Bicycles and Car Accidents
Posted December 11th, 2012 by Anthony Carbone, PC.
Categories: Auto Accidents, Personal Injury.
Bicycles and Car Accidents
Posted December 11th, 2012 by Anthony Carbone, PC.
Categories: Auto Accidents, Personal Injury.
Many people in Essex County choose to ride bicycles for work, recreation, exercise, and even errands. However, the roads of Essex County are not always bicycle friendly, and auto accidents involving cyclists are on the rise.
When you are riding a bike and you are hit by a car, catastrophic injury is almost always unavoidable. Essex County personal injury attorney Anthony Carbone is prepared to take your case and fight to get you compensation for your medical expenses, lost wages, and personal pain and suffering.
Top Causes of Bicycle and Car Accidents
The Bicycle and Pedestrian Information Center reports that the top causes of bicycle and car accidents include:
- Cars turning into a cyclist’s path
- Cars overtaking a cyclist
- Cars failing to acknowledge right of way
Other causes may include driver distraction, failure to see a cyclist, as well as road rage.
The cause of your accident will need to be investigated by an experienced personal injury attorney like Mr. Carbone. Once liability is determined, attorney Carbone can build your case to include compensation for every way your injuries will impact your life in the near and distant future.
Why These Causes Matter to Your Case
Each cause listed above has distinct legal implications, and understanding them is not just an academic exercise. It shapes how liability is established, what evidence needs to be gathered, and how an insurance company or opposing counsel will attempt to deflect responsibility.
A car turning into a cyclist’s path is one of the most common crash patterns, often called a “right hook” collision when a motorist passes a cyclist and then turns right, cutting across the bike’s lane. Left-turn crashes follow a similar pattern at intersections, where a driver turning left across oncoming traffic fails to account for a cyclist traveling straight through. In both scenarios, the driver’s failure to check mirrors and blind spots before executing a turn is the critical act of negligence. Traffic camera footage, dashcam video, and skid mark evidence at the scene can establish exactly where each vehicle was at the moment of impact.
Cars overtaking a cyclist present a different legal challenge. New Jersey law requires motorists to give cyclists at least three feet of clearance when passing. When a driver clips a cyclist while passing, the contact itself often tells most of the story. But these cases still require careful reconstruction because the driver’s account frequently differs from the physical evidence. Witness testimony from pedestrians or other motorists who observed the overtake maneuver, along with damage patterns on both the vehicle and the bicycle, help establish what actually happened.
Right-of-way failures at intersections are a frequent source of severe injuries. A driver who runs a stop sign or fails to yield at an uncontrolled intersection and strikes a cyclist in the travel lane bears clear liability, but the defense may still argue that the cyclist was traveling too fast, was not visible, or entered the intersection at an angle that contributed to the collision. Surveillance footage from nearby businesses, traffic signal timing data, and accident reconstruction expert analysis are the tools used to counter those arguments.
Driver distraction deserves its own attention because it has become more pervasive and more documentable than it was even a decade ago. A driver who was looking at a phone in the seconds before striking a cyclist may leave a digital record of that distraction. Cell phone records obtained through the litigation discovery process can show call activity, text transmission, and data usage timestamped to the moment of the crash. When a driver admits to looking away from the road, or when the phone records show activity immediately before impact, the negligence case becomes substantially stronger.
Road rage as a cause is less common but can carry legal consequences beyond simple negligence. An intentional act by a motorist toward a cyclist can give rise not only to a civil personal injury claim but potentially to criminal liability as well. In those cases, the conduct is so far beyond ordinary negligence that punitive damages may become a relevant consideration in the civil case.
The Injuries Cyclists Sustain and Why They Demand Full Compensation
The original description of bicycle-car collisions as almost always resulting in catastrophic injury is accurate and worth exploring in detail, because the scope of potential injuries directly determines the compensation a cyclist is entitled to pursue.
Cyclists have no structural protection between themselves and the road or the striking vehicle. A car traveling at 30 miles per hour carries enormous kinetic energy. When that energy transfers to a cyclist’s body, the results can include traumatic brain injury even when a helmet is worn, because helmets reduce but do not eliminate the rotational forces that cause diffuse axonal injury and concussion syndrome. Spinal cord injuries resulting in partial or complete paralysis occur in higher-energy crashes, particularly when a cyclist is thrown over the hood of a vehicle or strikes a fixed object on the way down.
Orthopedic injuries are nearly universal. Broken clavicles result from the instinctive outstretched-arm fall response. Fractured wrists, elbows, and shoulders absorb the initial impact with the pavement. Broken ribs and pelvic fractures result from direct contact with the vehicle or the road surface. Femur fractures, which are among the most serious bone injuries a person can sustain outside of the spine, can occur when a vehicle strikes a cyclist’s leg directly.
