After a motorcycle accident, be sure to follow these steps.
While motorcycle accidents aren’t as common as car accidents, they often leave victims with more severe injuries due to the lack of protection offered to motorcyclists. Motorcyclists often experience injuries like traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injuries, internal bleeding, and road rash.
In 2018, there were 4,985 fatalities among the 8.5 million registered motorcycles in the United States. In comparison, there were about 82,000 injuries to motorcyclists in the same year.
Motorcycle accidents can be scary and stressful, leaving victims with severe injuries, disabilities, and a lot of medical debt and lost wages. Hiring an attorney is crucial to ensuring that you receive the maximum amount of compensation available. To build your case, motorcycle accident injury lawyers will use a combination of evidence that they collected themselves and evidence that you supply.
To ensure that your case is as strong as possible, there are a few steps you should take directly following your accident.
Make Sure You’re Safe
First and foremost, you should always make sure that you and everyone else involved in the accident are safe. If anyone appears to have injuries that require immediate medical attention, you should contact 911 on their behalf. If you require immediate medical attention because you’re unresponsive or unconscious, another party will likely call 911 on your behalf, and the ambulance will take you from the scene to the hospital. You won’t be able to collect any further evidence if you are immediately removed from the scene of the accident.
If anyone else was with you, such as another motorcyclist, ask them to stay at the scene of the accident to collect evidence, if you’re able to. If you collected no evidence at the scene, don’t worry, that isn’t the end of your case.
Keep Your Protective Gear On
Removing your protective gear before paramedics arrive can exacerbate your injuries. Even if you don’t believe that you’re injured, you should still keep your protective gear on to prevent the worsening of any potential injuries. As adrenaline can mask even serious injuries, you may not feel the pain associated with your injuries until hours later.
Contact the Police
Some may try and dissuade you from contacting the police, but you shouldn’t listen to them. Contacting the police to file a police report for the accident is always a good idea. Filing a police report creates concrete evidence for your lawsuit.
The investigating police officer will speak with all involved parties to develop a story of how the accident occurred. They’ll also speak with anyone who may have witnessed the accident. This documentation of the accident will be a great help in building your lawsuit later down the line. A police report stating that the other driver is at-fault with witness statements to back it up is nearly inarguable.
Exchange Information
After contacting the police to start the process of filing a report, you’ll have some time to kill. During this time, you should exchange information with all parties. You should receive the contact information and insurance information of any other people involved in the accident.
Take Pictures
A picture can paint a thousand words, showing exactly what happened to cause the accident. For example, the at-fault driver’s vehicle may have skid marks behind it, indicating that the vehicle came to an abrupt stop.
It would help if you took pictures of the damage to your vehicle, the at-fault driver’s vehicle, your injuries, and the scene of the accident. Take as many pictures as you can. There’s no such thing as too many.
Talk to Witnesses
After speaking to the parties involved in the accident, you should speak to those who may have witnessed it. Get their names and contact information and encourage them to stick around to speak with the investigating police officer. Occasionally witnesses won’t want to speak with the police, so it’s important to get their contact information first. That way, your attorney can contact them later on in the process of your lawsuit for their statement.
Seek Non-Emergent Medical Care
Once you’ve gathered as much information from the scene of the accident as possible, you should immediately seek medical attention. Even if you don’t think that you’re injured, you should still seek out this care.
A delay in medical care may cause insurance companies to raise an eyebrow at you. They may argue that your injuries weren’t serious as you didn’t receive medical attention immediately following the accident.
Injuries such as internal bleeding, whiplash, concussion, soft tissue damage, and more often manifest hours after the accident. Without medical care, these injuries could worsen, which is why it’s important to seek medical care even if you don’t believe that you’re injured.
Contact a Motorcycle Accident Injury Attorney
Before filing a claim with your insurance company, you should contact an attorney. Speaking to an insurance company without an attorney can cause damage to your case without you even knowing it. They may offer you quick cash in exchange for a statement or signed waiver. To avoid damaging your lawsuit before it starts, hire a motorcycle accident attorney first.
If you or someone you love has been injured in a motorcycle accident, please contact our talented personal injury attorneys here at Sand Law in North Dakota. Our motorcycle injury attorneys have years of experience working on motorcycle accident cases and are ready to take yours on. We can help you get the compensation and justice that you deserve for your accident.
For more information or a free case evaluation, please contact us online using our chat box option or by calling us at 701-609-1510.
