Lampkin's Rider Accident Support

Interesting case particularly for my biking friends!

Go-Pro helps Biker win accident case!

Go-Pro helps Biker win accident case! From putting a man on the moon to the Hadron collider, man’s ceaseless desire to advance his technological capabilities is an unquenchable thirst and now we happy band of motorcycling brothers can reap the rewards of advanced media like never before. Go-Pro’s (and in the interest of balance other makes of digital video recorders are available) are becoming motorcycling man’s best friend when disaster strikes and one of the most remarkable examples of that is a case we have just successfully settled for a lovely client and fellow rider. I personally took his initial call last August when he saw my advertorial in the wonderful Adventure Bike Rider magazine and I have to say my eyebrows raised a tad when he told me the circumstances of what seemed an innocuous bump whilst riding his beloved XT660. Fortunately, and indeed crucially, he had a Go-Pro mounted to his helmet and decided to film his country commute home. In no rush he allows a pesky BMW (enough said!) to pass and then watches incredulously as the said grey missile reverses back towards him at speed to allow an oncoming white van (this time blameless!) to continue on a single track road. The video, in which we have removed the audio in the interests of taste and for those with sensitive ears, shows clearly the car striking the bike with reckless abandon. Minor damage to the bike was sustained but more importantly our client had his knee behind the footpeg and the subsequent hyper extension caused a nasty and troublesome injury of some importance given that he had a manual occupation as a self-employed gardener, of some reknown in the area I should add. Never having the need to make such a claim before I was delighted to spend the time with him to allay his fears and without further ado we arranged an inspection and repair and a medical examination to get to the bottom of the painful injury which luckily was not as severe as it could have been. Imagine our surprise when we presented the claim to the insurers and they told us that liability was in dispute and not only that we were asked “Can we assume that you will not be pursuing this matter and that we can close our file?” Undeterred we continued to prepare our client’s case for court proceedings despite receiving ongoing correspondence from the insurers of the BMW with such comments as “Our policyholder is adamant that no collision occurred between the two vehicles”. Proceedings were issued and served and lo and behold at the point where the defendant driver of the vehicle, or someone on his behalf, would have had to sign a statement of truth we received total radio silence. Not a dickie bird as they say up north. So judgment was entered and the financial settlement followed without further ado. There is presently a prevailing wind in the media that all claimants are fraudsters and the gutter press have little hesitation in pandering to the PR departments of insurance companies who give them the reverse of this case where a claimant has clearly presented a false claim. The passengers on the bus and the football referee claiming a bad back spring to mind as recent examples and rightly they were named and shamed. But potentially dishonest defences of cases such as this never see the light of day as they are settled when good lawyers and brave clients force the matter into court proceedings and with conclusive evidence such as video footage irresistible pressure is brought to bear upon insurers and their clients to cough up. I have other examples of such behaviour by insurance companies and their clients seeking to deprive honest claimants out of their rightful compensation so watch this space. In the meantime it was a pleasure to deal with such a delightful client who, unprompted, sent these kind words:- “I just wanted to say thanks for all your efforts in dealing with my claim. As you know from our conversation on the phone I was a bit reticent about the whole thing but soon felt in safe hands! Everything was dealt with in a professional but friendly manner. Could you thank Andrea also for her kindness on the phone….and lets all thank the fact I was using my Go-Pro camera!! Kind regards.” Mr E, Bognor Regis Mark Lampkin, Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

