Palm Springs Motorcycle Accident Safety Lawyer
California Motorcycle and Truck Accident Lawyer Sebastian Gibson
The Right Choice In California Motorcycle and Truck Accident Lawyers in Palm Springs and Newport Beach
At the Law Firm of California Motorcycle and Truck Accident Lawyer Sebastian Gibson we know how dangerous it can be for a motorcycle rider. We see this every day in reports of motorcycle accidents throughout California. If you’ve been injured in a motorcycle accident, watch for these situations, which, if you’re prepared to encounter them or to take extra precautions, it may save your life.
There are at least 17 common situations in which motorcycle accidents occur. All are difficult to prevent but there are some safety techniques motorcycle riders can employ to reduce the risk of injury and death. Unfortunately, there’s no substitute for experience. It’s those first three months of riding that are the most dangerous for a new motorcycle rider. It’s then that a new motorcycle owner realizes it’s not only that car drivers simply don’t see them, they aren’t even looking for them.
Common California Motorcycle Crash Situations
1) Cars Turning Left At An Intersection Who Never See Your Motorcycle
Drivers of cars in California simply don’t look for motorcycles. If they’re looking at all, they’re looking for a wide car, two headlights or maybe a cop, but not a motorcycle. A study in Europe found that in 69 % of the accidents with other vehicles, the other vehicle attempted no collision avoidance maneuver whatsoever, which suggests they never saw the motorcycle at all.
It therefore falls on the motorcyclist to avoid a collision with the car pulling out in front of them, and far too many simply don’t have more than a split second to take evasive action before a collision with the turning car wipes them out.
If the car waiting at the light does turn in front of you, you need to know what routes of escape are open to you and any evasive action you might take. The wheels are what you should look at for your first clue. If they do turn in front of you, laying the bike down is not your best answer in most cases.
Your best chances are if your bike is upright and you’re ready either to use the brakes or swerve and get out of the way. The last thing you want to be doing is skidding along the asphalt into a fixed object. As soon as you get on your bike, you must anticipate that other drivers won’t see you and won’t be looking out for you.
2) Cars Ahead Making Quick Stops
The car ahead or a number of cars ahead slam on the brakes because someone didn’t notice traffic was coming to a stop.
While it’s easier for the driver of a car to still avoid a collision, it’s much more difficult for the motorcyclist when the cars ahead stop on a dime.
As any motorcyclist knows, 70% of the braking power comes from the front brakes. Brake too hard and you lock up the front wheel and go flying off the bike. ABS brakes can help, but not always.
3) Getting Clipped by Oncoming Traffic
Take any two lane highway, uphill or downhill, it doesn’t matter, throw in a curve and you have the perfect recipe for being clipped by oncoming traffic not staying in their lane.
The narrower the road, the more you must look out for oncoming traffic.
4) Road Gravel and Other Road Hazards
Gravel, a motorcyclist’s worst road fear. There are other potential road hazards as well for sure, but gravel is the worst. Pot holes come in a close second. Honorable mentions go to dirt, sticks and road kill. When a motorcycle rider is going around a corner and has no time to react before his or her wheels hit the road hazard, an crash can easily occur.
Advanced training can help a motorcycle rider learn how to trail brake and to maximize your vision.
5) Car Drivers Opening Their Car Doors Before Checking If It’s Safe
It’s not simply elderly drivers who do this, though it may seem so sometimes. But take a narrow street where shoppers parallel park, throw in a motorcyclist, a shopper not thinking if anyone may be coming down the street, and you have all the ingredients for a motorcycle rider to be thrown off their bike trying to avoid the shopper and/or their car door.
As if it’s not enough to watch for cars turning left and road hazards among other things, a motorcyclist has to keep an eye out for people about to get out of their cars.
6) Cars Changing Lanes As You Split Lanes in California
A similar situation to car drivers opening their car doors, is the situation that occurs when a motorcyclist is splitting lanes on a freeway or on a busy street filled with cars and a driver shoots left or right into the gap in another lane hitting the motorcyclist splitting lanes along side their car at that moment.
