What happens if you’re on a scooter and you’re injured by someone else on a scooter? These accidents are becoming more common due to the popularity of scooters in coastal California.
At Sally Morin Personal Injury Lawyers, we’ve seen many types of scooter-vs.-scooter accidents and scooter-vs-motorcycle accidents. Some are quite severe and cause life-altering physical impairments for otherwise healthy people.
Hopefully, your accident wasn’t you and your buddy riding side by side, knocking each other over! In that case, things could get messy and your friendship might be at risk. But in most situations, you can secure compensation rather smoothly through an insurance claim.
How Liability Works in Accidents Like These
When a scooter rider is injured by a motorcyclist or another scooter rider, it’s similar to a car accident in some ways. Ideally, insurance information is exchanged at the scene of the accident, the police write a report, and insurance covers all or part of the losses.
However, sometimes things are much trickier. There could be an attempted shift in liability where the other person tries to pin all the blame on you. Sometimes things are further complicated because the police report is incorrect, unclear, or simply unhelpful in establishing what happened.
Right away, circumstances like these should tell you that you need good legal representation. Finger-pointing increases the risk of being found liable for the accident or even being held responsible for a traffic citation or crime.
Are You Insured for a Scooter or Motorcycle Accident?
Motorcycle and scooter insurance is frequently insubstantial for covering all of the losses from an accident. While companies like Geico and Progressive have cute commercials, they focus on providing minimum coverage that’s usually inadequate for severe accidents.
Before you’re ever in an accident, avoid buying the cheapest insurance option that only provides minimum coverage. Although your insurance carrier might tempt you with a policy that has a rock-bottom price, remember that they’re playing a numbers game and trying to get as many customers as possible.
After an accident, the value of your policy becomes a big deal. Most California scooter riders and motorcyclists have around $15,000 in coverage, from what we’ve seen at Sally Morin Personal Injury Lawyers. We encourage you to have much more than that.
Based on the cases we’ve seen with some of our clients, we advise you to carry a minimum of $100,000 worth of insurance and include uninsured motorist coverage on your policy. That way you’ll be prepared if you’re ever hit by a scooter rider or motorcyclist and you won’t have to worry about an accident ruining your life or finances.
Not All Lawyers Handle Scooter and Motorcycle Cases
One last thing: Many lawyers don’t have experience with cases like these. While it’s common for accident attorneys to handle car accident cases, few have an extensive background with scooter and motorcycle cases.
If you go with an inexperienced lawyer, you’ll probably regret it. There are no do-overs with accident compensation cases and if you miss your chance to win fair compensation now, that’s it. Insurance companies and the courts don’t allow you to come back later for a second chance.
At Sally Morin Personal Injury Lawyers, we not only have plenty of scooter accident experience, but we’re also scooter riders ourselves. We truly understand the challenges you’re facing and we’re dedicated to giving you the best possible shot at high-value compensation.
We Handle Your Accident Claim So You Can Focus on Your Life
After an accident, contact the attorneys at Sally Morin Personal Injury Lawyers. We handle many types of personal injury claims including scooter claims. We believe you should be able to focus on recovering from your accident while we handle the legal details.
We truly care about the people of California. Contact us today for a free online case evaluation.
Video Transcript
What happens if you’re on a scooter and you’re injured by someone else on a scooter? Well, hopefully it wasn’t you and your buddy riding side knock each other over. But if you’re in a legitimate accident by someone else riding a scooter or a motorcycle, it would be handled similarly to if you were hit by a car. But, keep in mind that this might be a little more tricky because there might be a shift in liability. They might try and pin it on you, you’re going to pin it on them, so you’re probably going to want to get a lawyer on this pretty quickly unless they just say, oh, I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault, here’s my insurance information, they’ll pay you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen. So it could be a little more tricky with who caused what.
And then another thing is that a lot of times insurance for motorcyclists or scooter riders is not that substantial. So like Geico, Progressive, all these companies that have these really cute commercials will go ahead and sell you the cheapest policies they can just to make that initial amount of money. And if they upsell anything, they only make teeny bits of money more, which doesn’t pay off for them in the long run because if you get in a serious accident, you’re going to ask for a lot of money. So most scooter riders and motorcyclists have like $15,000 of liability coverage. So that’s where you could run into some issues of not having enough money. And again, I make my recommendation that you should carry a minimum of $100,000 of uninsured motorist coverage if you can afford it. So anyway, if you’re hit by a scooter or another motorcycle, check in with a lawyer who specializes in motorcycle cases.
