Personal Injury Law

St Louis Missouri Motorcycle Accident and Injuries - Driver Inattention and Struck Motorcyclist when Changing Lanes - Uninsured Motorist Claim

By Benjamin J. Sansone, Esq.

Recently, two of my clients were injured in St Louis Missouri as the result of a driver changing lanes and sideswiping my two clients who were traveling on a custom Bad Boy motorcycle. The motorcycle is nine feet long and three feet of the motorcycle was past the other vehicle's front end, yet the driver still negligently failed to keep a careful lookout and caused a collision after violating the motorcyclist's right of way by entering his lane and side swiping the motorcycle, causing the St Louis Missouri motorcycle accident. The driver ended up with a fractured ankle and foot and the passenger ended up with very serious injuries to her neck, back, arms, and legs, likely requiring surgery.

As an experienced St Louis Missouri motorcycle accident personal injury lawyer, I have investigated and represented numerous clients that were injured on a motorcycle in Missouri motorcycle accident cases and Illinois Motorcycle accident cases. Most cases are simply the result of a car or truck driver's inattention or simple failure to look for smaller vehicles on the road, as a motorcycle versus car or truck accident rarely results in injury to the car or truck driver.

From the perspective of a Missouri injury attorney, the most common causes of motorcycle accidents and collisions is the failure of a car or truck driver to yield to a motorcyclist coming through an intersection and the car or truck driver makes a left turn on a green right in front of the motorcyclist, thus causing a collision; or commonly, I see a fact scenario as described in the case above, blind or inattentive lane changes striking the motorcycle.

In the above case, my clients were struck by a driver who did not have insurance, therefore the claim becomes a UM claim or uninsured motorist claim. Basically, in Missouri everyone with insurance has a minimum of $25,000 in UM coverage, meaning if you are injured by an uninsured motorist the injured motorcyclist makes a claim through their policy under their uninsured motorist coverage. Under Missouri injury law, the insurance company essentially takes the place of the uninsured motorist. If an injured person has several auto policies they can often stack the polices, meaning, if you have 2 cars with minimum coverage each, the injured party can make a claim against both policies thus stacking the limit from $25,000 to $50,000 of insurance coverage. This can quickly become a complicated area of personal injury and insurance law based on policy provisions and case law pertaining to stacking, anti-stacking clauses in some policies, set off clauses, other insurance clauses, and the specifics of each fact scenario that may preclude coverage or act to open up additional coverage from other insurance sources.

Full post as published by Missouri Injury Law Blog on December 01, 2008 (boomark / email).