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When people think of accidents, they often think of car crashes. Car crashes are indeed very serious and unfortunately common, but other kinds of road accidents can cause serious injuries. Bicycle accidents are also common and very dangerous.
Bicycle accidents are usually very severe for the cyclist but not the driver in the car. While their vehicle might take a bit of damage, a driver is usually unharmed after a collision with a bike. The cyclist, on the other hand, is often seriously injured. The medical expenses related to bike accident injuries can be great, and injured cyclists need to consider how they will get compensation.
If you are a cyclist suffering from injuries sustained in a recent bike accident, our Indianapolis bicycle accident lawyers can help you. Call Wruck Paupore at (765) 295-6920 for a free initial case evaluation.
Bicycle accidents happen in similar ways to accidents involving cars and pedestrians. Often, inattentive drivers and failure to take necessary precautions are at the root of bike accidents. The fact that bikes often travel in lanes right next to cars or sometimes in the same lane makes the risk of an accident even greater.
Many accidents are caused by drivers who fail to look out for bicycles. Many drivers tend to disregard cyclists as other pedestrians who should not be anywhere near the street to begin with. On the contrary, cars are legally required to share the road with bikes, and many roads and highways with bike lanes have signs posted reminding drivers to look out for cyclists and share the road.
Sometimes, bike riders are not where they should be when on the road. Bicycle riders have to follow all the same laws that drivers in cars do. This means that bicycle riders must stop at stop signs and red lights, signal turns, and stay on the correct side of the road. When a bike rider tries to cross lanes of traffic without signaling or fails to stop at a red light, they might get hit by a car.
However, just because a bicycle was in the wrong place at the wrong time does not mean the car driver is totally blameless. Our Indianapolis bicycle accident attorneys can help you hold negligent drivers accountable and get your damages paid for.
On the one hand, many of the same laws and rights that apply to drivers in cars also apply to bike riders. On the other hand, some special rules and exceptions apply to bike riders but not drivers. Review your case with our Indianapolis bicycle accident lawyers to determine how the law affects your situation.
Under Indiana Code § 9-21-8-37, drivers are required to use caution on the road and avoid striking pedestrians, bike riders, and others. This law places a legal duty on drivers to exercise due caution around bicycles. If a driver’s failure to acknowledge a bike rider leads to a collision, the driver can be held liable.
According to Indiana Code § 9-21-11-2, a person riding a bicycle on the road or highway has all the same rights and duties applicable to a driver in a car. Taken with the other statute mentioned above, these laws place bike riders and drivers on equal ground in the eyes of the law.
A special exception to this rule, under Indiana Code § 9-21-3-7(b)(3)(D), is known as the “Dead Red” law. Under this law, bike riders may proceed through a red light before it changes if they have been waiting at the light for at least 2 minutes and it is safe to safe to enter the intersection. Bicycles are usually too light to trip sensors that cause lights to turn green. As such, bike riders may move through red lights under the above conditions.
Not only are bike riders protected by the same laws that protect other drivers, but bike riders may also be protected by special rules that only apply to them. For example, a bike rider going through a red light under the Dead Red law could be injured by a driver speeding through the intersection without paying attention.
Injured accident victims often want to cover their expenses through insurance. This is a common process when both parties are behind the wheel at the time of the crash. However, bike riders are often unsure of how to proceed. As a bike rider, auto insurance could still cover your accident as long as the other party was driving.
Indiana is a fault-based state when it comes to car insurance and crashes. Under an at-fault or fault-based system, injured parties must file a claim with the other party’s insurance to get any compensation. In Indiana, you typically must file a claim with the driver of the car’s insurance, not your own. This can be done even though you were on a bike and not in a car.
However, if the other driver is uninsured or cannot be found due to a hit-and-run, you might have to turn to your own insurance. While insurance policies offer coverage in an accident with an uninsured driver, coverage is not guaranteed for bike riders. Our Indianapolis bike accident lawyers can help you check with your insurance company about your coverage if the driver in your accident is uninsured.
