Did you suffer serious injuries in a Newark bicycle accident? Did someone else’s negligence cause these serious injuries, leaving you with substantial medical bills to pay and a host of concerns about your health?
A Newark bicycle accident claim cannot restore lost health, but it could provide you with the funds you need to cover your medical expenses and rebuild your life. If you suffered serious injuries in a Newark bicycle accident, contact Jacoby & Meyers, LLP today.
Who You Get When You Hire Us
For nearly five decades, Jacoby & Meyers, LLP has represented clients in Newark and Northern New Jersey who have suffered injuries because of someone else’s wrongful conduct. From the beginning, bicycle accident cases have constituted a regular and important part of our practice. Our goal is to secure maximum compensation for injured cyclists and for families whose loved one died in a Newark bicycle crash.
Clients come to Jacoby & Meyers, LLP for help after a Newark bicycle accident because we have a well-established reputation for serving our clients’ interests with compassion, diligence, and professionalism. If you hire Jacoby & Meyers, LLP to help you secure compensation for your Newark bike accident injuries, then you can count on us to answer your questions, explain your options, and pursue legal actions tailored to fit your unique needs and priorities.
Our Case Results
Through hard work and a core commitment to our clients’ interests, Jacoby & Meyers, LLP has compiled an impressive track record of top-dollar results in a wide array of personal injury cases. Defense attorneys and insurance adjusters know that when we take a Newark bicycle accident case, we will bring the full measure of our firm’s skill, knowledge, and resources to bear to achieve the best possible result for our client.
We cannot guarantee favorable financial outcomes in every case, but our winning reputation can assure our clients that we have achieved secured settlements, judgments, and jury verdicts in even the most complicated cases.
Where We See Too Many Bicycle Accidents in Newark
Bicycle accidents can happen virtually anywhere in Newark, but cyclists face the highest risk at busy intersections like:
- Broad Street & West Market Street
- Broad Street & Raymond Boulevard
- South Orange Avenue & Sandford Avenue
- West Market Street & Central Avenue
- Bloomfield Avenue & Mount Prospect Avenue
Common Newark Bicycle Accident Injuries
Newark residents may choose to ride bicycles for a variety of reasons. Bicycles offer a convenient, eco-friendly means of transportation and make it easy to get in a little exercise in Newark parks or even during your daily commute. At the same time, however, bicycles offer little protection from the road or an impact with a vehicle. Bicycle accidents can cause severe injuries, many of which can result in long-term consequences.
Traumatic Brain Injury
Bicycle accidents in which the victim’s head strikes the pavement, especially if the victim chooses not to wear a helmet, can result in traumatic brain injury. Not only do victims with traumatic brain injury often suffer from severe holes in their long-term memories, they may have ongoing problems with short-term memory, focus, and concentration. Victims with traumatic brain injury may also suffer substantial emotional impact.
Frequently, traumatic brain injury results in emotional symptoms alongside the mental ones, including a lack of emotional control, difficulty with impulse control, or unexpected mood swings. Some victims with traumatic brain injury may even suffer from immense personality changes, which can cause changes and challenges to their relationships.
Symptoms of even mild traumatic brain injury can linger for more than a year after the accident. Victims with more serious traumatic brain injury may suffer from lifelong impacts.
Spinal Cord Injuries
Whether the victim’s back strikes the pavement or the victim ends up taking a blow from the vehicle directly to the back, bicycle accidents can result in serious back and neck injuries, including spinal cord injuries. Complete spinal cord injuries—which occur when the victim’s spinal cord breaks completely in the accident—can result in complete paralysis below the site of the injury.
Even incomplete spinal cord injuries can result in substantial limitations in mobility, depending on the severity of the injury. The extent of the paralysis may depend on the location of the injury. The higher on the spinal cord the victim suffers an injury, the greater the extent of the overall damage and the more seriously those limitations may impact the victim.
Spinal cord injuries may require a victim to use a wheelchair to get around. The victim may never fully regain mobility after the accident.
Amputations
Sometimes, bicycle accidents can result in the need for amputation. The force of the accident may crush the limb or tear it from the body, resulting in a loss of blood flow. Amputees often choose to use prosthetic devices that can help them maintain mobility and independence. Prosthetics can also help restore some normal appearance, preventing many observers from noticing the missing limb. However, not only does getting used to a prosthetic take time, many victims find that they need to replace their prosthetics regularly to maintain function.
Road Rash/Burns
Sometimes, bicycle accidents can result in severe burns due to chemical exposure or the car catching on fire. Other times, the victim may have burn-like symptoms in the form of severe road rash. Minor road rash may look like scrapes and abrasions and heal fairly quickly with home treatment.