It’s the fault of the car driver, but 9 times out of 10, the car driver, having never seen the motorcyclist coming up between the lanes, will try to blame the motorcyclist. Fortunately, most traffic cops, especially those who ride motorcycles, are able to see who’s really to blame – the car driver.
7) Cars Changing Lanes Even When A Motorcyclist Isn’t Splitting Lanes
It’s good to see signs on freeways now warning drivers to watch for motorcyclists or to share the lanes with them. But far too many motorcycle accidents are still caused by car drivers who change lanes right into a motorcycle rider, having failed to look out for anything other than a car, if they’re paying attention at all.
When this happens on a freeway while both the car and the motorcycle are traveling at 70 miles or more, the consequences can be deadly for the motorcycle rider.
The way to lessen the chances of this type of crash is to spend as little time in blind spots as possible. And if traffic is slowing with one lane moving faster than others, be aware that cars in the slow lane may want to go into the faster lane. Avoid being where they may decide to go.
This type of situation may be alleviated in the future as more and more new cars are coming equipped with blind spot alerts or other self-driving features which warn a driver that a vehicle, including a motorcycle may be on their side or in their blind spot. However, if the car driver is still in control of their vehicle and the blind spot or lane changing warning doesn’t allow the car to prevent the lane change, these features may not prevent that many of these accidents.
8) Riding Too Fast Around A Curve or A Corner
Motorcycles are fast, especially the newest ones and speed, as dangerous as it is, can be intoxicating. Speed on corners and curves though don’t blend well. New riders learn that lesson quickly. But even experienced riders will occasionally go through a curve or take a corner too fast, not realizing what they’ve just bargained for.
Sometimes this type of motorcycle crash comes as a result of overconfidence on the part of the motorcycle rider. Other times, it’s the result of a road hazard or the actions of an oncoming car.
If you do find yourself going too fast, whacking the brakes, chopping the throttle or doing anything else that can upset the bike and lose traction is what you want to avoid. Many times, the bike can handle it better than the rider. What you can’t do is panic.
9) Car Drivers Behind Motorcyclists
As with any driver who stops first at an intersection, motorcycle riders know they too can be rear ended by a car driver’s inattention to the traffic signal or to their motorcycle stopped immediately ahead.
But while cars have air bags and crumple zones, a motorcycle rider is, for the most part, riding unprotected from this type of impact.
Rear end collisions, however, don’t simply take place at intersections. They can occur in slow-moving traffic, in stop and go situations and even while traffic is proceeding at a fairly quick pace but not quickly enough for someone speeding or driving recklessly.
How do you avoid being slammed into from behind when traffic stops ahead? Use the car ahead for protection. Pull in front of it and if possible off to the side so the car takes the impact, not you, and you avoid having it hit pushed into your motorcycle.
10) Bad Weather
Rain is bad, snow is worse, but ice is beyond dangerous. With rain, a motorcycle rider doesn’t just get wet, they get splashed. Puddles can be deceiving, pot holes crop up out of nowhere, and the more rain there is, especially that first rain of the season that brings out all the oil on the roadways, are no fun at all. Even if a motorcycle rider reduces their speed, visibility can be next to nothing.
If there’s snow or ice on the road ahead, turn back or take another route if possible. The life you save will probably be your own.
11) Drunk Drivers
A drunk driver can cause nearly any of the above situations, except for bad weather, gravel and other road hazards, or a motorcycle rider taking a curve or corner too fast.
When a motorcyclist drinks and drives, it can cause a motorcyclist to drive more recklessly and even when they’re driving carefully, it will slow down the rider’s reaction time. Since so many car drivers don’t watch out for motorcycle riders, an impaired motorcycle rider is that much more prone not only to getting into an accident, but also runs a high risk they will be found at fault for the crash, simply because they had alcohol on their breath.
