Boston Bicycle Accident Lawyer
Boston is a major city with lots of traffic. Like many other cities, residents often turn to modes of transportation other than cars. Bikes are very popular, and you will likely see multiple people on bikes at almost any time in Boston. Unfortunately, while bike riders are easy to spot, drivers in cars often do not watch out for them, and accidents happen.
Bike accidents may involve serious injuries. Economic losses related to financial costs like medical bills and non-economic injuries revolving around pain and suffering should be assessed by your lawyer. Some common bike accident scenarios include bike land accidents, drivers failing to yield to bike riders, and accidents while drivers try to pass bike riders. You have only 3 years to file your case, but you might have more time under special circumstances. To begin your case, we need to gather evidence, assess your damages, and evaluate your legal options. You might be fully covered by car insurance, or you can take your claims to civil court.
Begin your case with a free review of your claim from our bicycle accident attorneys at the Law Office of John J. Sheehan by calling us at (617) 925-6407.
Damages Available in Boston Bicycle Accident Cases
When it comes to accidents, people might not think of a bike accident as seriously as they do a car accident. However, many bike accidents involve vehicles. While the person driving the vehicle might be largely unharmed, the person on the bike might be catastrophically injured. Their damages may be quite substantial, especially if their injuries are severe. Your lawyer should evaluate your damages so you fully understand what your claims are worth and how much compensation you rightfully deserve.
Economic Damages
Many damages are measured in terms of how much money they cost. Economic damages may usually be proven with evidence of costs and expenses. If you spent money as a direct result of the bicycle crash, save all your receipts, bills, and invoices, as we may need them to prove your economic damages.
One significant source of economic damages is medical care. Bike riders are no match for speeding cars, and an injured bike rider might need extensive medical treatment after an accident. Bike riders might be thrown to the pavement or even dragged along the ground. Broken bones, head injuries, road rash, and other serious injuries are possible. As such, medical bills tend to be high. Be sure to hold onto any hospital bills you receive for treatment related to the accident.
We should also take the cost of your bicycle into consideration. Even a simple bike for everyday use might be expensive. Whether you must pay to repair your bike or replace it entirely, you are likely dealing with significant expenses. If you still have receipts from when you first purchased the bike, those will be very helpful in proving damages. If you do not, our bicycle accident lawyers may have other ways of evaluating your bike and the cost of the damage.
Non-Economic Damages
Your non-economic injuries are not related to actual monetary costs as much as they are to painful personal experiences. These damages tend to be more subjective and unique to each plaintiff. In many cases, non-economic damages are established through testimony. Your testimony about how the accident and your injuries have affected you may be very powerful in the courtroom.
Perhaps the most well-known kind of non-economic damages are pain and suffering. You might have heard this phrase tossed around before, but these damages may be quite significant. Your injuries might be extreme and painful. The accident itself might have been frightening and traumatic. Many victims live with physical pain and psychological distress for a long time after an accident, so damages for pain and suffering should not be disregarded.
You might claim other non-economic injuries, too. For example, suppose your injuries result in disabilities, scarring, or disfigurement. In that case, you may claim damages for the reduction in your quality of life or the loss of enjoyment of your life. Again, these are highly subjective and unique to each plaintiff, but these damages are often worth substantial compensation.
How Bicycle Accidents Often Happen in Boston
Bike accidents can be incredibly simple or highly complex. However, even simple accidents can be extremely dangerous and cause major injuries. Knowing how your accident occurred puts us one step closer to determining who is responsible and how we can have them held liable in a court of law.
Bike Lane Accidents
A number of bicycle accidents occur in bike lanes throughout Boston and the surrounding towns and neighborhoods. While these lanes are dedicated to bicycle traffic, other vehicles and people often get in the way. For example, many bike lanes run alongside parking lanes. Drivers might run into bike riders as they try to park. Dooring accidents are also somewhat common. These accidents happen when a person in a parked car opens their door directly into a bike lane. If the person in the car does not check behind them, they might open the door in front of an oncoming bike rider. The bike rider might crash into the open door and be badly hurt.
Drivers Failing to Yield
Cars and bicycles are expected to share the road. Bikes are permitted to be anywhere there is a bike lane and in many places where there is not a bike lane. If there is no bike lane, drivers in cars are expected to share the road with bike riders as if they were vehicles, including yielding to them when necessary. Maybe you were riding your bike through an intersection when a turning vehicle failed to yield and struck you. This is an unfortunately common problem, and bike riders are frequently injured because negligent drivers do not believe they have to yield to bikes. If you were injured this way, speak to an attorney immediately.
