In this podcast, John Maher talks with Rob Mazow and Kevin McCullough of Mazow McCullough about the unique challenges faced by victims of hit-and-run motorcycle accidents. They discuss the importance of proper insurance coverage, the difficulties in proving fault, and strategies for recovering damages. The conversation highlights the need for motorcyclists to protect themselves with the right insurance and awareness of potential road hazards. Listen in for expert advice on navigating the aftermath of hit-and-run incidents and ensuring you’re covered in case of an accident.
John Maher: Hi, I’m John Maher, and I’m here today with Rob Mazow and Kevin McCullough of the law office of Mazow McCullough. Today we’re talking about hit-and-run motorcycle accidents. Welcome, Rob and Kevin.
Robert Mazow: Thanks, John.
Kevin McCullough: Thank you, John.
Specific Challenges with Hit-and-Run Motorcycle Accidents
John: So, Kevin, what are some of the specific challenges that are faced by victims of hit-and-run motorcycle accidents as compared to other types of motorcycle accidents?
Kevin: John, with motorcycle accidents, and we see it sometimes in car accidents, but probably more frequently with motorcycle accidents, is this concept of hit-and-run. And on the extreme end of things, if there’s a horrible motor vehicle versus motorcycle collision and there are catastrophic injuries or death involved, it’s hard for the driver of that car to just disappear and take off.
Usually there are witnesses, there’s a police presence, there’s a very thorough investigation. But in the more common situations where the driver of a motorcycle suffers some pretty serious injuries and sometimes life altering injuries, that could result from a very small impact with a car, but that causes the motorcyclist to fully lose control and crash horribly.
Oftentimes we see cars cutting off motorcyclists or pulling out from stop signs and the motorcycle driver is forced or required to take evasive action, sometimes dumping the motorcycle to avoid a collision, and there’s no contact between that car and it’s just much easier for a driver of a car in a no contact situation or a minor contact situation to just leave and take off.
And that is something that we see frequently and it’s very important for the driver of a motorcycle to educate themselves on the insurance coverage available to you when you’re registering that motorcycle, to be mindful of the fact that a motorcycle insurance policy is different than a car insurance policy and some of the coverage that’s available to the driver of a car, some of it is required by law, isn’t there when it comes to operating a motorcycle.
So it’s so important to know how to protect yourself as a motorcycle driver, not just physically with the proper gear and a helmet, but knowing that there are drivers of cars out on the roadway who may not stop if they cause you to crash or dump your bike or even make contact with you. So this concept of a hit-and-run with a motorcycle collision resulting in serious injuries can be pretty severe, and we do see it frequently.
And it’s very important to have the insurance coverage that you need. We meet with clients, individuals who have suffered injuries driving a motorcycle where they don’t have the information for the driver of the car or the car that was involved, they took off. And sometimes there’s this misconception that, well, I’ll be protected, I’ll be compensated if I did nothing wrong. I should be able to recover from my injuries. But oftentimes it’s the who and how could you recover? Where are you going to get that compensation?
Here in Massachusetts, and also in New Hampshire, there are coverages available to you as the owner of a motorcycle to be protected. If that ever happens to you, that coverage will be there for you to present a claim. And it sounds weird and it sounds scary sometimes to an individual who’s hurt to say, wait a second, I did nothing wrong. I’m horribly injured. If I present a claim to my own insurance company for my motorcycle to get compensation for my injuries, I’m going to have to pay more money. My premium will increase. All of those things flow through their head and they just want to run away from it.
But the fact of the matter is there’s a thing called uninsurance and under insurance, which again is available in Massachusetts and New Hampshire for motorcycle operators. And if you have that coverage, you’re paying that coverage with the hopes that you never need it, but someday you may need it. And if you need it and you have it, you can access it. Insurance premiums and increased rates, those are based upon fault.
So, if you’re at fault and you cause a collision, chances are you’re going to receive a surcharge from your insurance company and your premium will increase. If you suffer an injury driving a motorcycle because of a driver of a car that takes off and you need to access your uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage, you should do that to compensate yourself for those injuries. You’ll be protected and it won’t impact your premium or your rates if you’re not at fault for that collision.
What to Know About Uninsured or Under Insured Coverage
John: So, the uninsured or under insurance that you can get can cover you not just in the case where you know who the other driver was, but they just maybe don’t have insurance for whatever reason, but actually, if you don’t know who the other person was who caused the accident, it can come into play in that case as well.
Robert: Exactly.
Kevin: Exactly, John. In New Hampshire, you don’t have to have insurance coverage, so it’s even more important to be mindful of that fact and aware of that fact. If you own a motorcycle in New Hampshire and you’re driving that motorcycle on the roadways in New Hampshire, you should be aware that there are cars out there that have no insurance coverage and if, God forbid, they cause an injury to you and they cause you to crash, you’ll have no recourse or no one to go after unless you purchase that uninsurance or under insurance coverage.
What if the Other Driver Doesn’t Know they Caused You to Crash?
John: You mentioned at the beginning that sometimes people might swerve into a lane, cause you to go off the road and dump the motorcycle and then that car just continues on. Could the driver of that car just honestly have never even seen you? So it’s not that they’re hitting you and then realizing that they had caused an accident and then running away, or running away from the police, but that they actually just didn’t even know that they hit you or that they swerved and caused you to have an accident, they just had no idea that you were even there.
