negotiations Work?
An insurance claim is just like any other negotiation. You have a number in mind for what you think that you should receive for your injuries, and the insurance company has a much lower number in mind for what it wants to pay. Your insurance claim begins when your Plantation personal injury attorney files a demand letter with the insurance company. This is when the adjuster goes to work to try to save money for their bosses.
The insurance adjuster may outright deny your claim or question liability. They may come back with a settlement offer. When the number seems low, and it will, know that this is just their opening offer. Your Plantation injury attorney will likely reject the offer and respond with your own demand.
Eventually, you will lower your number, and the insurance company will raise theirs, and you could meet somewhere in the middle. This is a time-honored dance that personal injury lawyers have been doing with insurance companies since the advent of courtrooms. Even when you seem very far apart from the insurance company, most cases eventually will settle.
What Happens After I File a Personal Injury Lawsuit?
Filing a personal injury lawsuit is an early part of the claim process. Most cases will never go far enough to see the inside of a courtroom. Statistically speaking, a vast majority of personal injury cases are settled out of court. However, if your case does make it to court, you should expect going into it that the trial process may take one to two years to complete. The legal system is far from rushed, as courts and judges have busy schedules and full dockets.
In the short term, you can expect motions and attempts to obtain evidence. Many people associate a lawsuit with a trial, but that only happens after many months of the nuts and bolts of the legal system. The phase of your case that will take the longest time is discovery. This is when the two sides obtain evidence that the other has in their possession. At this point, you may even need to sit for a deposition.
Filing a lawsuit will not cut off settlement negotiations. As was previously mentioned, most cases will settle without a trial. If anything, litigation may give each side more incentive to settle. The two parties usually continue negotiating right up until the point when the jury is seated.
What Evidence Can Prove My Injury Claim?
Negligence is the basis of every personal injury claim. When you file a lawsuit in court, you have the burden of proof. It will be up to you to show that what you say is more likely than not to have happened. You need to back your claim up with evidence.
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Your Plantation personal injury lawyer will work to gather things that can backup your side of the story, including:
— Witness statements from people who say your injury or accident
— Pictures of the scene of your accident
— Security camera footage
— Expert witness testimony that could reconstruct the accident
— Maintenance logs of the area or vehicle involved
— Medical records that can help prove damages
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These are things that can be difficult to get on your own and piece together to tell the story of what happened. Injury lawyers in Plantation, Florida, know how to both get the evidence and use it to prove that someone else was responsible for your accident.
What if I Cannot Work Due to My Injuries?
Your personal injury damages include both economic and non-economic compensation. Economic compensation aims to pay you back for the actual money that you lost. This includes bills that you paid and earnings you lost. This specifically pays you back for lost wages from your job when you are unable to work. Since you would have worked, this is money out of your pocket.
Lost wages in a personal injury settlement are much broader than you think. Of course, this includes the time that you have already missed from work. It also encompasses time that you will miss from work in the future. You do not need to outright miss work to receive compensation for this. For example, if you were qualified for a promotion but cannot get it now because your injury limits you in the type of work that you can do, you can get compensation for the reduction in your earning capacity.
Lost wages are often a very contested part of your personal injury claim because you can bet that the insurance company will see things differently to try to lower its bill. They may dispute what your possible earnings are or use a lower rate of inflation to calculate what they may be in the future.