[boomgarden]

I'm more than a little bothered that Motorcycle.com would link to this as a front page story without any investigation or attempt to verify the facts. Did this anonymous writer provide any proof? Jeez, even a link to a news report would give me some reassurance.



I subscribed to receive access to quality on-line motorcycle journalism--not this.

 

[boomgarden]

kpaul--

While I'm a lawyer myself, I'd respectfully disagree with your advice. Assuming that the original post is not a hoax (and, again, I reiterate my concern that it's a front page MO story that hasn't been verified in any way), I think it's totally unacceptable to file a wrongful death suit against the driver in the absence of some evidence of wrongdoing on his part. Undoubtedly some lawyer will be willing to do it, but imagine, if you will, the pain and anxiet that you'd be inflicting on someone who--as far as we can tell by what we know--did nothing wrong.



To the original anonymous poster--if this truly happened, there are specialists who can reconstruct accidents. The fact that you've written four months after the event doesn't help, but reconstruction experts can often determine if a vehicle was running or lights were illuminated in the course of a thorough investigation. The officers on the scene, hearing the truck driver's version of events, should have at least made some preliminary efforts to determine whether the bike was running--it might be as simple as looking at the position of the ignition switch and/or kill switch. In order to determine if lights were illuminated, the bulbs would have to be located and examined. You, as a non-relative would have limited abilities to gain access to the bike to allow an examination, but his next-of-kin should be able to do so. An examination of the accident scene would be very helpful to a reconstruction expert, but the passage of four months probably means that such an examination would be fairly useless. The photos you're referring to would, in likelihood, not tell an expert whether the bike was in motion, though it might be possible to estimate the relative speed of impact. The skid marks and debris at the scene of the accident would be much more helpful in this respect.



It's hard to imagine a scenario in which a rear-end collision of the sort you're describing would leave the motorcycle upright if it was moving at the time of the collision. Certainly the gyroscopic effect of a bike's rotating wheels would enhance the possibility of that happening, but it seems much more likely that a motorcycle moving at speed would be upset in its trajectory by being hit from behind and would have either been propelled sideways at an angle or have gone down--I'm not an expert, but based on what you've written, the truck driver's version sounds plausible.

 

[boomgarden]

Re: I'll pay to have your sub cancelled

Hmmm . . . I think you're replying to me. It's kind of hard to tell, give the format of this forum.

If you'll look around, you'll see my response to the anonymous poster regarding hiring an accident reconstruction specialist, but my point was that MO let us down by making an unverified story that has some significant BS indicators (like "killed so bad they almost couldn't get a fingerprint", the missing $7,000; a tree-climbing business, etc.) a front-page headline without doing anything to verify the story. Maybe there was an accident. If there was a death, I'm sorry for the rider and for those left behind. But, as subscribers we've paid for an on-line magazine, and it's not journalism if you make an anonymous post about an unverified accident into a front-page headline. Sorry.

 

[boomgarden]

The MV Agusta story?



Seriously, though, I know it's easy to be a critic, but I hope you'll consider my comments. I think you've done a good job with the website, but you positioned an anonymous post as a front-page story. Journalists can be wrong and, occasionally, they're hoodwinked. But if you're going to present something as a news item, and not just leave it to stand as an anonymous post to a discussion board, then I really believe you should do some journalistic work to verify it. Your heart was in the right place, but it's not a "story" until there are facts.



Thanks for at least giving my perspective some consideration.

 

[boomgarden]

Re: Lawsuits for dummies: I speak from experience and my wife is a paralegal

Understand. I was writing from the perspective of my personal standards, not legal ethics. Even though I make my living as a lawyer, I just do't feel that it's right to file a lawsuit in a situation like this, where there's really no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the driver. Of course, this whole scenario may not have happened at all, in which case we're wasting valuable bandwidth.

But, my perspective is this: it sounds like, in your case, it was fairly clear that you were on the hook for an error in driving. By acting quickly, the lawyers may have preserved evidence and prevented a tolling of the statute of limitations (by all means, a huge consideration). I'm a little skeptical of the authenticity of this story, but from the description there's no indication that the driver did anything wrong--in fact he might be the one with a cause of action. I don't feel that it's right to sue people and quite possibly screw up their lives to satisfy one's personal curiosity.

Anyway, this is just a personal opinion--it's not a judgment of the legal ethics of doing this and it is most definitely not legal advice.

 

[boomgarden]

The photo that's now posted actually sheds a completely different light on this, since it appears that the collision occurred on the shoulder of the road and not in the far right lane, as first indicated . Maybe it's a matter of regional terminology, but around here we think of the "far right lane" as referring to a the far right travel lane.

If the rider was stopped on the shoulder and rear-ended, I would think that it's worth consulting a lawyer at this point to determine if a lawsuit is appropriate. As was mentioned earlier, civil liability is not dependent on the driver receiving a traffic ticket or being convicted--it's an entirely separate determination.

If, however, an insurance settlement has already been accepted by the survivors, it's likely that the right to bring a lawsuit has been waived.

 

[boomgarden]

Iceworm--

You're absolutely right. The photo doesn't tell all, but it at least raises the possibility that it occurred on the shoulder. Where the rider was stopped--in a traffic lane or on the shoulder--would make all the difference in the world.



Kpaul--

Darn, you figured it out. Just don't tell anyone--I've been able to maintain the lawyer hoax for 22 years.



And don't slam your own writing--it's actually very good. You just need to get in touch with your inner self and resolve those emotional issues . . . .

 

[boomgarden]

Re: Physics for dummies

Make sure to consider the parallex error

Why don't you run through the calculations for the rest of us? Also, I'd be interested in knowing how you believe parallax error factors into this and how you'd compensate for that in your analysis.

Thanks in advance for helping us out with this.

 

[boomgarden]

Re: Physics for dummies

Precisely as I thought, Mr. BMW4VWW. I was just kind of curious how someone who can't spell "parallax" was going to incorporate it into his calculations.

I've been around the MO site since before it was a pay to view site, but haven't participated in the forums. This thread confirms the wisdom of my previous habits.

 

[boomgarden]

I think it's more of a split--in bike vs. car/SUV/truck crashes, I often see the "hang the driver" or "sue 'em" sentiment echoed, often without regard to the factors that actually contributed to the crash. It's part of the not-my-responsibility attitude that's crept into American society and which has fueled the upsurge in lawsuits over the past couple of decades.

I'd admit that perhaps not every collision is avoidable, but there are many, many instances where the dead rider had a role in his demise.

For some interesting reading that has a real impact on motorcycle safety, I'd suggest that every motorcyclist who's interested in living a long life look at the studies on inattentional blindness. The Visual Cognition Lab at the University of Illinois has done some interesting research on the subject: http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/djs_lab/ .