Lampkin's Rider Accident Support's cover photo

Emerging through queue and filtering motorbike crash with Audio

Almost daily I have to analyse the legal implications of a motorcycle accident where a car emerges through stationary traffic to turn right just like in the clip below. It is rare to have such a grandstand view from a dash cam but in my career I must have dealt with literally hundreds of such accidents and can give a pretty accurate view of how these cases go in court. In the clip you will see that a car emerges through a gap and the driver only looks left and crucially he does not look right before he emerges past the stationary traffic. Had he looked right at that last second he would have seen the bike and the accident could be avoided and is likely to have some finding of negligence against him. That said, the biker in this case would be in danger of having a finding of contributory negligence made against him and this could all but wipe out his claim as he is unarguably going at a ridiculous speed . I say that as a bike lawyer and a lifelong bike rider in other words from a bike leaning stance. I have written many articles on this scenario, never with the benefit of such evidence, and would urge all my fellow bikers to watch this and moderate your speed when filtering. Trust me this happens a lot and you will have an uncomfortable afternoon in court if this was you travelling at such speed. Do yourself a favour and filter slowly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve-xvafW_p8

Motorcycles and ice don't mix! Just a quick reminder about the law relating to highways as we enter the bitter chill of winter. The Highways Act 1980 imposes as duty on the relevant highway authority to "maintain" the highway. As bike and scooter lawyers we have conducted thousands of cases for bikers injured due to pot holes and defective manholes and all manner of obstructions and deposits on the highway. But what is the law on ice? If you are on the early shift and decide to brave it on the bike you are at the mercy of the local gritting authority as to whether they have been down your stretch yet or not. This was considered in the case of Goodes v East Sussex in 2000 where it was decided in court that the council did not have an absolute duty to remove ice and snow. In other words they did not have to remove all ice and snow and were not to be legally responsible for all accidents caused by ice. Interestingly though the court did suggest that in certain circumstances their duty to maintain the highway could be extended to include providing for safe passage at all times of the year so in extraordinary circumstances they can still be liable. We acted for a scooter rider who came off on sheet ice caused by a water from a blocked water gully, a problem that had been reported many times and had caused many previous accidents. So my advice is that you must look after yourself and ride according to the conditions. If you come off on ice you will probably not be able to claim unless the circumstances are outstanding!

Difficult case to advise on yesterday and a very suprising result. The enquiry was referred to me by Brenda Mitchell at Motorcycle Law Scotland a great bike lawyer who sends me any accidents this side of the border and vice versa. The case concerned a young man in his twenties who died when a car turned across his path. He left no spouse or children and was of course and adult being over 18. This means that there was no one to claim the bereavement award of a measly £12980 that is only payable to a spouse or parent of a child following a non fault fatal accident. I was astounded to be told by Brenda that in Scotland a bereavement payment of around £80,000 would be paid to his mother if the accident had happened there. This massive difference in two constituent parts of the UK is incomprehensible and I am compliling evidence and case histories to bring this to public attention and camaign for change. Watch this space! Mark Lampkin

