While many urban and suburban areas around Pennsylvania have made significant efforts to add bike lanes and make bicycling safer for riders, there are still plenty of opportunities for negligent drivers to cause serious harm to bicyclists in Allentown. If you were hurt in this kind of incident recently, understanding and enforcing your right to pursue compensation is crucial to protecting your long-term interests and financial security.
An experienced Allentown bicycle accident lawyer can help you from start to finish of your legal proceedings. Whether you sustained life-altering trauma or just want to ensure the person who hit you while riding pays for your short-term medical bills and other losses, a knowledgeable personal injury attorney’s support can make all the difference to your odds of success.
At Ostroff Godshall Injury and Accident Lawyers, we have extensive experience handling injury cases all across the state. In one bicycle accident case, we were able to recover a $3.5 million settlement on behalf of a child who suffered serious injuries after being struck by a drunk driver while riding her bike in her apartment complex near Allentown. To learn more about how Founding Partner Jon Ostroff and the rest of our winning team can put our experience to work for you, call today.
How Fault Works in Bike Crash Claims
Even though bicyclists are at far greater risk of sustaining physical injuries in traffic collisions compared to those in cars, automobile drivers who run into bike riders are not automatically held liable for ensuing damages in every situation. Instead, you must have sufficient evidence to show that the driver directly caused the incident in question through their own careless actions—or, in legal terms, they acted negligently.
Negligence leading up to a bike accident can take the form of a missed stop sign or some other breach of traffic law, or a broadly reckless act like failing to check for bicycles before turning at an intersection, or simply a careless act. The exact way in which someone else was negligent does not matter when it comes to holding them liable for a crash, though—so long as they were negligent in some way, they are responsible for the injuries they cause.
In some cases, a negligent defendant or their insurer might try to shift some blame onto you for the accident to avoid paying a full and fair compensation amount. Partial fault can lead to a court reducing the value of a damages verdict by whatever percentage of total fault is assigned to you by a jury. A seasoned Allentown bicycle accident attorney can provide crucial help both with proving someone else at fault for a wreck and disproving accusations of fault brought against you.
Filing Deadlines for Bike Wreck Lawsuits
Another important legal rule to be aware of when pursuing a bicycle accident case is the statute of limitations. According to 42 Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes §5524, any person injured because of someone else’s misconduct has two years from the date of their incident to file a lawsuit.
Failing to file a timely lawsuit before this deadline passes will almost always prevent you from recovering any compensation for that particular accident. Because of this, it is crucial to contact a lawyer and start working on a claim as quickly as possible after an Allentown bike crash.
Get in Touch with an Allentown Bicycle Accident Attorney Today
Holding someone else accountable for injuring you while you were riding your bike can be complicated in many ways. Even if it seems obvious who is to blame for an accident and how exactly they caused it to happen, proving them legally liable for all ensuing injuries and losses can be next to impossible without professional legal guidance.
Hiring a capable Allentown bicycle accident lawyer is essential to protecting your best interests after this type of incident. Contact us at Ostroff Godshall Injury and Accident Lawyers today to get started. Initial case consultations are free. You don’t pay anything unless we recover money for you. Don’t wait– call today.