Robert: Yeah, you’re picking up a good point there because hit-and-run is a misnomer. You do not have to be hit and the person does not have to intentionally run away to try to avoid being responsible. So it really can happen and it does happen often when a driver changes lanes, when an automobile driver or truck driver or anybody on the road changes lanes. Let’s say they don’t use their blinker or let’s say that they just use their blinker, but they don’t realize that the motorcyclist is already in the lane, and there’s no contact, but the motorcycle has to reasonably swerve out of the way, dumps his or her motorcycle and gets injured, the vehicle driver leaves, doesn’t even realize that they’ve done this. That doesn’t mean that that driver wasn’t negligent, failed to act reasonably.
So, a claim for uninsured motorist can absolutely be made against that driver for a hit-and-run even though there was no contact, and even though they may not have reasonably known that they had done what they did. The trick there though, the hard part there is going to be proving those few things: number one, another driver that caused the motorcyclist to swerve and number two, that that person left the scene.
And oftentimes it’s only going to be the motorcyclist’s word against nobody. And that person can make a claim against their insurance company, but has the burden of proving what I just said: There was a negligent act done by the at fault driver and that they were injured and the driver left the scene.
How to Increase the Chances of Recovering Damages
John: So, is there anything then that the motorcyclist can do in that case to maybe increase the chances of being able to find that driver and recover damages from them?
Robert: Absolutely. The smart motorcyclist will have some sort of recording device on their motorcycle: audio, video recording device that they can capture what’s happening around them. A smart motorcyclist is aware that other drivers aren’t going to be necessarily driving as safely as they should.
And because the motorcyclist is really physically exposed, they should have additional protection besides a helmet and leathers and things like that. They should have a camera, a recording device to make sure that that kind of information is captured. It will make all the difference in the world if there is a hit-and-run like we’ve talked about, whether there’s impact or not, and you have that on camera, your case becomes much, much easier to prove to the insurance company that this is what happened.
Kevin: I just wanted to add that the point that you mentioned earlier, it is something that happens frequently and that idea that a driver of a car may be responsible for a collision involving a motorcyclist and just not know it. And where we’ve seen a lot of that over the last 25 plus years that we’ve been doing this is where one car inadvertently cuts off another car and there’s no contact, and the motorcyclist who’s behind that second car taking that evasive action then also was forced to take evasive action and sometimes either crashes or hits the car in front of them or is forced to dump their bike. And the motorcyclist truly doesn’t even know about that car that’s up ahead, they didn’t even see it, but that’s the cause of the ultimate collision and the injuries.
And there are witnesses sometimes to those events where you could have five or six people after a horrible motorcycle crash stay on the scene, report to the police that there was this other vehicle that did this erratic lane change or a sudden stop or something to cause this collision and they took off. And that’s ultimately the person responsible.
And if we were to pursue a claim for that motorcyclist against the people that stuck around, there’d be no claim. The ultimate claim is this at fault driver who truly may not know that the motorcyclist was even there on the roadway, let alone the horrible injury that they caused. So that ties back into this idea that as a motorcycle operator, you absolutely want to protect yourself and think ahead and be mindful of these different situations that can happen on the roadway, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, and sometimes just complete ignorance to the roadway.
And this coverage that we’re talking about to protect you as the motorcycle driver also protects any passengers you may have on your motorcycle as well. So there is protection there available for someone who has suffered that injury for an at fault driver who flees the scene, whether they knew about the collision or not, but you have to think ahead in order to have that coverage. You can’t purchase that coverage after the accident if you don’t have it for the protection. You have to have that coverage in place at the time that the event happens or the collision happens. So there are ways to protect yourself. It’s just making sure that you get educated on what’s available to you and also be mindful of the other drivers out there on the roadway and what they’re capable of.
Could Other Parties be At Fault in a Motorcycle Accident?
John: Mm-hmm. Beyond just the at fault driver, could there be any other parties that might be able to be held liable in the case of hit-and-run motorcycle accident?
Robert: I’m sure there are scenarios where a passenger causes a driver to be distracted, just messing around or just causing somebody to lose control. So there are those scenarios. There are scenarios where nobody’s at fault, that there’s an animal that crosses the road and a car has to swerve out of the way and that causes the motorcycle to crash.
John: Maybe some sort of mechanical problem with a car, a tire blows out, something like that.
Robert: Yeah, it could be a mechanical problem. There are even cases where, this is getting a little bit farfetched, but there are cases where you go and get your tires changed and they do a faulty job changing your tires and a tire comes off of your car as you’re driving and causes a motorcyclist to crash. Now the motorcyclist could not only potentially go after the car driver, car owner, but the tire company that put the tire in. We’re looking everywhere for potential liability when we look at these cases.
Legal Strategies to Help a Motorcycle Accident Victim
John: Are there any other legal strategies that a personal injury lawyer might use to help a motorcycle accident victim recover damages in a hit-and-run accident?
Kevin: I think the strategies, John, tie into this conversation that we’re having, which is investigating and assessing what happened and to see how many parties might actually be responsible or have contributed to that event. So, as lawyers representing victims of car accidents and motorcycle accidents, oftentimes it’s finding the applicable insurance coverage available to our client or to that injured party.
And a good, thorough investigation includes looking at other potential defendants. If you do something wrong to cause or contribute to an accident or an injury, you could potentially be at fault for some percentage. If you failed to do something you should have done, even if you didn’t necessarily do anything wrong, but because of the roadway ahead or the weather conditions, there are factors that may cause another party to be at fault or partially at fault.
So, it’s doing that investigation to see exactly what happened and to assess who or how many people may have contributed to that event and may be legally responsible for those injuries or for that collision.
John: All right. Well, that’s really great information. Rob and Kevin, thanks again for speaking with me today.
Robert: Thanks, John.
Kevin: Thank you, John.
Information About Mazo and McCullough
John: And for more information, you can visit the website of [email protected] or call 978-744-8000.