Road rash, while sometimes dismissed as a minor injury, can be severe enough to require skin grafting when the abrasion covers a large surface area or exposes underlying tissue. These wounds carry infection risk and often result in permanent scarring.
The cumulative cost of treating these injuries, combined with lost income during recovery, future medical needs including ongoing physical therapy or surgical revision, and the genuine impact on the injured person’s quality of life, is what a full compensation claim must capture. Insurance carriers representing at-fault motorists are experienced at offering settlements that seem significant initially but fall well short of what the injured cyclist will actually need over time. An attorney who understands both the medical trajectory of these injuries and how to present their financial impact to an insurer or jury is what bridges that gap.
New Jersey Law and the Rights of Cyclists
New Jersey treats bicycles as vehicles under the law. Cyclists operating on public roads have the same rights and are subject to the same duties as motor vehicle operators, with some important distinctions that affect how accident liability is analyzed.
Cyclists are entitled to use the full travel lane on roads where the lane is too narrow to safely share side-by-side with a motor vehicle. This matters because a common argument from drivers who strike cyclists is that the cyclist should have been riding further to the right. When the lane width does not safely accommodate both a bicycle and a passing car, the cyclist is legally permitted to occupy the center or left portion of the lane.
New Jersey has specific laws governing when cyclists must use bike lanes where they are provided, how cyclists must signal turns, and what lighting equipment is required when riding after dark. A front white light and a rear red reflector are required by statute for nighttime riding. Failure to comply with equipment requirements can become a comparative negligence argument when a crash occurs in low-light conditions, which is why documentation of the bicycle’s equipment at the time of the accident is part of any thorough investigation.
Comparative negligence applies to bicycle accident cases the same way it applies to any other vehicle collision claim in New Jersey. An injured cyclist can recover compensation as long as their own share of fault does not exceed 50 percent of the total. If it does, recovery is barred. If it does not, the damages award is reduced proportionally. This means that even a cyclist who made a minor error in judgment or failed to fully comply with a traffic regulation can still have a valid claim, as long as the motorist’s negligence was the primary cause of the collision.
How Insurance Coverage Works in a Bicycle Accident
This is an area that consistently surprises cyclists who find themselves injured by a motor vehicle. Because New Jersey is a no-fault insurance state, the initial source of medical expense coverage after a bicycle accident is often the cyclist’s own auto insurance policy through its Personal Injury Protection provisions, assuming the cyclist also owns and insures a car. PIP covers reasonable and necessary medical expenses regardless of fault. A cyclist without their own auto insurance policy may be able to access PIP coverage through a resident relative’s policy.
When PIP benefits are exhausted or inadequate given the severity of the injuries, the claim moves to the at-fault driver’s liability insurance. The limits of that policy determine the ceiling of available coverage, which is one reason why cases involving catastrophic injuries that result in damages exceeding the driver’s policy limits require a thorough investigation of all potential sources of compensation, including umbrella policies and, in some circumstances, the cyclist’s own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage.
Cyclists who do not own cars and are not covered by a household auto policy face a more complicated path to initial medical coverage. Understanding which policies apply, how to make claims correctly, and how the timing of those claims interacts with the litigation process requires legal guidance from the outset.
What to Do After a Bicycle Accident Involving a Car
The steps taken in the immediate aftermath of a collision affect both the injured cyclist’s health outcome and the strength of any subsequent legal claim. Calling 911 creates an official police record of the accident, documents road conditions and vehicle positions, and triggers an official investigation that may produce findings relevant to liability. Staying at the scene and waiting for police to arrive preserves the cyclist’s ability to participate in that investigation.
Photographs taken before anyone moves vehicles or bicycles capture the physical evidence that tells the story of how the crash happened. The position of the car, the bicycle, skid marks, debris fields, and the condition of the road surface are all relevant and transient. Witness names and contact information are worth collecting immediately because witnesses who leave the scene are difficult to locate later.
Medical evaluation on the day of the accident establishes a baseline record that directly connects the injuries to the crash. Some of the most serious injuries sustained by cyclists, including traumatic brain injury and internal bleeding, can present initially with mild or subtle symptoms that worsen over hours. Getting evaluated promptly protects both the cyclist’s health and the evidentiary record.
Connecting with a New Jersey Personal Injury Attorney who regularly handles bicycle accident cases is a practical step that changes how the claim develops from that point forward. Attorneys can communicate with insurers on the cyclist’s behalf, preserve critical evidence through formal legal holds, and begin building the factual and medical record that supports full compensation.
If you are a cyclist who has been injured by a car, please contact the Law Offices of Anthony Carbone to schedule a free consultation today with our Essex County personal injury attorney.
