Bike Accident Attorney

About 10,000 bicyclists suffer injury and 158 cyclists die each year on the roads in California. The majority of these injuries are caused by turning vehicles, not the bicyclists. The majority occur in urban areas with vehicles failing to yield the right of way. That's the number one cause. The majority of these happen on the front wheel. The second most frequent type of bicycle injury is a dooring incident, where someone doesn't look and opens their door into the bicycle traffic. Third most common are vehicles changing lanes, and the fourth is vehicles overtaking bicycles. Now generally, bicycles have the same rights and responsibilities of car drivers under the vehicle code. They have to ride with traffic. However, they're given under the law a 3-foot buffer between a car and they. If a car can't get 3 feet of distance, it has to slow down and only pass when it's safe to do so. Where you can ride as fast as the traffic, you can be anywhere in the roadway. If you're riding slower than traffic, you can take the lane if it's not wide enough for a car and a bike. And by take the lane, that means move your bicycle to the center of the lane. If you're moving slower than traffic, you're supposed to be as close to the right-hand side of the road as possible. An exception to that is if the right-hand side is closed, there's construction, or some obstruction in the right-hand side of the road. Now people ask me about can they ride a bike on the sidewalk. Well, it depends on how old you are, and it depends on where you are. In Alameda, Los Angeles, Novato, San Rafael, Orinda, Lafayette, you can ride a bike on the sidewalk. However, you must do so in a reasonably safe manner and yield to pedestrians. In San Francisco and Berkeley, if you're older than 13, you can't ride a bicycle on a sidewalk. In Santa Rosa, certain areas outside of the business and downtown district are open for sidewalk use. The law requires that bicyclists have lights at night. They have to have a white light on the front that's visible from 300 feet ahead and red reflector or solid or flashing red light on the rear. There must also be reflectors on the pedals and on the side of the tires. Under the age of 18, when riding a bicycle or a non-motorized scooter or skateboard, a youth has to wear a bike helmet. Adults are not required to wear bike helmets. However, it's our experience that injury is greatly reduced when a bike helmet is used. If you're injured on a bicycle, it's important to get the information of the driver, to gather up any types of photographs or evidence that you can, and contact the police. Bicycle injuries are some of the worst that we deal with. Handling a bicycle case is not like handling a car case. You need to understand the dynamics of gyroscopic wheel movement, how pushing on one side of the handlebar moves the bike in an opposite direction, and various aspects of tires, including tire tread patterns. Bicyclists who are injured have the right to recover damages, economic damages, which means medical bills, lost wages, damage to the bicycle, and non-economic damages for damage to their person, such as pain and suffering, emotional distress, fear, anxiety, humiliation, scarring. We see a lot of road rash, unfortunately. So if you're going to hire a lawyer who's going to handle a bicycle case, hire lawyers that are very involved in the bicycling community. The Dolan Law Firm's proud to be a sponsor of the San Francisco Bike Coalition, the East Bay Bike Coalition, and the Marin County Bike Coalition. We want bicycling to be fun and safe. We'd prefer never to meet you in our office, but see you on the road. But we're the best lawyers we hope you'll never need. Contact us at dolanlawfirm.com.