free consultation
no fee unless we win
F(480) 546-5262
For its many warm, dry days through most of the year, Arizona is an increasingly popular state for motorcycle riders. For example, from 2019 to 2022, motorcycle registrations in Arizona increased by more than 25 percent to more than 290,000.
As more motorcycles share Arizona roads and highways with cars and trucks, motorcycle accidents will increase in number, too (see charts below). If you’re involved in such an accident resulting in personal injury and/or property damage, our team of highly experienced motorcycle accident lawyers at Stone Rose Law will confidently represent you to ensure you receive what you’re entitled to.
Call Stone Rose Law today at (480) 490-9889 to team up with one of our Phoenix motor accident lawyers before the two-year statute of limitations is up.
Source: Arizona Department of Transportation, 2022 Arizona Crash Facts Summary
If you have been injured in a motorcycle accident on the increasingly busy streets of Phoenix or anywhere else in Arizona and need to seek compensation for your medical bills and property damage, then this page is for you.
If you are reading this, then we assume that your motorcycle accident has already happened, so we will not go into the details of what you should do before the accident, like wearing a helmet, and after the accident occurred, like exchanging drivers’ license and insurance information, taking photographs of the accident scene and the motor vehicles involved, and filing a police report.
One important consideration we will cover, though, is how to deal with insurance companies that may contact you in the days following the accident.
After a motorcycle accident with another motorist, either the other driver’s insurance company or your own may approach you with a quick offer of settlement. Be wary of such offers. Before they are anything else, auto insurance companies are money-making enterprises: they exist to make a profit, not so much to serve your best interests after you’ve been injured. In fact, once you file a policy claim, you become a liability to your insurer. This is one reason why companies have a reputation for trying to get you to agree to a settlement before all of your accident-related injuries manifest themselves and the true value of your claim fully develops.
At Stone Rose Law, we recommend that if you have received an insurance settlement offer, call one of our personal injury attorneys at (480) 490-9889 first so we can review it with you in a no-cost consultation. Our Phoenix motorcycle accident attorneys can help you see whether the settlement offer is fair to you and does not trade away your ability to claim all the compensation you may be entitled to for your motorcycle accident injury claims.
Of the top three causes of motorcycle accidents in Arizona, by far the most common is a collision with another vehicle. The next two leading causes of motorcycle accidents are losing control of the motorcycle (overturning) or colliding with a fixed object. Accidents involving pedestrians, bicyclists, animals and other causes do occur, but they are far less frequent.
Source: Arizona Department of Transportation, 2022 Arizona Crash Facts Summary
Unfortunately, in nearly half of Arizona motorcycle accidents, the motorcyclist does nothing wrong to cause the accident. You can do everything right when riding your motorcycle and still be involved in a crash. Other drivers may not see you. They may be distracted. Or they may be drunk or under the influence of some other drug.
In Phoenix and other Arizona towns and cities, there are many ways how other drivers can cause you to get into a motorcycle accident, some of which can cause you severe injuries while making no physical contact with you themselves. They can cut you off, run past red lights or stop signs, make unsafe lane changes without checking their blind spot to see if you are in it, make unsafe passing attempts, or even engage in dangerous behaviors like “brake checking” in front of you.
Understanding who is at fault for a motorcycle accident is important because Arizona is a “comparative negligence” state when it comes to allocating the share of blame for a vehicle accident. To the extent that in a personal injury lawsuit you as a motorcyclist may have contributed to the accident, a court can find you at fault for it and reduce any recovery you might be entitled to.
The best way you can reduce your chance of being involved in a Phoenix motorcycle accident is also a good way to avoid losing part of your compensation claim to comparative negligence: watch your speed. In one of every five motorcycle accidents, the motorcyclist is at least partially at fault for driving too fast for the road, weather, and lighting conditions. Moreover, the faster you are going when a motorcycle wreck happens, the more likely you will suffer catastrophic injuries like broken bones, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, and organ damage.