Drivers Passing Bike Riders
In places where there is no bike lane but bikes are still legally permitted, cars must share the lane with bike riders and treat them like other cars. Since bikes are much slower than cars, drivers often try to pass bikes when this situation arises. While passing a bike rider is not illegal, it can become dangerous if the driver does not exercise caution. If a vehicle gets too close to a bike rider as they try to pass them, the car could sideswipe the bike rider. While this often leads to minimal damage to the car, it can severely injure the bike rider. This is especially problematic on older, narrow streets around Boston where passing bike riders might be more difficult or simply not possible.
How Long You Have to File a Bike Accident Civil Case in Boston
Taking legal action does not happen overnight, and you likely need time to recover from your injuries, speak to a lawyer, and prepare various aspects of your case for court. However, you do not have an unlimited amount of time in which to accomplish all this. The statute of limitations in Massachusetts, under Mass. Gen. Laws Ch. 260 § 2A, limits the time plaintiffs have to file personal injuries. Under the law, you have 3 years from the day of the bike accident to file your case in civil court. If you do not file on time, you could lose your right to bring the cause of action altogether.
If time is running out, there might be ways in which you can buy yourself more time to prepare. Tolling the statute of limitations essentially pauses the clock on the limitation period, thereby extending your time to file the case, but only for very specific reasons. Remember, not knowing about the statute of limitations or simply forgetting to file on time is not a valid reason for tolling.
One reason that may allow you to have the statute tolled – and this reason often comes up in bike accident cases – is that the driver who hit you does not live in Massachusetts. According to § 9, If the defendant lives outside the jurisdiction of the State of Massachusetts and they are beyond the reach of long-arm statutes, the statute of limitations may be tolled while the defendant is outside the state.
If the driver who hit you lives in a neighboring state, they will likely return there after the accident, making it hard to sue them or take other legal action against them. If they cannot be reached, the limitation period is paused until they are back within Massachusetts jurisdiction.
How to File a Civil Injury Case for a Boston Bike Accident
Most people understand that they can take legal action if they are injured in a bicycle accident. The thing is, many people do not fully understand just how to begin their case. This is a big reason why many people never file claims and simply live with their injuries and debt from the accident. The legal system can be very intimidating, and just getting your foot in the door might seem impossible. Your attorney should be able to help you get started and stick by your side throughout the duration of the case.
First, consider car insurance. Even though you were not driving a vehicle when the accident happened, a vehicle might have hit you. As long as one car is involved, your accident may be deemed a car accident and covered by auto insurance. Massachusetts requires drivers to have no-fault insurance coverage. According to Mass. Gen. Laws Ch. 231 § 6D, a person injured in a car accident, including bike riders, may file a civil case for damages only if they have certain kinds of injuries or their medical costs meet a specific monetary threshold.
You must incur medical expenses in excess of $2,000. Alternatively, you must have an injury that consists of severed body parts, death, loss of vision or hearing, serious disfigurement, or a fracture. Considering how badly many bike riders are after being hit by a car, there is a strong chance you will meet the legal criteria to file a civil case for damages.
How to Prove the Defendant’s Negligence in a Boston Bicycle Accident Case
In many, if not most, bike accident cases, plaintiffs must prove that the defendant’s negligence caused the accident. Negligence is not just mere carelessness, although careless behavior is often involved. Negligence is a legal concept with specific definitions, and our bicycle accident lawyers must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant was negligent.
Negligence
Negligence is broken down into four distinct legal elements: duty, breach, causation, and damages.
The defendant’s duty is the legal obligation they owed you at the time of the accident. In many accidents involving motor vehicles, drivers have a legal duty to drive with reasonable safety under the circumstances while obeying the traffic code.
Breach refers to what the defendant did or omitted that violated their duty of care. In a bike accident case, this might involve something like the driver running a light or unreasonably disregarding a bike rider on the road.
The causation element is the link between the defendant’s breach and the accident. In short, the breach must be the direct and proximate cause of the accident.
Finally, we must have evidence of your damages.
Gathering Evidence
Evidence to prove negligence often starts at the scene of the accident. If possible, you should take some photos of the scene while you wait for help to arrive. Photos of the driver, their car, your bike, your injuries, and the surrounding area might be helpful in ways you do not yet realize. They may also be used in insurance claims.
