Besides being a personal injury trial lawyer for 30 years, I have been an avid rider for longer. Every day I get calls from fellow-bikers who have been in a motorcycle accident and sustained injury…some much worse than others. They’ve suffered injuries, wage loss, property damage to their bike, etc. Let’s face it, no motorcycle accident is MINOR! You can have a minor accident in your car, but not on your bike. I hear stories of catastrophic injury, loss of wages or business and other horror stories where riders are about to lose assets because they are out of work for an extended period due to injuries. So why aren’t you entitled to a Million dollars or some big amount of money to compensate you??
The ANSWER is easy (for me). The answer is that any accident is only worth the amount of INSURANCE there is surrounding it. It really does not matter how badly you’re injured or how much money you have lost as result of someone else’s stupid decision (negligence). You’ll never recover more than the insurance available for liability coverage to the person at fault, along with your own Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Coverage…if you even have that coverage? In NJ and PA, a car only has to have $15,000.00 in liability coverage in order to legally be operated on the streets. Actually, in NJ, there could be no liability coverage on the at-fault vehicle under the “Dollar-A-Day” law. Moreover, you’re not going to be successful going after the negligent party’s house, 401K, inheritance, etc. for lots of reasons I can’t go into here, but can address in future articles. In PA, the law has recently changed to be much more favorable to bikers in accidents…but only if you if have purchased the correct coverages.
So, what’s the SOLUTION? The ONLY solution is to buy a LOT of uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on your OWN cycle policy. There are laws that govern how that works, and I can go into that in future articles, but, in a nutshell, that’s the only answer. If you buy $99.00 a year insurance just to be “legal”, what do you think you’re getting? Insurance is a perfect example of “you get what you pay for”. If you call me after a motorcycle accident and you have not prepared properly BEFOREHAND, no lawyer in the world can help you get more insurance coverage.
I will go into more details in further articles. But feel free to reach out to me at BikersHaveRights.com or email me at brad@twlegal.net.
Ride safe and keep it on two wheels!
Brad Tabakin, Motorcycle Accident Attorney, Founder of Bikers Have Rights & Avid Rider