The motorcycle accident statistics table below offers a comprehensive summary of how motorcyclists can contribute to their own motorcycle accidents. Keep it in mind the next time you ride, for your own safety:
Source: Arizona Department of Transportation, 2022 Arizona Crash Facts Summary
Another thing you can do to reduce your risk of a motorcycle accident and to reduce the possibility of contributory negligence if you do get into an accident is to pay careful attention when following other vehicles and when making left-hand turns on your motorcycle. Rear-end collisions and left-turn accidents are the most common motorcycle accidents for Arizona motorcyclists, together making up about half of all injury-causing and fatal motorcycle accidents:
Source: Arizona Department of Transportation, 2022 Arizona Crash Facts Summary
An inherent drawback to riding a motorcycle is that if you get into an accident, then unlike with other motor vehicles there is nothing but your helmet and the clothes you wear between you and the pavement. Even a low-speed accident that does not trigger the airbags in a car can still leave you with traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, broken and fractured bones and soft tissue damage from abrasions, lacerations, and burns.
You can experience serious injuries like a traumatic brain injury from a motorcycle accident even when you wear your helmet. You can suffer crush injuries from being run over, or road rash injuries from skidding underneath your motorcycle or being dragged by another vehicle.
Simply put, if you get into a motorcycle collision, then there is a good chance that you could receive injuries that can require intensive and costly medical care, including ambulance costs, emergency room treatment, surgery for broken bones or damaged internal organs, and burn treatment therapy.
You could also require long-term care for a traumatic brain injury or a spinal cord injury, including physical and occupational therapy. In some cases, you may be unable to return to work full-time or could even become totally disabled. How will you replace your lost wages?
In the worst case scenario, your injuries could prove fatal, and your legal claims for injury compensation would fall to your estate and possibly also to your family as a wrongful death claim.
One important thing to keep in mind when it comes to motorcycle accident personal injury claims is this: the vast majority of motorcycle accident lawsuits settle out of court. What this means to you is that it is not just the facts of your case that will influence how much you might recover in a personal injury lawsuit or arbitration proceeding. Whether you receive a fair settlement will depend heavily on how well you negotiate with insurance companies and their attorneys. This is why it is important to have a personal injury law firm like Stone Rose Law on your side
The first thing to remember here is, after you get into a motorcycle crash, insurers, including your own insurance company, are not your friends. They are not on your side, they are trying to keep their costs down in connection with your injuries, and they will do that at your expense if you let them.
The second thing to remember is,after a motorcycle accident in Arizona, it is almost certain that you will be dealing with other motorcycle accident lawyers, and they will not be on your side:
You can expect these attorneys to know Arizona personal injury law. You can expect them to be experienced, tough negotiators in personal injury cases. And you can expect them to not care whether you get treated fairly in the settlement outcome and recover compensation that covers all your injuries sustained – they only represent their clients’ interests, not yours.
Indeed, because of Arizona’s comparative fault law, you should not be surprised to see these other attorneys looking for ways to put some or all of the blame on you for the motorcycle accident instead of on the other liable parties. They will also be looking for ways to get you to say, do, or sign things against your own interest.
There are two reasons why having a Stone Rose Law Phoenix motorcycle accident attorney to represent you in a Phoenix motorcycle accident injury case is important:
The stakes are too high in a motorcycle accident injury settlement for you not to have a lawyer whose sole focus is to represent you. As we have seen above, the injuries motorcycle accident victims can suffer from a motorcycle accident can be devastating. Not just to you, but to everyone you love. The cost to you in medical bills to treat your injuries is only part of the overall harm you can experience. Catastrophic injuries, like traumatic brain injuries and spinal cord injuries, can affect you for the rest of your life. Lost wages and future medical expenses can add up over time into large sums of money.
You can add property damage to your losses. Perhaps your income is reduced because you had to quit your old job after the accident. The costs of needing long-term care assistance if you are partially or totally disabled can be substantial. If you are experiencing traumatic brain injuries or mental or emotional distress, like anxiety, depression, or inability to sleep because of lingering effects of a motorcycle crash, this is compensable harm done to you.
Was the other driver drunk at the time of the accident? Was that person texting while driving? Some behaviors behind the wheel, like drunk driving or distracted driving can expose a car driver to punitive damages.