Security cameras and dashcams might also be helpful. If the accident happened near a security camera, which is very possible on a public street, there could be a video of the accident. We should also check to see if the defendant was driving with a dashcam in their car that could have recorded the collision. If they had one, we may get the court to compel the defendant to turn over the video to our legal team.
Witnesses may also provide powerful and persuasive testimony about the accident. If someone saw the accident and stuck around to help you, try to get their name and contact information so we can find them later. Their testimony might shed light on how the accident happened and what the defendant might have done to cause it.
Comparative Negligence
A somewhat common strategy used by defendants in these kinds of cases is to accuse plaintiffs of contributing to the accident that caused their injuries. If the defendant’s claims have enough evidence to back them up, the court may decide the issue according to laws of comparative negligence under Mass. Gen. Laws Ch. 231 § 85.
Under the law, if a plaintiff is deemed contributorily negligent in causing the accident, their overall damages claim may be diminished according to their share of the blame. So, if a plaintiff is found to be 20% responsible for a bicycle accident, their overall damages may be reduced by 20%. However, if the plaintiff’s share of fault is more than 50%, they may be completely barred from recovering any damages.
What to Do if the Driver Flees the Scene of a Bike Accident in Boston?
Hit and runs are awful to endure, but they are not unheard of, even in bike accident cases. If the driver who hits you flees, call the police immediately. If you can describe the vehicle that hit you, the police might quickly find the driver and bring them justice. If they cannot, we might have to wait while the authorities investigate before we learn the identity of the driver. In the meantime, we cannot file legal action to recover damages until we learn who the defendant is.
Investigations can take a long time in some cases, and plaintiffs might worry that they will run out of time to file the case. However, according to Mass. Gen. Laws Ch.260 § 4B, we may be able to have the statute of limitations tolled in hit and run cases.
Under the law, a plaintiff who was injured in a hit and run accident may file their case in court no later than 6 months after they learn the identity of the driver. This rule may apply if the ordinary statute of limitations that lasts 3 years runs out before the driver is identified. Rest assured, the defendant cannot outrun their responsibility for your injuries and damages.
How Long Your Bicycle Accident Case Might Take to Complete in Boston
One question asked by many plaintiffs is how long their case might take. Not only are most people afraid of entering a protracted legal battle but they often need financial compensation as soon as possible. While some cases do take longer than others, your attorney can help you determine whether there is any way to speed yours along.
Exactly how long your case will take depends on various factors. Some factors might slow things down, making your case take longer. For example, if the facts surrounding the accident are especially complicated, the court will likely need more time and evidence to parse through the details and make any decisions. For example, a case involving multiple vehicles is likely more complicated than a case with only one vehicle. Also, cases involving hit and runs tend to be more complicated and take longer to complete. Often, these factors are outside your control.
Other factors might help us move your case along faster so you get the compensation you need relatively quickly. Strong evidence is great for speeding up a case. If your evidence is so strong that the defendant cannot hope to refute it, they might accept defeat quickly and offer a settlement. If they are cooperative, we might not even need to do much negotiating to make sure the settlement is fair. On top of that, experienced attorneys who understand the ins and outs of the legal system can help you speed up your case.
What Your Attorney Can Do For Your Bicycle Accident Case in Boston
Filing any civil case can be confusing, intimidating, and frustrating. Courts play by a set of very lengthy and complex rules, and understanding all of them can be difficult even for experienced lawyers. You should hire an attorney who can help you navigate the civil justice system and the legal heavy lifting for you.
Your lawyer will help you draft the formal complaint and file it with the appropriate court. The complaint is the legal document that initiates a lawsuit. It must contain very specific details about how the bike accident happened, who was there, how you were injured, and evidence indicating the defendant may be liable. While we do not have to submit enough evidence to meet our burden of proof, we should have enough to show that you have a valid legal claim.
Your attorney should also handle communication for you. This includes any communications with the defendant and their legal counsel. It is a general rule that plaintiffs and defendants should not interact directly while a civil case is pending, and your lawyer should be your point of contact.
On top of everything, your lawyer will navigate the court system with you. Again, the courts and overall judicial process are highly complex. There are numerous hearings and proceedings in addition to the trial, and paperwork, documentation, and forms must be drafted and submitted according to specific court rules. If the rules are broken, even by accident, your entire case might be jeopardized. Your lawyer should have a working knowledge of these laws and rules so your case goes as smoothly as possible.
Contact Our Boston Bicycle Accident Lawyers To Discuss Your Case
Begin your case with a free review of your claim from our bicycle accident attorneys at the Law Office of John J. Sheehan by calling us at (617) 925-6407.
