Motorcycle Accident Attorneys in Olathe, KS

Are fatal motorcycle accidents common?

If you are wondering just how common motorcycle accidents are, let us run some numbers by you. In 2019, motorcycles made up about 3% of all registered vehicles, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. And overall, there were about 284.5 million registered cars, which means there were approximately two million other registered vehicles, like trucks, in America at the time.

That same year, about 84,000 motorcyclists were injured, and just over 5,000 were killed, in traffic accidents. In comparison, there were 23,744 car and truck occupant deaths in traffic accidents that year.

Are fatal car and truck accidents more common? Yes. But by their own calculations, the NHTSA says that motorcyclists are far more likely to be injured or killed in a crash than passenger car occupants:

The fatality rate for motorcyclists was 29 times more than the passenger car occupant fatality rate and nearly 40 times the fatality rate for light-truck occupants. The motorcyclist injury rate was almost 4 times more than the injury rate of passenger car occupants and nearly 7 times the injury rate of light-truck occupants.

What are the causes of Olathe motorcycle accidents?

While there is no other feeling than the freedom riding a motorcycle brings, this freedom can also work against you on the road. Since motorcycles are small, they can be hard to notice for other drivers on the road. This is one of the main reasons that motorcycle accidents happen: other vehicles may not be able to see you when you are passing or even just driving next to them.

Some other common causes of motorcycle accidents are:

• Lane switching and merging: When a vehicle switches lanes and does not see the motorcyclist in the lane they are merging into, it can easily lead to a collision.
• Distracted driving: Drivers are distracted by their phones, their kids, their radios, and GPS units. A distracted driver is a dangerous driver. If the motorcyclist was not in a vehicle’s blind spot, the chances are good that the accident was caused because the motor vehicle driver was not paying attention. They may also be using assistive driving devices and put all their faith in these instead of checking themselves.
• Lane-splitting: Lane splitting is illegal in Kansas, but some riders still do it. If another rider is lane splitting and causes a driver to swerve, that driver can easily hit you.
• Wrong-way accidents: A driver who makes a wrong-turn off an entrance or exit ramp, who doesn’t see road signs indicating a one-way street, or who is intoxicated, is likely to drive the wrong way. This can lead to one of the scariest and most tragic types of accidents – a head-on collision. This happens when two vehicles (in this case, a motorcycle and a car) are traveling in opposite directions and collide with each other. As you would assume, the most damage is caused to the motorcycle and the rider, since they lack the added protection that other vehicles have. We have seen many times when the motorcyclist is thrown off the motorcycle or dies on impact.
• “Dooring” accidents: These happen when a rider is passing a parked car, and the driver (or passenger) opens the car door into traffic.