In California, the highway patrol have the right to blame anyone in an accident who has been drinking as the cause of the collision, even if they otherwise would be found blameless if they hadn’t consumed alcohol.
12) Car Drivers Texting Or Looking At Their Cell Phones
It’s a fact of life today, that car drivers frequently use their cell phones while driving. Laws against cell phone texting have only limited though not eliminated the use of cell phones.
The new California law taking effect January 1, 2017 prohibits the use of cell phones by drivers not only for texting but for any purpose unless they are attached to the dashboard or window and an action can be accomplished by a single swipe of a finger. Whether or not this will eliminate cell phone use by drivers will have to be seen.
13) Being Lucky (or Unlucky)
There’s something to being in the right place at the right time as opposed to being on the wrong road near the wrong driver at the wrong time. That’s why we put this at number 13. You occasionally meet a motorcycle rider who has never had an accident and they’ve been riding for decades. These riders have to be the luckiest people on the face of the earth. If you come across one, ask them where they play the lottery.
14) Male Older Riders
A great number of fatalities and injuries are suffered by motorcycle riders age 40 or older. In 2013, motorcycle riders age 40 or older suffered 46% of the fatalities. Males have a considerably higher fatality and injury rate than females.
While seasoned bikers will tell you they are the most experienced and more skilled, which in many cases may be true, they also have slower reaction times. And if they get tired or lose focus from the road, it’s a bad combination, seasoned or not.
15) Road Surface
A sudden change in the surface of a road can cause a sudden loss of traction for a motorcycle and destabilize it. If the motorcyclist is braking or changing direction, the risk of skidding increases as well. Asphalt sealer, steel plates, and road grading can all cause a motorcyclist to lose control.
16) Riding A Motorcycle Alone In Rural Areas
More than half of motorcycle crash fatalities occur on rural roads, especially when the rider is off road. Medical attention finally arriving at the scene of the accident can arrive too late to save the motorcyclist’s life. If the crash occurs at night, it can take even longer for help to arrive.
Experienced motorcycle riders know better than to ride alone unless it’s absolutely necessary.
17) Riding Your Motorcycle In The First Month
You really can’t avoid doing this, but the first 30 days a motorcycle rider operates their motorcycle is nearly four times more dangerous than their entire next year. More than half of the accidents on supersport bikes occurs in the first three months.
If you could park your ride for the first three months and then start riding with a lesser risk, that would work perfectly. Only it doesn’t work that way.
Training should help, yet statistics show that after training, for an unknown reason, motorcycle riders still have a large number of accidents.
There’s really no substitute for experience, some common sense, a dash of luck and being alert for trouble from the road and other drivers.
Call Palm Springs Motorcycle Accident Attorney Sebastian Gibson If You’ve Had A Crash Riding Your Harley
With offices in Palm Desert and Newport Beach to handle motorcycle accidents up and down the coast of California and to the east, the law firm of California Motorcycle and Truck Accident Lawyer Sebastian Gibson specializes in motorcycle accidents, truck crashes, bicycle and pedestrian injuries, car accident collisions and wrongful deaths for victims in Palm Springs, the Coachella Valley, throughout Orange County and all of California.
Call California Motorcycle and Truck Accident Lawyer Sebastian Gibson today for a free consultation on the phone. Once we’ve analyzed your case and feel it can be won, we’ll come out to your home or hospital and take your case on contingency so you don’t have to pay anything out of your pocket. We advance all of the costs of your case and are reimbursed for our costs and paid our fees only if we obtain a settlement, mediation or arbitration award or a judgment.
If you’ve been injured in a motorcycle crash and need a personal injury lawyer for an accident anywhere in Palm Springs or anywhere in California for a motorcycle accident with a car, truck, bicycle or pedestrian accident, call California Motorcycle and Truck Accident Lawyer Sebastian Gibson at (760) 776-1810.
California Motorcycle and Truck Accident Lawyer Sebastian Gibson has been named a 2024 Top Lawyer by Palm Springs Life Magazine for the 14th year in a row.
