The Motorcycle Accident Lawyer SITEMAP
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The Motorcycle Accident Lawyer SITEMAP
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Our Motorcycle Accident Lawyers Identify the Most Common Causes of Multi-Vehicle Motorcycle Accidents.What our motorcycle accident lawyers often find in jury selection is that the ordinary juror has the misperception that motorcycle riders are risk takers, and so they come into the case with the initial bias toward the assumption that negligence on the part of the motorcyclist is most likely the cause of the accident. However, according to the extensive research conducted by our motorcycle accident attorneys the most common cause of multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents is the inattention and negligence of the other driver, most commonly an auto driver.What our motorcycle accident lawyers discovered upon reviewing the research, including the landmark study conducted by Harry Hurt of the University of Southern California, is that the most common causes of motorcycle accidents is auto driver inattention, specifically either in pulling out from a side street or turning left from the opposite direction into the motorcyclists right of way. According to our motorcycle accident attorneys research, two-thirds of all multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents are solely the fault of the auto driver, meaning without any fault on the part of the motorcyclist. And two-thirds of that number, or fifty percent of the total number of motorcycle accidents are due to auto driver inattention, again either "not seeing" the oncoming motorcyclist as the auto driver enters a street from a side street or "not seeing" the motorcyclist as the auto driver turns left into the motorcyclists right of way from the opposite direction. The auto driver's explanation is almost always that he or she didn't "see" the oncoming motorcyclist. How Our Motorcycle Accident Attorneys Conclusions on the Solutions to High Incidence of Motorcycle Accidents Differs from That of NHTSA.Our motorcycle accident lawyers have done original research to determine why it is that auto drivers don't "see" motorcycles. For many years the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, NHTSA, took the position that auto drivers didn't see motorcyclists because of a "lack of conspicuity" of the motorcycle. In our motorcycle accident lawyers opinion that was just a cop out by NHTSA, essentially an excuse for not doing what would be required in order to retrain auto drivers to "look" for motorcyclists when they engage in the driving behaviors most likely to result in auto accidents. All "lack of conspicuity" does for NHTSA is to shift the fault of two-thirds of all motorcycle accidents from the auto drivers who fail to "see" the motorcycle, over to the size of the motorcycle. But every motorcyclist knows that for a car to present a hazard to us that we can't avoid either by braking or by swerving, the auto driver must pull out right in front of us, from a very short distance. Our motorcycle accident lawyers are convinced that "lack of conspicuity" of the motorcycle simply cannot account for auto drivers failing to "see" us at the short distance that would be required for them to create a hazard we can't brake to avoid or swerve around.Instead, what our motorcycle accident attorneys original research suggests is that the mental mechanism responsible for the auto drivers failure to "see" us at these short distances is an "inattentional blindness," a widely accepted mental perception phenomenon widely discussed in the scientific literature. There are a number of factors leading to "inattentional blindness" that our motorcycle accident lawyers believe are responsible for the auto drivers failure to "see" oncoming motorcyclists. The two most prominent, in our motorcycle attorneys view, are "expectation" and "relevance." The reason why auto drivers don't "see" oncoming motorcycles is in part because they don't "expect" to see a motorcycle, just because motorcycles are a less prevalent mode of transportation, and the science discloses that we are much more likely to "see" what we expect to see. The second reason why auto drivers don't "see" motorcycles, on the basis of our motorcycle accident lawyers research, is that auto drivers just don't see us as being as "relevant" as an oncoming car, truck or bus. We don't pose a threat to the auto driver's life in the same way that an oncoming car, truck or bus would pose such a threat, and therefore, in the competition for limited conscious attention, the oncoming motorcycle will not draw the auto drivers attention in the same way a larger vehicle would. As our motorcycle accident lawyers will describe in other articles on "The Solution to the Obscene Incidence of Motorcyclist Injuries," the real answers to reducing motorcyclist injuries is to focus on reducing motorcycle accidents, specifically by "motorcycle awareness" programs directed at auto drivers, also on retraining auto drivers to look for motorcycles including by modifying DMV booklets and tests, and then, more severe criminal penalties for auto drivers who commit "right of way violations" that result in the injury or death of a motorcyclist. In the foregoing ways our motorcycle accident attorneys suggest that the auto driver can be led to "expect" the oncoming motorcyclist, and to see the oncoming motorcyclist as "relevant." Ray Henke is a Motorcycle Accident Lawyer, a Motorcyclist, and Lead Trial Attorney for the Henke Law Group. |
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Most Recent Jury Verdict or Settlement $2,500,000.00 Settlement in Contested Liability Motorcycle Accident Case in Which Motorcyclist "Split Lanes" Between Cars in Two Left Turn Lanes. Injuries Were Lower Leg Amputation and Broken Clavical. |