Motorists Who Crash into Bicyclists Believe Cyclists Are Magic!

Handling Central New York bicycle accident cases has its draw backs when you are also a bicyclist. It ruins your fun. You can’t ride without thinking about the guy you are representing who may never walk again because a car at an intersection “didn’t see him” and did him in. Or the guy who got pummeled by a dog that charged straight into his back wheel and sent him crashing to the pavement, causing traumatic brain injury (TBI).

So as I am out on the road trying to relax, I see every car as the enemy. Every dog is a potential lethal missile. My wife says I should either change professions or change pastimes. But if you know me you know I’ll do neither.

And I wish I had a penny for every time I have heard a motorist who took out a cyclist say “I didn’t see him” or “he came out of nowhere”. Once the bike-striking-motorist gets lawyered up, it gets even better. At deposition he will say, “I looked carefully to the left, I looked carefully to the right, then I looked carefully straight ahead, then I made my turn, and — boom — there he was, out of nowhere”!

By the way, this defense doesn’t work. In New York motorists are required not just to “look”, but to actually see that which can be seen. No matter how carefully you claim to have “looked” if you didn’t see that which there was to see, you are liable.

The interesting thing about this “I-didn’t-see-him-even-though-I-looked” defense is that it makes cyclists out to be magicians. We can magically appear out of thin air! We can even make ourselves invisible! And we are especially adept at re-appearing right in front of the hood of cars! We are just dazzling, supernatural creatures, really.

What motorists who hit cyclists will find out, though, is that cyclists have even more magical powers than they thought. With a little help from good bicycle accident lawyer, injured cyclists can make money magically disappear from the negligent motorist’s insurance carrier’s pocket, and re-appear just as magically in the injured bicyclists’ pocket. And that’s a good thing. The cyclist will need that money because his magic, though truly marvelous, is not powerful enough to make his permanent, life-altering injuries disappear.