A motorcycle ride on a California freeway or boulevard often leaves riders steering clear of the dangerous moves drivers make. A distracted driver can miss seeing a motorcyclist nearby and strike a motorcycle at full speed. Riders can extend their hands and arms out to catch themselves as they fall off their motorcycles, only to end up with severely broken hands and fingers.
Motorcyclists need their hands to work, to take care of their families, and grip handlebars on the rides they love. They should get the best care available without having to worry about the cost of emergency room visits and surgeries. A California motorcycle accident lawyer fights to make sure victims have everything they need to recover physically and financially.
A Free Legal Consultation for California Motorcycle Accident Victims
When a driver’s carelessness is responsible for your hand or finger injury, you’ll only have one chance to secure the compensation you’ll need to recover physically and financially. You must handle your motorcycle accident injury claim correctly, or you could leave yourself without support when you require additional surgeries or physical therapy in the years ahead.
Schedule a free consultation with a California Motorcycle Accident Broken Bone Lawyer to discuss how much your finger fracture is worth and how to hold a car insurance company accountable. If you decide we can help you get the most out of a motorcycle injury claim, you won’t need any upfront money to hire Maison Law. We don’t get paid unless we win your case. Then our fee comes out of the settlement you are awarded.
Broken Hand and Finger Dangers in California Motorcycle Accidents
A motorcycle accident victim might be having a cast or brace put on before they get a chance to consider what’s happened and how they’ll hold a reckless California driver responsible for recovery costs.
That trip to an emergency room won’t be the last medical bill they’ll receive either. Hand injury victims may need expensive surgery to put finger bones in place so they can heal. Victims could need months of physical therapy to restore control and strength to the hand to resume things like writing, using a cell phone, and performing job duties.
The Mayo Clinic explains how motor vehicle accidents can carry enough force to badly damage a hand and fingers and fracture the bones within into many pieces. Motorcyclists are especially vulnerable because most collisions send them off their bikes and down on the hard pavement. Their reflexes may have them flailing their arms out in front of them to catch themselves. This can put hands and fingers out front to absorb traumatic force before any other body part.
The bones in the fingers or the bones in the palms can break. The bones the hand shares with the wrist could also crack. Without proper care from the start, victims can develop permanent disfigurements such as crooked fingers they are unable to ever straighten again. They may experience permanent numbness or recurring pain over the rest of their lives.
A California motorcycle accident lawyer factors in all of these potential long-term issues when deciding how much to demand from an at-fault driver’s car insurance provider. No motorcycle accident victim should be left to face these consequences alone.
Insurance Tactics to Beware of After a Motorcycle Accident Hand Injury
A normal finger fracture may leave you in a cast or hand brace for a month or more. But a more serious break that involves shattered bones and damaged nerves, or a bone sticking through the skin, would require expensive surgery.
When medical bills grow, the car insurance companies representing at-fault drivers can begin to worry about the size of a settlement check they’ll have to provide. Instead of coming to the victim’s aid, they can instead, begin downplaying the seriousness of a motorcycle accident.
These are some of the insurance tactics adjusters will use on motorcycle accident victims:
- Pinning the Blame on the Motorcyclist: Insurance adjusters like to shift blame to riders, no matter what a California Highway Patrol collision report says. They use stereotypes about motorcyclists being reckless to try to get you to accept some or all of the fault. To this end, they may dig up your old driving records to try to show that you are reckless. This is an underhanded strategy that could allow an insurance company to rob your family of support.
- Downplaying Injuries: Auto insurers might also use their own doctors to claim that your injuries aren’t as bad as they seem and that you won’t need full compensation for bills. They could also claim that your injury is from a previous motorcycle accident.
- Delayed Acknowledgment: Insurance representatives can purposely take a long time to respond to your claim. They hope you’ll become desperate as more and more hospital bills arrive.
- Low Settlement Offer: After you’ve been made to wait and face your bills, insurance agents may make you a ridiculously low settlement check offer just to see if you’ll accept it in desperation.
A skilled California Motorcycle Accident Lawyer knows exactly what a lowball offer looks like and helps you demand more. Your lawyer also protects you from all of these common tactics that almost all insurance adjusters try after a motorcycle collision. They are weak arguments, but without an attorney protecting your interests, these tactics might succeed and leave you and your family paying for half or more of the leftover medical bills.
Compensation Available for California Motorcycle Accident Victims
Motorcycle accident victims must secure the most out of their injury claims as possible. They won’t always know how long recovery may take or if an injury may end up as a lifelong affliction.
An injury lasting for months and requiring weeks of physical therapy quickly racks up an enormous amount in invoices. Victims may also miss work during this time and have no savings left to pay for medical expenses.
A motorcycle accident attorney works to make sure every hardship the victim is facing now and will face in the future is considered in any insurance settlement offer.
These are just a few factors in your recovery that must earn fair financial support from an at-fault driver’s car insurance provider:
- Totals on all medical expenses. The immediate costs and the costs expected in the future. When a permanent physical disability is involved, estimates on long-term care and support are submitted.
- Support for physical pain endured.
- Support for emotional trauma endured.
- Compensation for a loss of enjoyment of life, perhaps stemming from being unable to ride a motorcycle for an extended period.
- Support for a loss of consortium (the loss of intimacy with family members).
- Travel costs getting to and from doctor’s visits and surgery consultations.
- Money for a new motorcycle.
- Past and future lost earnings and work benefits if a hand injury victim can’t return to work.
- Wrongful death benefits. Families who have lost loved ones in a fatal motorcycle accident should file wrongful death claims to secure support for burial expenses and lingering medical bills. They’ll also seek help with making up the income the victim can no longer provide for close relatives.
Contact a California Motorcycle Accident Hand Fracture Lawyer
Finger injury victims and their families have up to two years to file an accident claim in California. However, it’s critical to bring your injury case to a California Motorcycle Broken Bones Injury Attorney as soon as you can.
The longer you wait the more difficult it gets to track down evidence and locate witnesses. Our motorcycle hand fracture accident attorneys want the chance to inform you of what your case should earn before an insurance adjuster tries to convince you otherwise.
Contact Maison Law of California for a free, no-obligation consultation. It’s a no-risk way to find out what your motorcycle accident injury is worth and what you should demand from an insurance company.