More serious road rash, on the other hand, may completely strip away the protective layer of the skin, leaving the victim extremely prone to infection and causing severe scarring even after the initial injury heals. Many victims feel self-conscious about the scarring, especially if it occurs on the face or a highly visible area of the body.
Broken Bones
While broken bones often heal with time, they can cause both short-term and long-term complications for the victim. Many bicycle accident victims suffer from multiple broken bones from the force of the accident. Several broken bones can make it difficult for victims to go back to work, to participate in their usual leisure activities, or to take care of themselves. Severely broken bones may require surgery to set them, which can increase the risk of complications and leave the victim facing substantial medical bills.
Sometimes, broken bones have long-term consequences for the victim. Some people suffer from an ongoing loss of mobility or strength in the affected limb. Others may notice pain when using the limb for a long time. Dealing with those limitations may mean considerable changes in the victim’s life, including the inability to engage in normal leisure activities or the need to rest more often than before. In severe cases, victims may need to change their job to compensate for those broken bones.
Seeking Compensation After a Newark Bicycle Accident
After a Newark bicycle accident caused by another party’s negligence, you may have the right to seek compensation by filing a claim. Talk to an attorney as soon after your accident as possible to learn more about your right to compensation and to allow the attorney to start an investigation into your claim. Contact Jacoby & Meyers, LLP today.
Who Caused Your Newark Bike Accident?
To determine how much compensation you deserve for your bicycle accident injuries and who to sue for compensation, your attorney will start by helping you identify who caused your accident and, therefore, who may bear liability for your injuries.
Most often, the driver that caused your accident may bear liability. However, your personal injury attorney will also look at other factors that may have contributed to your accident to identify other potentially liable parties and help increase the compensation you could receive for your injuries.
Was the liable driver on the clock at the time of your accident? Sometimes, you may have a bicycle accident with a commercial driver. A pizza delivery driver may zip around a corner, hurrying back to the store for their next delivery. A big truck might turn into your lane without ever noticing your presence. A construction worker chatting on the phone with their boss about the materials they need to pick up might run a stop sign.
Those drivers may share liability for the accident with their companies, especially if the company pushed them to violate the rules of the road or other laws while completing their usual job duties. For example, truck drivers can only spend 11 hours out of a 14-hour shift on the road. If an employer pushes them to exceed those hours, the employer may bear liability for the accident. Likewise, a pizza company that has strict regulations regarding the time an employee can spend on the road for each delivery, pushing the delivery driver to speed, may bear liability for the accident.
An attorney, like those at Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, can help look at the driver and the driver’s company and give you a better idea of whether the company may share liability for your accident.
Did a mechanical failure contribute to your accident? Did your bicycle break down unexpectedly, although you had maintained it correctly? Did a brake failure in the vehicle cause it to slam into you despite the driver’s efforts to stop? Sometimes, mechanical failure can cause an accident that no one can avoid. Your attorney may take a look at what led to the mechanical failure to help establish who may bear liability for the accident.
For example, if a factory error caused the mechanical failure, the manufacturer of the malfunctioning vehicle, whether your bicycle or the car, may bear liability for the accident. If the owner of that vehicle recently had it worked on, and the mechanic failed to repair the damage, the mechanic may bear liability. Talk to an attorney at Jacoby & Meyers, LLP to learn more about how mechanical failure could impact your claim.
How Much Compensation Do You Deserve After a Newark Bicycle Accident?
Talk to an attorney to get a better idea of how much compensation you could expect following a Newark bicycle accident. The compensation you ultimately receive may depend on several key factors relating to your accident. Your attorney may start by considering who caused your accident. Most drivers, for example, carry liability insurance policies that offer bodily injury protection coverage when they cause an accident. The limits of those policies can determine how much compensation you may be able to expect for your injuries.
Your attorney would also evaluate:
The extent of your injuries. Severe injuries often bring with them substantial medical bills. If you suffered severe injuries in your Newark bicycle accident, you may notice your medical bills adding up quickly. Complete spinal cord injuries that result in high tetraplegia, for example, may result in more than a million dollars in medical costs within the first year after the accident alone. If you suffered less substantial injuries, on the other hand, your medical bills may not grow quite as high.
Your attorney could take a look at all of your medical bills related to your bicycle accident, from the cost of immediate emergency care to your long-term medical expenses. You can include the cost of surgeries, hospitalizations, and follow-up procedures as part of your Newark bicycle accident claim as well as the cost of therapy, in-home care, and durable medical equipment that you need because of your injuries.