As discussed above, you can seek compensation through insurance after a bike accident. Depending on how the accident occurred and the insurance policies involved, your damages could be sufficiently covered. However, if insurance will not cover your accident or offers you an unacceptable insurance settlement, you can also pursue a personal injury lawsuit.
Filing an insurance claim is often the first choice for many injured bike riders because very few people enjoy the thought of a lengthy court battle. To be successful, you must prove the driver in your accident is at fault. You can do this by presenting evidence of the accident, like surveillance footage if it exists and information from police reports.
If you opt to file a personal injury lawsuit, you will also need evidence to prove the driver in your accident is to blame. However, civil evidentiary laws are stricter about what kind of evidence you can present. While a police report might be acceptable to an insurance company, they are inadmissible in most courts. Police reports tend to be based on hearsay provided by eyewitnesses, and hearsay is excluded from court.
However, if we can identify and track down the people and evidence mentioned in the police report, we can begin building your case. Also, any photos or videos from the accident scene can be used to prove fault. You may also need medical records to prove the extent of your injuries and damages.
After a bicycle accident, you can usually sue the driver who hit you. In more complex accidents, you might also be able to sue other parties who share liability for the crash. Determining who should be sued can be difficult in complicated accident cases, and our Indianapolis bicycle accident lawyers can help you make sense of your situation.
Perhaps the first person you should consider filing a lawsuit against is the driver who hit you. While bikes are smaller and slower than cars, drivers in cars must respect bike riders the same as other vehicles. This requires sharing the road and exercising caution around bicycle riders. When a driver fails to exercise proper caution and causes a crash with a bike rider, the driver can be held liable for their negligence.
In some cases, more than one driver is involved in a bicycle accident. A common example is a kind of domino effect caused by rear-ending. Suppose you are waiting at a red light with one car behind you. Next, suppose that a second car is speeding up to the light and fails to brake in time, rear-ending the car directly behind you. The car directly behind you might be pushed into you, causing you to hit the pavement. If both parties share blame for the accident, both can be sued in your lawsuit.
Depending on how your accident happened, there may be other parties you can name in your lawsuit. For example, suppose you were biking behind a driver who stopped short because a pedestrian darted into the street, and you slammed into the back of the car, causing severe injuries. You could sue the pedestrian for causing the driver to stop short, and you could sue the driver who failed to exercise due caution.
It is critical to identify all potentially responsible parties as soon as possible prior to an accident, as the law may require some defendant’s be put on notice in as little as 180-days from the date of the incident. Identifying these parties and putting them on notice also creates a legal obligation for them to preserve evidence which may be important to your case.
Finally, identifying all potentially responsible persons or entities allows you to determine what insurance is available to pay your damage claim. As soon as our Indianapolis injury lawyers get involved in a case, we will identify all parties and put their insurers on notice of the case and begin negotiation with them. Often, it is possible for experienced lawyers to resolve your case and recover damages without you having to actually sue anyone.
While we have discussed how you can establish your damages, such as through medical records, we have not precisely discussed those damages. “Damages” refer to any injuries or losses incurred by a person because of an accident. The damages suffered by many bike riders include physical injuries, medical bills, property damage, and lost income from missing work.
Physical injuries typically must be demonstrated through your medical records. Documentation of hospital visits and medical treatments can be used to establish the extent of your injuries. This information may also be used to prove that future medical expenses are probable and that you should be compensated for anticipated medical bills. Common physical injuries include broken bones, head and brain trauma, neck and spinal injuries, lacerations, and more.
Similar financial losses can also be shown through receipts and other records. For example, if your bike is destroyed, you can present the receipt to prove its value from when you purchased the bike. You can also provide information about your income to establish how much money you lost from missing work while you stay home to recover.
Assessing damages can be difficult and rather complicated. Our Indianapolis bicycle accident attorneys can help you claim all your damages to get the biggest payout possible.
