Advocacy & Safety - Accident advice

This comes from a friend of mine. I thought I'd post it here so I could get some helpful feedback for him. Thanks.


A Really Bad Mother's Day (Insult to Injury)

Got out Sunday afternoon for a solo ride to Lemont. While coming back
north on Wolf Road, just north of Plainfield, a car suddenly backed out
of a driveway on the east side of Wolf road and stood for a moment,
partly on the shoulder and partly in the northbound lane. I was maybe 15
or 20 feet away at the time, going about 25 mph.

In hindsight, I think I probably was under the impression that the
driver was waiting for me to pass before moving forward. I proceeded
around the driver, still going nearly 25, when suddenly, the driver
jammed on the gas and moved to do a U-turn right in front of me.

There was nothing I could do at that moment except yell something and
turn the bike to my left in a feeble attempt to not take a direct hit.
My left knee and front wheel smashed into the front of the car and my
helmet hit the hood, and I rolled into the street. I stumbled to my feet
and moved to the side of the road and squirmed in the grass for a moment
or two.

Traffic stopped in the north and south bound lanes and people seemed to
come running at me in all directions. There seemed to be a mother's day
BBQ going on in the front yard of the house where the driver exited
from, and next door to that as well. The driver, a 20-something-year-old
white woman stood shaken next to my crumpled bicycle and her car as her
family and friends tried to console her.

Someone called 911 and the usual flurry of fire, police and paramedics
arrived in moments on the scene from the Western Springs offices. I told
them my left knee hurt, and I had road rash on my left arm, shoulder and
legs. The force of the helmet on my forehead caused my contact lens to
pop-out and there seemed to be considerable swelling around my left eye.

Despite my protests, I was placed on a gurney with my head and neck
secured safely in. It is a hell of thing to be placed in a gurney and
rolled into the back of an ambulance. The one thing you realize is that
you have no way to keep yourself from being tossed and turned around the
back as the ambulance weaves left and right through the traffic. The ice
bag on my knee went everywhere. If I did have a neck or spine injury,
the trip to the ER wouldn't have done me any favors.

I was taken to the ER and felt reasonably fine except for my knee. I
refused the CAT SCAN and got X-rays, which revealed no breaks, just
contusions. They rolled be back to the ER and got the paperwork ready
for my release.

Just then the first officer on the scene (Officer Jarovsky, I think)
came in my room to tell me that based on the interviews with the driver
and an eye-witness (the driver's Uncle Leo, I think), the driver was
clearly in the north bound lane, with her turn signal on, getting ready
to make a turn onto 57th street, when all of a sudden I came barreling
out of nowhere, and tried to get around her by passing her in the
southbound lane.

The officer was very nice and reasonably sympathetic, but he said based
on the fact that the only witness he was able to interview corroborated
her story, he had no choice but to issue me a ticket for something like
'wrong lane usage'. It didn't help matters for me that my head crossed
the solid yellow lines when I fell.

This is a profound injustice in my mind. Why would any cyclist in their
right mind consciously try to pass a car with a turn signal on by going
around them into oncoming traffic? It defies the most basic concept of
common sense. The driver behaved recklessly in the worst possible way,
putting my life in danger, and I am issued a citation. I did absolutely
nothing wrong. The driver did everything wrong. The site lines are very
clear at that point. If she looked before she came barreling out into
the street, she couldn?t have possibly missed me. There were no other
cars around me.

My ability to seek compensation from her insurance company for the
damage to my bike, and for the part of the ER visit not covered by my
insurance, is seriously undermined by the ticket I received. It wouldn?t
surprise me if her insurance company came after me for the damage to her
car.

Somehow I emerged from all of this with a few cuts and bruises but and
surprisingly seem not particularly worse for wear. For that I thank my
lucky stars, but am extremely upset at the legal and financial impact of
all of this.

Do my legal friends have any advice on how to proceed?

norman

The witnesses are all confederates and their testimony is worthless in court.

Lawyer up and sue the **** out of this lying *****.

Oh, and kill Uncle Leo just for good measure.

I have no advice but you do have my sympathies. That's just wrong.

Time for a Lawyer :mad:

I hope the injuries aren't too serious.

CHEERS.

Mark

What the **** is wrong with people these days...she nearly kills you and has the nerve to lie about it...

Do you remember the house? I would come in person and discuss it with the person. A lot of the time, it is much more difficult to lie about something like that when you're meeting an actual person, flesh and blood, rather than an abstraction lying in a hospital somewhere.

My sympathies to you though. Something like this is very low on the driver's part.

This stuff happens all the time. We've become a world with very dishonest people. If you're honest, count yourself as one of the few. INcidents like this are why I laugh every time I read someone say on here that a person is SO broken up by hitting and injuring a cyclist. My experience is that they are broken up by the possibility of getting in legal trouble, and nothing else. When I hear someone say sarcastically; "That's what I've got insurance for", I know they mean it, and they are not worried about the other people their actions could hurt.

You need to make an assessment and a decision on how to proceed. You have to decide how much you are really out, and whether it is worth your while to pursue. Lawsuits are not glamorous like on TV; one will eat up hundreds or thousands of hours of your time, and even if you prevail the best you will do is recoup a fraction of what you've lost, and there's a substantial chance you'll recover nothing and end up further in the hole. If you've suffered lasting harm or a major economic setback, yes, you should talk to a lawyer, but if the injuries are minor and you're only out the cost of your bike, you should seriously consider just letting it go. It will mean swallowing your pride, but the legal system is about addressing economic loss, not restoring pride. It may console you to think of all the ways you could have had the same accident that would have been your fault, or nobody's fault -- debris in the road, mechanical failure, etc.

