What Damages Can You Recover After a Bicycle Accident in Kansas?

Riding your bicycle can be a relaxing and healthy means of running errands or simply getting from Point A to Point B, but there is always the risk, no matter how small, of being in an accident. Even if you’re wearing all of your safety gear, having a motor vehicle collide unexpectedly with you can result in catastrophic injuries that leave you unable to work or live your life as you used to. To make matters worse, treating these injuries and conditions causes medical expenses to pile up quickly. If the accident was the result of another party’s negligence or misconduct, though, you do have a legal remedy available: filing a personal injury claim to seek damages for your losses.

What damages can you recover after a bicycle accident in Kansas? At Palmer Law Group, our team of bicycle accident lawyers have decades of experience helping people who have suffered injuries because of another party’s negligence. We can guide you through the claims process and identify the full extent of damages you can seek compensation for.

Contact us at Palmer Law Group by calling (785) 233-1836.

How Bicycle Accident Claims Work in Kansas

Understanding No-Fault Claims

Kansas is a no-fault state when it comes to traffic collisions, including bicycle accidents. In other words, in the event that you experience injuries in a crash, you must file a claim against your personal injury protection (PIP) insurance. Your PIP coverage will include medical expenses, some lost wages, and funeral expenses, but only up to a specified limit. For minor injuries and property damage, that limit is more than enough coverage. If you suffer catastrophic losses that PIP insurance can’t cover, though, you may be able to go outside of the state’s no-fault laws and pursue a lawsuit against the party that caused your losses.

To file a fault-based lawsuit, you will need to either have medical bills amounting to $2,000 or more or have suffered an injury that is considered serious. These types of injuries include:

• Fractures of weight-bearing bones
• Compound, displaced, or compressed fractures of any bones
• Permanent disfigurement
• Permanent loss of a body function
• Any other permanent injuries.

A fault-based claim will allow you to receive damages that would not be available in a no-fault claim. These include both economic and non-economic damages.

Economic Damages After a Bicycle Accident in Kansas

Economic damages compensate you for the financial losses you’ve sustained because of your bicycle accident. You can claim these in both fault-based and no-fault claims, but you don’t have to worry about PIP insurance policy limits when filing the former against the other party. You can receive coverage for ambulance fees, hospital stays, medication costs, and rehabilitation.

In some instances, you may need to make adjustments to your home or vehicle to accommodate a disability that occurred because of the bicycle accident. Economic damages address these costs, too, as well as any expenses related to mobility devices like wheelchairs. If the injuries you’ve sustained will require future medical care, you can claim these expenses as well.

Suffering injuries severe enough to allow you to step outside of no-fault laws can leave you unable to work, but thankfully, you can recover lost wages that go beyond what your PIP insurance would cover. You can claim a loss of earning potential, too, if you know you won’t be able to work again. The family of a rider killed in a fatal bicycle accident can also claim damages to cover things like funeral expenses.

Non-Economic Damages After a Bicycle Accident in Kansas

You can receive non-economic damages, which compensate you for non-financial losses, only if you file a fault-based claim. These damages focus on the emotional and psychological distress you’ve experienced, as well as the loss of enjoyment of life you’ve suffered. If a loved one dies in a bicycle accident, loved ones can also claim loss of consortium, which will compensate them for their loss of companionship and support.

Because these losses are more subjective and don’t have a clear price, lawyers and insurers rely on two main formulas to decide on the most appropriate compensatory amounts. One of these is based on assigning an amount to each day (the per diem method), which is then multiplied by the number of days it will take you to recover from your injuries. The assigned daily number will depend on the severity of your injuries. Alternatively, insurance companies and lawyers can also rely on the multiplier method, which takes your financial losses and multiplies them by a factor of 1.5 to 5. The more serious the injury is and the more significantly it impacts your daily life, the higher the factor will be.

The Importance of Having a Lawyer

Filing a claim after suffering injuries in a bicycle accident is never easy, especially if you’re filing a fault-based lawsuit. You will have to demonstrate that the other party was negligent in their conduct, which first requires establishing that they owed you a duty of care and then showing that they breached it. You may not be certain how to do this and how to build a connection between the accident and the losses you sustained. Another challenge that these claims pose is needing to negotiate with insurance companies that are always searching for ways of paying you less than you deserve.

An experienced lawyer will help you prove the other party’s negligence and understand how to tackle these negotiations. They will work to gather the most important evidence to show that you deserve compensation, and if the insurers don’t cooperate, your lawyer can take an additional step and bring your case to court.

Receive Experienced Assistance After a Kansas Bicycle Accident

Palmer Law Group: Fighting for Your Rights

If you’ve suffered injuries in a bicycle accident, you deserve experienced representation to help you obtain fair compensation. At Palmer Law Group, we bring decades of experience and dedication to the table.

Call us at (785) 233-1836 to speak with a Kansas bicycle accident lawyer today.