Catastrophic injuries result from Reno motorcycle accidents

There is nothing quite like the feeling that one gets when riding their motorcycle. The wind in your hair, the freedom of the open road – it’s all very poetic. However, motorcyclists can be affected by a less-than-poetic event if they are involved in a motorcycle accident. Often, other drivers are to blame either partially or completely for the motorcycle accident and the resulting injuries.

There are lots of motorcyclists located in the Reno area, which isn’t surprising since the weather is fair enough most of the year to utilize and ride motorcycle. If you or your loved one has been impacted by a motorcycle accident injury, you may or may not be aware of just how severe they can be. Beyond the immediate medical expenses and medical care needed – it can turn a person’s life completely upside-down. An inability to work isn’t uncommon after suffering injury in a motorcycle accident. Even the health status of permanent disability can set in, causing a person to frame their whole life differently.

At Bradley Drendel & Jeanney, we have seen the horrors that are associated with motorcycle accident injuries and how it impacts people in our community including the injured and their families. Oftentimes a passenger vehicle, or any type of larger vehicle, makes a mistake on the road that causes the motorcycle accident and injury. It could have been carelessness or even more serious behaviors, like intoxicated driving, that could lead to this result. This is what, in the legal world, is often known as negligence. Even more serious behaviors like DUI can result in not only civil issues for the accused, but criminal as well.

While criminal charges in a motorcycle accident will not determine the civil outcome – it can help with the proceedings. For example, if the party suspected of DUI is convicted, that bodes well for the negligence case as they have a lower standard of proof than do criminal cases. This means that, most likely, the case would decide in favor of the injured when, in a criminal case, the person accused of DUI was convicted. However, in the opposite situation, if a person is not convicted of a drinking and driving related crime, the lower threshold of proof could still find negligence with a preponderance of the evidence.