To prove that the defendant in your case is liable for the accident, you must have evidence. Evidence is necessary for both an insurance claim and a lawsuit, although each process has somewhat different rules about what is considered evidence.
Our Indianapolis bicycle accident lawyers can help you gather evidence from the accident scene. Photos and videos recorded immediately after the crash may be extremely useful in your case. We can also help you identify possible eyewitnesses who can testify about what they saw.
Your medical records are also important as evidence of your injuries and damages. A significant portion of your damages will likely be your injuries and medical bills. Accurate medical records are crucial to establishing damages. You can also use records of other damages, like receipts for your damaged bike, and paystubs to help calculate lost income.
In both a lawsuit and an insurance claim, evidence is required to prove that the driver is liable and should pay you compensation. In a lawsuit, the evidence must adhere to strict rules and protocols before it can be entered. Insurance companies might have different rules about what they will consider, and you should speak with your attorney before communicating with an insurance company.
In most cases, injured plaintiffs prefer to negotiate settlement agreements before plowing forward with a lawsuit. A settlement agreement is a deal between the parties that ends the case early with no trial and often before a lawsuit. Typically, in a settlement, the defendant will agree to pay for the plaintiff’s damages in exchange for dropping the lawsuit. Settlements result from negotiations and compromise, and it may be than what your first sought. Our Indianapolis bicycle accident lawyers can help you negotiate for the maximum settlement possible and make sure you’re treated fairly.
A good settlement covers as much of your loss as possible. In most cases, a good settlement will require all your damages be covered, including your non-economic losses and compensation for the impact of the bike accident on your life. Occasionally, there may be good reason to take less than the full amount owed, such as when the defendant has no assets and does not have adequate insurance. If we represent you, these issues will be fully explored by our legal team before entering into any settlement agreement.
Negotiating a settlement requires leveraging the evidence you have in order to get the biggest settlement possible. The more evidence you have on your side, the better prospects you have in a settlement negotiation. Even in cases with scant evidence, a good lawyer can use effective negotiation tactics to get you the compensation you need. Additionally, we have seen many insurance companies change their settlement positions once a qualified accident lawyer gets involved in the case because they know they will either need to pay full value or go on trial.
If you were hurt in a bike accident, you can hold the other person responsible and cover your damages. Our Indianapolis bike accident lawyers can help you file an insurance claim or a lawsuit. Call Wruck Paupore at (765) 295-6920 for a free initial case review.
Don is a founding partner and one of the nation’s top-ranked personal injury litigators. He is a member of the Multi-million Dollar Advocates Forum, which includes less than 1% of the nation’s trial lawyers, and awarded the highest ranking given by Martindale Hubbel and AVVO.
More importantly, Don understands representing personal injury victims is about more than recovering the best settlement: it’s about helping clients get back on their feet and supporting them in every aspect of their recovery.
In nearly all cases, our clients seek compensation from the wrongdoer’s insurance company. Before forming Wruck Paupore, Jason worked for a prominent law firm representing some of the world’s largest insurers. This experience gives Jason a deep understanding of the insurance industry and the strategies it uses to pay injury victims as little as possible.
Jason -- and our entire team -- put this inside knowledge to work to force insurance companies to pay what is actually owed. Often, we use the insurance company’s own tactics against them as we fight for the full compensation our client deserves.
For more than four decades, Keith has been fighting for injury victims. During that time, he’s watched the insurance industry change, with insurers now more interested in protecting their stock price than treating injury victims fairly.
Since the beginning, Keith has put people first. From his childhood in Gary, Indiana during the 1960’s and working his way through law school, Keith has risen to become one of the Midwest’s most respected trial lawyers. He has never forgotten that being a lawyer is about helping people -- and seeing injury victims through struggles in a way that could change their lives forever.
Over the decades, Keith, Don and Jason have fought relentlessly for clients, even when other lawyers have said the case was impossible to win.
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Wruck Paupore P.C.
Injury Lawyers
275 Joliet St. Suite #250
Dyer, IN 46311
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