In either case, it would be a really bad idea to visit the other party. Nothing good will come out of that.

In either case, it would be a really bad idea to visit the other party. Nothing good will come out of that.

Good advice. He needs to remember that these people have already lied about what happened.

First I would fight the ticket. Best to get a lawyer for this part. Since the police did not see the "violation" then they are just relying on hearsay to issue the ticket (which is amazing in itself). If the women and uncle do not show up on the court date, then it is your word against hearsay. If they do show up to testify against you, then they at least have to lie under oath. At least a few people are more reluctant to do so. Prepare charts showing the sequence of events. See if you can get the uncle and lady to agree with the actual spot you came to rest in the street and the location of the car, then show how it would be impossible for you to end up on the pavement in that spot and the car at its location based on their version of events.

If your are then cleared of the ticket, make it clear to the insurance company that you intent to sue if they refuse to settle at a fair amount.

At that point, it becomes an easier task to sue them in small claims court. You against them, no lawyers, again under oath. This time the judge gets to decide who is lying. In most states, I think the limit is $5,000 for small claims court. The downside is that it is easy for them to counter sue.

The police should have never issued that ticket.

Good luck.

Yeah you need a lawyer, preferably a bike-advocacy lawyer.

Good to hear you're not really hurt, and the only thing worse than having a contact lens pop out is having on get shot around the back of the eyeball, which I've heard of happening.

First I would fight the ticket. Best to get a lawyer for this part. Since the police did not see the "violation" then they are just relying on hearsay to issue the ticket (which is amazing in itself). If the women and uncle do not show up on the court date, then it is your word against hearsay. If they do show up to testify against you, then they at least have to lie under oath. At least a few people are more reluctant to do so. Prepare charts showing the sequence of events. See if you can get the uncle and lady to agree with the actual spot you came to rest in the street and the location of the car, then show how it would be impossible for you to end up on the pavement in that spot and the car at its location based on their version of events.

If your are then cleared of the ticket, make it clear to the insurance company that you intent to sue if they refuse to settle at a fair amount.

At that point, it becomes an easier task to sue them in small claims court. You against them, no lawyers, again under oath. This time the judge gets to decide who is lying. In most states, I think the limit is $5,000 for small claims court. The downside is that it is easy for them to counter sue.

The police should have never issued that ticket.

Good luck.


Agree with you in part, disagree in part. Fighting this ticket is an absolute necessity, but DO NOT try to go against the driver for injuries without a lawyer. I guarantee you she will have a lawyer paid for by her insurance company. You will likely need to come forward with medical records in admissible form for courtroom use, and a lawyer can help you get those. It will also be a lot more intimidating for this driver and her family of witnesses if a lawyer puts the screws to them. You need someone who knows procedure well and can use it to your advantage. Good cross-examination can make folks crumble.

Traffic school can clear the mark on your record if you decide to forget about it.

My health insurance company would consider going after the person.

Also see if you can get the police report unfortuately the truth

Sounds like Western Springs--one of the most useless, incompetent police departments I have ever encountered.

Glad your friend is okay.

By "Wolf Road" does he mean "Wolf S Crossing Road". That's all I can find on maps.google.com close to Plainfield and Lemont, IL. But it goes more east/west and than north/south. From the satellite view it does look like a 2-lane highway, so that fits.

My interest in hearing about bike-car collisions is always from the angle of what could the cyclist have done to avoid it?

In this case, I suspect that the reason the motorist did not see the cyclist was because he was riding too far to the right. Sure, he eventually moved left to pass the motorist, but that was probably after she had already looked and "verified" the northbound lane was clear of traffic. I bet she waited for some southbound car to go by, and then pulled her U-turn. I'm sure she was astonished to find out that in doing so she crossed the path of a northbound cyclist.

Since there was no other northbound traffic at the time, the appropriate position for a northbound cyclist is in the center of the lane. In his book Cyclecraft, John Franklin calls this the primary riding position. In The Art of Urban Cycling, Robert Hurst refers to is as the default position. The idea is that the cyclist is much more visible when riding in the center of the lane where other vehicles travel. Sure, the sight line was there from the motorist to the cyclist riding at the right side of the highway, but a sight line is no good if the motorist does not look down it. Where she is most likely to look to see if there is any northbound traffic is in the northbound lane, not to the side of it.

On top of that, cyclists, like motorcyclists, are inherently less visible than cars, and when motorists look, they are looking for cars. As such, the cyclist should make sure that the motorist not only sees the cyclist, but is aware of the cyclist, before barreling past them like your friend did in this situation.

Without verification that the motorist was aware of his presence, the cyclist should have slowed down in preparation for a situation like this. Not that the cyclist is at fault. But I think suing the motorist is missing the point here. All the suits in the world are not going to eliminate innocent mistakes like this. We need to be prepared for them.

Serge

1) Serge -- good post, particularly in regards to defensive cycling.

2) Was the motorist's U-turn on this particular stretch of road legal?

3) By all means, at least fight the ticket. Come prepared with a series of scale drawings which accurately describe the sequence of events which led up to the collision.

4) Irrespective of any wrongdoing on your part, the motorist violated the law by making an unsafe U-turn. Legal standards for U-turners are even more severe than for left-turners, i.e., they are expected to yield right-of-way to EVERYONE else in the vicinity, unless explicitly sheltered by a green arrow at a signallized intersection, which obviously does not apply in this case.

5) Since your were cycling, not driving, the citation should NOT count as a point against your driving record, but be sure to verify this and to make sure that your state's department of motor vehicles or drivers' licensing bureau has it on record that you were cycling, not driving.