Columbus, GA Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

Taking the right steps after an accident can make all the difference regarding your future financial recovery for a motorcycle crash in Columbus.

In order to preserve evidence left from a crash, victims should try to photograph it. You can use your phone to take pictures of injuries to your person, damage to your motorcycle, and debris on the street. Victims must also report accidents to law enforcement in Columbus by calling 911. We will talk to witnesses soon after the accident and interview them before they forget what they saw. To document your injuries as they are immediately after the collision, go directly to the emergency room. Our attorneys will then assess your claim’s value by calculating your financial damages and estimating your pain and suffering due to negligence.

Call Rice, Murtha & Psoras’ Columbus, GA motorcycle accident lawyers for a free case assessment at (410) 694-7291.

How to Preserve Evidence Left from a Columbus, GA Motorcycle Accident

By intentionally preserving evidence left at a crash scene in Columbus, victims can strengthen their claims before they truly begin. For example, you should try to take photos and videos to preserve evidence. You should promptly call 911 to report the motorcycle accident and try to get eyewitnesses’ information.

Take Pictures and Videos

Physical evidence, like property damage, tire marks, broken glass on the street, nearby road signs the other driver might have ignored, or anything else of pertinence, should be photographed. This includes any physical injuries to your person. Take pictures of any apparent injuries, including minor scrapes or bruising.

In addition to pictures, you can take longer videos to capture the full scope of the accident site in Columbus. Video and photographic evidence can help us reconstruct the accident if necessary and prove certain elements of your claim, like the fact that the defendant’s negligence caused your specific injuries.

In addition to the photos and videos you took at the scene, our lawyers can look for additional video evidence. For example, if the negligent driver had a dashboard camera in their car, it might have filmed the incident. Our lawyers will also seek out nearby surveillance systems in case they have video footage that could help with your recovery.

Call Law Enforcement

Alerting the Columbus Police Department to your motorcycle accident is vital. When accidents lead to physical injuries, they must be reported. After you call 911, emergency medical personnel and law enforcement officers will arrive on the scene. Police officers will proceed to process the accident site, interviewing all involved drivers and eyewitnesses. Officers might take pictures or videos of their own, which we can obtain when we get the accident report from the Columbus Police Department.

Get Eyewitness Statements

When people other than the victim or the negligent driver witness a motorcycle crash, it is important to speak with those individuals. While still at the site, you can ask eyewitnesses if they saw what happened and request their contact details. Our motorcycle accident lawyers will interview witnesses soon after the crash so they remember what they saw.

By interviewing eyewitnesses, we might learn new information about the accident because of their different perspectives and vantage points. Even if police officers spoke to eyewitnesses and included their statements in the accident report, we will want to talk to them ourselves.

Get Medical Care

You must document your injuries as they are immediately after the accident. Otherwise, the defendant might have room to question the cause of your injuries and if it is unrelated to their actions. When you allow emergency medical personnel to take you to the closest hospital, doctors can immediately assess and diagnose you. You can then get any emergency treatment necessary for your injuries, such as surgeries.

You must continue to get treatment for as long as necessary. Missing any scheduled visits with specialists or doctors could result in gaps in medical treatment. When victims have substantial or unexplainable gaps in their medical care, it might hurt their claims in Columbus.

How to Assess the Value of Your Motorcycle Injury Claim in Columbus, GA

Before filing, victims should fully appreciate their damages. If you think your losses are lower than they actually are, you could end up accepting a bad settlement from the defendant in Columbus.

To estimate the value of your case, we will need to know all of your damages. Regarding your economic damages, give our attorneys copies of all invoices and charges from throughout your medical treatment, starting with that first visit to the emergency room after the crash. All medical damages, including future medical damages, should be compensated, whether in a jury award or a settlement.

Landing in the hospital for a motorcycle accident injury could make you miss time from work. If you incurred lost wages because of an accident, our attorneys will also consider those damages when assessing the full value of your claim.

When it comes to your non-financial damages, our lawyers may approach estimating them differently. To calculate pain and suffering, we may use one of two methods: the per diem or multiplier methods.

Using the per diem method, we will assign a dollar rate to your daily emotional distress and multiply that by the number of days you anticipate experiencing pain and suffering.

When using the multiplier method, we will identify an appropriate multiplier based on the severity of your injuries and apply that to our calculation of your total economic damages.

Once we know how much your case is worth, we can file it and proceed with settlement negotiations in Columbus. Since we will know your true damages, we can prevent you from accepting an unfair offer during settlement discussions. We can also use evidence gathered at the start of your case as leverage to get a better settlement.