Timeline Photos

Motorcycle overtaking when car turns right. I have just fielded and enquiry from a motorcyclist who was knocked off when overtaking a vehicle in a line of traffic that turned right directly in front of him. He was riding his cherished Honda CB1000R through busy London traffic and slowly going past a long line of stationary vehicles in single file. This is obviously a common motorcycling scenario in urban areas. He describes how he has not had an incident or crash in thirty years of motorcycling and considers himself a safe and confident rider. He was only doing around 5 to 6 miles an hour and keeping good observations. Suddenly a vehicle in the line of traffic turned out directly infront of him leaving him nowhere to go other than in to her drivers door. Fortunately he was nearly able to keep the bike upright and only fell softly and hence was not injured at all, other than pride. His bike sustained £1400 of damage and the car was likely to face a similar repair bill. He had phoned his insurers who said the car driver had already claimed against him and said that it was his fault. He wanted my advice on this. This is a very common scenario for a bike accident solicitor to come across and I have dealt with many. Firstly the car driver when turning right has a duty to make sure that other road users will not be inconvenienced by her manoeuvre. I have little doubt that if this case progressed to trial and she was giving evidence from the witness box she would say the classic “he came from nowhere”. This would show that she had not had that last look over her shoulder to make sure there was no vehicle overtaking before she turned. Conversely if she says she did see the approaching bike then she would inevitably be accepting blame so either way it is likely that a judge would find that the primary cause of the accident will be her turning across the path of an approaching motorcycle without taking adequate precautions and so liability would be established against her. That said it is doubtful that the motorcyclist would escape a microscopic analysis of his riding. Whilst the Highway Code is not law it is certainly advisory and a booklet that is often to be found on a Judge’s bench. A couple of rules spring to mind:- Rule 167 DO NOT overtake where you might come into conflict with other road users. For example approaching or at a road junction on either side of the road where traffic is queuing at junctions or road works As I said the code is not law but is virtually inescapable when appearing in court in relation to road traffic collisions. So in the scenario set out above there is the obvious point that the motorcyclist was without doubt overtaking a line of traffic queuing at a junction and on the approach to a junction on the right hand side of the road into which the car was turning. The geography is inescapable. So my prediction would be a substantial finding of contributory negligence against the motorcyclist. I know this is difficult opinion to follow and is only based on the basic analysis of the physical layout of the accident scene layout and not a detailed analysis of evidence. In this particular enquiry there was a kind witness who stopped to check the biker was ok and then drove on without leaving contact details so we are left with little independent assistance in analysing the intricacies of the accident. One word against another and that’s it. So overall the motorcyclist would have a decent shout at establishing primary liability against the car driver given she patently did not see him before turning directly across his path. Thereafter depending on what finding was made as to whether the car driver indicated or not then any award of damages would probably be reduced by 25%-50% to take account of contributory negligence. That of course would be in the eye of the beholder, or rather the Judge but that is an educated guess at the range of reduction. The motorcyclist’s insurers are already involved and are suggesting that they should settle off the car claim without further ado. They will probably insist on doing so in order to avoid escalating legal costs. The consequence of this is that this will stand as a claim on his insurance and have an impact upon his premium at next renewal. That may again be inescapable. Bear in mind though that had there not been a junction on the right of the road then the case may have better prospects. This can be seen in the case of Davis v Schrogin 2006 when a motorcycle was overtaking a long line of stationary traffic when a bored American tourist performed a reckless U-turn directly infront causing major injuries. Liability was awarded at 100% in favour of the motorcyclist but the crucial point of comparison here is that this was on a straight piece of road with no junctions on either side so no reason why the motorcyclist could not make a decision to overtake safely. My advice overall therefore on this particular case is that the most likely outcome would be a straight division of liability with both parties achieving a recovery of 50% of their losses. Only the appearance of evidence about whether the car indicated or not and the approaching speed of the motorcycle could be expected to shift this balance of blame. Mark Lampkin, Expert Motorcycle Accident Lawyer mark@lampkins.co.uk

Adam Evans - Motorbike RTC Gopro Video Camera

To give you some idea of the work I get involved in here is video from my client's go pro. He is a courier in London and with the proceeds of an earlier claim we handled for him he bought a go pro and religiously kept it filming. It was good that he did given the the defendant's insurers denied liability saying that he ran in to their stationary vehicle! (By the way turn the volume down if you don't like swearing......you have been warned!) No real analysis needed.........we won in full! (and the case was featured on car crash Britain). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Wro3GUoWs

Motorcycle Accident Essentials • Lampkin & Co Solicitors

Welcome to my own personal page for me to advise on legal issues I come across in my work as a national bike accident lawyer. I will post analysis of bike accidents and highlight the pitfalls of each accident scenario and I welcome (constructive) comments. I believe that post accident analysis of bike accidents can help us all learn what to expect on our overcrowded and often crumbling roads and how to be safer. Feel free to fire questions at me relating to bike accidents, the legal process of claiming, or indeed any aspect of motorcycling law and I will try to help. And to start at the beginning here's my latest "Motorcycle Accident Essentials" article http://www.lampkins.co.uk/news/motorcycle-accident-essentials/

Lampkin's Rider Accident Support's cover photo

Lampkin's Rider Accident Support