hit by a car yesterday

back in march i had a serious crash which was caused by people walking out in front of me. yesterday i had a car pull out in front of me while i was going down a hill at around 35mph.

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=7461421&blogID=35805958

i posted about it there. i'm not sure of the overall condition of my bike but i'm not thinking it's good. since the guy was charged by the police i'm thinking i should get a lawyer to represent me to his insurance company so i don't get screwed here. yesterday it didn't really hurt as much as it does today. i can barely walk and getting on my old bike is completely out of the question. :-( does anyone have any advice or experience in a similar situation?

 

Here in BC we have a monopoly car insurance situation. I have sat on a jury in a major insurance claim. After watching how the insurance company lawyers work my opinion is that you do not want just any lawyer - you want a specialist in the field - it gets really ugly and personal.

 

Glad to hear that story didn't have a worse ending. Take a few days off the bike to let the swelling go down. If you didn't break anything then you can probably ride without doing any damage, but it's going to make you feel miserable. A steady stream of Advil probably isn't a bad idea either. You may or may not need a lawyer depending on how dirty the insurance company is going to play. Since there's a police report and the damage is only a few thousand, they probably won't fight it too hard. Take your bike to a shop as soon as you can and get a repair estimate in writing. Don't take any money from the insurance company until you know for sure how much this is going to cost you. If they try to pressure you, then it's time to call a lawyer.

 

Mike,

First, glad to hear you're relatively OK.

Make sure you have proper and good documentation for what your bike costs. You're LBS should be able to help you with that if you don't have copies still. The photos you have are good. You might have to supply them to the insurance company too. I'm sure the insurance compnay willl have a fit when you send them a bill for multiple thousands of dollars for a bicycle. I don't think I go for a lawyer until you're to a point where you don't think you'll get satisfaction.

Good Luck,

L

 

I deal in personal injury case on the defense side. Whatever you do go to the doctor immediately and register your injury complaints.
It is a shame that it is this way ,but the injury card is a powerful one to play when trying to recover damages.
If you wait it will appear you were not injured.

 

The advice given so far is quite good in my limited estimation. I have two experiences that apply. I had a similar accident where a car turned in front of me. I watched the woman turn in front of me and managed to dump off much of the speed I had going by the time I hit her car. I wasn't damaged but my bike definately was. Her car insurance payed for the damages on the bike. I just took it to my local shop, they wrote up an estimate and the insurance company quickly wrote a check. The repair even ended up costing more than the initial estimate and they wrote another check with no complaint (I didn't know that was going to be easy and freaked out a little before I found out there was no reason for the freaking).

My second experience is with my wife. She has had two accidents where she was injured and was in need of money from the responsible party. Both times we ended up using a lawyer. Both times it became neccessary because doing all the paperwork and fielding the phone calls from all involved became far too tedious to handle. The second one was a major car accident where she was quite badly injured. It was a mess and the lawyer made it far easier. My experience from that event is that insurance companies have made the use of lawyers neccessary. They are NOT likely to be helpful in working things out. In fact they seem to set up roadblocks to you getting what you may need.

I guess my points are these--if you're looking to just fix the bike, that could be fairly easy. If you are looking to make some claim for the injuries it could get difficult.

--David

 

You might be able to get replacement cost for those shorts that are gone also...those aren't cheap.

 

thanks for the support folks. i was supposed to get a call back from the insurance company today but nobody called. i guess i'll wait till tomorrow and call them back. i went to the bike shop i bought the bike from and they said that it wouldn't be good to just put new components on it because there's parts of the frame that have been chipped. they've got the bike at the shop to get an estimate on all the parts and labor just in case the insurance company wants it. hopefully this will all be a smooth process.

 

Sorry to hear about your wreck. I hope all goes well. Good luck with the insurance company, and let us know how it all turns out. I hope you heal quickly too.

 

Did you kick’em in the balls or whatever? I would've. Go beg your sponsors… they might give you new shifters or whatever parts.

Good luck with everything!