How Motorcycle DUI Accidents Differ From Other DUI Cases

A large part of how drunk motorcycle accidents differ from other DUI cases is your vulnerability as a motorcyclist. Your vulnerability affects your compensation amount and how our team of motorcycle accident lawyers approaches your case.

Our Phoenix motorcycle accident lawyer at Zanes Law understands the pain and stress you’re dealing with after a drunk driver hits you. Read on to learn more about how drunk motorcycle accidents differ from other DUI cases.

Motorcyclists Suffer More Severe Injuries Than Drivers of Cars

When an accident occurs due to an intoxicated driver, motorcyclists frequently endure injuries that are far worse than what automobile victims experience. This is due to motorcycles providing virtually no protective barriers between the rider and external hazards.

Motorcyclists rely on a helmet, gloves, jacket, and pants as their sole safety equipment. While this basic gear helps in some impacts, it does little to prevent injuries to vulnerable areas like the neck, back, limbs, and internal organs compared to an automobile’s roll cage, crumple zones, airbags, and seatbelts.

Our Phoenix personal injury lawyers understand all too well that even low-speed crashes involving motorcyclists can have devastating consequences. Simple losses of control due to another drunk driver’s negligent actions can lead to a motorcyclist’s direct impact with solid objects like vehicles or the pavement.

What Injuries do Motorcyclists Suffer Due to a Lack of Protection?

Without the protection of other victims in different types of DUI cases, motorcyclists are more vulnerable to injuries. Some of the most common severe injuries you could suffer as a DUI victim include:

Traumatic brain injuries: Due to not having a protective body around them, motorcycle riders are more prone to head injuries from impact with vehicles or the pavement.
Spinal cord injuries: Without frame structures and airbags to absorb impact, motorcyclists are at greater risk of compression fractures, disc injuries, and other spinal cord injuries after motorcycle accidents.
Multiple long bone fractures: Since limbs have direct contact with the crash surface during throws from the bike, arms and legs sustain compound and complex fractures more often.
Amputation: Entanglement of limbs between the motorcycle and crash objects during spills or run-off incidents can lead to loss of limbs due to blood loss or crushing injuries.

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How a Personal Injury Lawyer Can Uniquely Help Motorcyclist Victims

In contrast to helping other DUI accident victims, our Phoenix motorcycle accident lawyers can help you in different ways to increase your compensation. Here’s how our team at Zanes Law will help you build a strong case as a motorcyclist DUI victim:

Emphasizing Increased Vulnerability

When motorcyclists are severely injured in preventable DUI crashes, seeking legal representation from a lawyer experienced in these types of cases can yield distinct advantages compared to automobile drivers. Our attorneys understand motorcyclists’ special vulnerability and the enhanced challenges that come with advocating for fair compensation. We can emphasize the lack of safety equipment, leaving clients exposed to grievous harm.

Maximizing Non-Economic Damages

Lawyers illustrate damages like loss of mobility, lifetime impairment, and injury photos to maximize non-economic awards for pain and suffering. This aspect of compensation tends to be higher in magnitude for motorcyclists due to the graphic nature of injuries sustained without vehicular protections.

Ensuring Adequate Insurance Payouts

Our motorcycle accident lawyers also fight to ensure insurance payouts factor in medical costs and lifelong care necessary due to the lack of protection riders have. We may pursue excess payment from the defendant’s assets if policy limits cannot address the true costs of healthcare and supportive services.

Your Voice Has a Larger Impact At Trial

Due to your lack of safeguards, if your case goes to trial to hold the liable parties accountable, your voice has a stronger impact on your case. Through your testimony, you’ll be able to illustrate how the vulnerability you have and how severely injured you are will impact you for the rest of your life.

Courts understand that as a motorcyclist, you have no protective shell or airbags to prevent serious harm in an accident like a car would provide. Your graphic descriptions of injuries sustained, medical treatments required, and long-term effects on your mobility, independence, and quality of life can help maximize damages awarded by a jury.

It also assists prosecutors seeking heavier criminal sentences for dangerous drivers who left a defenseless motorcyclist to endure debilitating wounds through no fault of their own. Your victim impact statement carries substantial weight in establishing penalties as a deterrent against impaired driving endangering vulnerable road users.

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DUI Motorcycle Accident Victims Could Have a Larger Injury Settlement

As a motorcyclist DUI victim, your losses and severe injuries could result in a higher payout for your DUI case. Your settlement amount increases again due to your vulnerability as well as other factors like:

Exceeding Medical Costs

When motorcyclists do suffer injuries from a preventable DUI crash, their medical treatment is often extensive and long-term. In addition to acute emergency response and hospitalization, they frequently require multiple surgeries, limb reconstruction, intensive physical rehabilitation, prosthetics, and lifelong care for permanent disabilities.

The accumulation of expenses for all this healthcare vastly exceeds the disbursal limits of most motor vehicle insurance policies. This leaves victims responsible for massive bills far beyond compensation available through standard coverage.

Impact on Earnings

Motorcycle accidents also directly impact motorcyclists’ financial security. Due to the magnitude of their injuries, victims lose the ability to work and fully support themselves and their families. Extensive missed wages occur during hospitalization and recovery, draining savings.

Long-term disability prevents return to a career path. The loss of current and future earnings destroys stability and independence, with no protective auto insurance to compensate as it would.

Punitive Damages

Personal injury lawyers can argue that motorcyclists deserve significantly larger awards than car drivers involved in equivalent DUI crashes. This is due to motorcycles providing effectively zero safety measures compared to full automobiles.

Attorneys may attempt to recover punitive damages meant to punish those who drove recklessly while severely intoxicated, especially if their impaired decision directly caused you severe injuries. These extra damages aim to accomplish greater deterrence against behaviors endangering the most vulnerable road users.

For all the losses we mentioned, our team can help you recover them so you aren’t stuck paying for the drunk driver’s mistakes. We’re ready to fight for justice for you and your family.

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Learn More About How Drunk Motorcycle Accidents Differ from Other DUI Cases

At Zanes Law, our Phoenix motorcycle accident attorneys are ready to advocate for you and emphasize how vulnerable you are in order to get you the compensation necessary. Throughout your DUI motorcycle accident case, our team is here for you.

Call or text 866-499-8989 or complete a
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