Here is another consideration: the greater your injuries and other harm done to you, the larger your potential personal injury claim judgment award is in a lawsuit. Insurance companies will be eager to settle your claim as soon as possible, and for as little as possible, and that pressure grows as the potential settlement payout increases.
Your insurance company attorney may be sympathetic to you. And that lawyer is duty-bound to do nothing to harm your case. But the bottom line is that the insurance company is paying for that lawyer’s time, and the insurance company wants to keep your payout as low as possible.
Given this situation, can you not afford to have a Phoenix motorcycle accident lawyer of your own after a motorcycle accident? One that is your lawyer, not yours and someone else’s? One whose sole purpose is to make certain that you receive all the settlement compensation you deserve for your motorcycle injury claim, and who is not being externally pressured to save time and cut costs at your expense?
Don’t you deserve the legal services of an experienced Phoenix motorcycle accident personal injury lawyer, who will prepare an aggressive plaintiff’s case for you in an Arizona court if necessary?
The cost of hiring a personal injury law firm attorney by the hour to navigate a motorcycle accident injury claim through complex settlement negotiation, and if necessary, through a motorcycle accident lawsuit, is too often beyond the reach of most Arizona residents. That goes double when you are struggling to keep your household budget afloat because of lost wages after the accident. This is a key reason why most personal injury claims for motorcycle wrecks never go to court.
If you hire a lawyer of your own but must pay that attorney by the hour, then just like your insurance company lawyer faces pressure to settle quickly, your own attorney’s monthly legal bills can pressure you to settle for less while you can still afford your lawyer.
At Stone Rose Law, our motor vehicle and motorcycle personal injury accident lawyers in Phoenix work for you on a contingency basis. This gives you the following advantages when our legal team takes on your motorcycle accident case:
You pay us nothing up front. You pay us nothing while we negotiate your motorcycle accident claims for you. No hourly billings. No fees. We only collect if we recover compensation for you, or if settlement is not possible then we only collect if we win your case at trial.
Win or lose, you will never pay out of pocket for your Stone Rose Law motorcycle accident attorney.
Just like we walk away empty-handed if we do not win your motorcycle injury claims, because we collect a percentage of what we do win for you that means we are highly motivated to do the work necessary to win the most we can for you.
We thoroughly investigate the facts of your case to identify and determine the money damages value of all the present and future personal injuries and other losses you suffer because of the accident. We leave nothing on the table when it comes to getting every dollar of fair compensation you deserve. What benefits you benefits us, too, so we do not hold back when negotiating with insurance company lawyers or any other attorney in the case.
Your insurance company lawyer is paid by someone other than you to represent you. An attorney you hire by the hour will always be looking at the clock, wondering when the time will come to take the quick and easy way out when your legal tab starts running too high.
You will never – never – come in “second place” at Stone Rose Law. We serve only our injured clients. We do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to win the best possible motorcycle accident settlement or trial outcome for you, because when you retain one of our lawyers our outcome depends entirely on yours.
We provide superior yet affordable serious injury legal representation for injured motorcyclists in Phoenix and across Arizona.
We are highly experienced in helping motorcycle riders who become motorcycle accident victims to recover compensation. With our motorcycle accident attorneys’ combined knowledge and unique insights, we will help you to maximize the amount of fair compensation you receive.
There is no amount of money that can return you or your loved one to how life was prior to the accident and the severe injuries you may suffer. This is especially true in the case of life-threatening injuries or a wrongful death claim.. But one of our Phoenix personal injury lawyers, experienced in motorcycle accident claims, can help you recover money from insurance companies to assist in compensating you for your serious injuries and other losses, or to fight for you at trial. Whatever it takes. For as long as it takes. To win for you.
Call us at (480) 498-8998 today to set up a free consultation with one of our Phoenix motorcycle accident injury attorneys. Do you prefer to communicate online instead? Then you can contact us here to ask a question to a Phoenix motorcycle accident lawyer, or set up a consultation about your motorcycle accident claim.
Remember, under Arizona law motorcycle accident personal injury claims and property damage are subject to a two-year statute of limitations that can easily slip by before you know it. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Call Stone Rose Law today, (480) 498-9889, and put a Phoenix motorcycle accident lawyer on your side. Our accident attorneys are waiting for your call.