Talk to your attorney about other expenses you may have faced because of your bicycle accident injuries and your new medical needs. For example, some victims with severe spinal cord injuries, back and neck injuries, or amputations may need to modify their homes by adding wheelchair ramps, widening doorways, or altering the overall design of the home to accommodate a wheelchair. You may be able to seek compensation for some of those costs as part of your Newark bicycle accident claim.
The work you had to miss. Most Newark bicycle accident claims include a section for compensation for wages lost because of your injuries. Many people may have different professional outcomes from a serious bicycle accident. Sometimes, your employer will work with you to keep you on the job, even allowing you to work remotely while you recover or making modifications to make it possible for you to come into the office.
Other times, your employer may require you to stay home until you make a full recovery, especially if you have injuries that prevent you from taking on your usual job tasks. The wages you lose due to lost time at work can add up fast. Talk to your attorney about how to include those lost wages, including lost vacation time or lost personal time, after your accident.
The impact of your injuries on your life. You cannot express every aspect of the losses you faced due to your bicycle accident injuries in terms of their financial cost. In some cases, your greatest losses may have nothing to do with expenses related to the accident.
Some victims, for example, find that their injuries prevent them from engaging in the activities they love most, sometimes permanently. Other victims suffer from ongoing physical pain related to their injuries from the accident. Talk to your attorney about how to assess your pain and suffering and include it as part of your Newark bicycle accident claim. Often, if you suffer severe impact from your injuries in your personal life, it can increase the compensation you may be able to receive.
“I had an amazing experience with Jacoby & Meyers, LLP. I would highly recommend them for anyone needing a law firm.” -Paul T.
★★★★★
Newark Bicycle Accident Lawyer FAQs
Following a bicycle accident, contact a Newark bicycle accident attorney at Jacoby & Meyers LLP to ask any specific questions you may have about your claim. If you have general questions related to a bicycle accident in Newark, check out the FAQs below.
1. Does the vehicle driver in a Newark bicycle accident always bear liability for the accident?
Often, the vehicle driver bears liability for bicycle accident injuries. The drivers of passenger vehicles may not take adequate protection when sharing the road with a cyclist: speeding past a cyclist at the side of the road without allowing adequate space or cutting off that cyclist, for example. Other times, the driver may not even recognize the presence of the cyclist.
Commonly, drivers struggle with changing visual profiles when trying to look around them. A bicycle does not fit the visual profile of a passenger vehicle, and since it takes up much less space, the driver may look right over you without realizing that you need space on the road.
However, that does not mean that the driver will always bear liability for the accident.
Like the drivers of passenger vehicles, you must follow the rules of the road as a cyclist. If you ride on the road, you must stop at stop signs and red lights, use a single lane of traffic or a bicycle lane, if available, and yield to pedestrian traffic. You should also avoid swerving into traffic or riding suddenly into the road, especially in the presence of vehicle traffic. If you cause a serious accident due to negligence on your part, you may bear liability for the accident.
On the other hand, in some cases, outside factors may contribute to the accident. For example, if a mechanical failure causes your accident, the vehicle manufacturer or a mechanic who recently worked on the vehicle may bear liability. Talk to an attorney to learn more about your specific accident and who may bear liability for your injuries. Contact Jacoby & Meyers, LLP today.
2. I didn’t wear a bicycle helmet and suffered a traumatic brain injury. Can I still file a Newark bicycle accident claim?
New Jersey law states that bicycle riders under the age of 17 must wear a helmet when operating any type of wheeled vehicle, including a bicycle. That does not mean that you should skip wearing a helmet if you are older than that when riding your bike, especially on Newark streets. Helmet use can substantially reduce the risk of traumatic brain injury and even decrease the severity of injuries if you do suffer a traumatic brain injury or injury to the head, neck, or face in your accident.
You may have the right to file a Newark bicycle accident claim and could still receive compensation for your injuries, even if you chose not to wear a helmet. Talk to your attorney to learn more about your right to compensation following a bicycle accident in which you chose not to wear a helmet.
3. What should I do if the liable driver’s insurance company offers me a settlement for my Newark bicycle accident injuries?
Immediately after your bicycle accident, you may have medical bills that leave you feeling daunted and worried. Worse, you may not have the ability to return to work, which can leave you without a source of income during an incredibly difficult time.
The driver’s insurance company contacts you to offer a settlement. You may not even know how much your medical bills will cost yet. But, having money in your hands now to help you handle your bills sounds like a great idea.
Unfortunately, insurance companies often know about these common worries and the immediate concerns that often follow a serious accident. They may, in many cases, issue a settlement offer soon after the accident to convince you to accept it quickly, before you have a chance to learn more about your rights and how much you really deserve.
If you accept that offer, it may prevent you from actually receiving the amount you deserve after your accident.
Instead of accepting a fast settlement offer, get in touch with a Newark bicycle accident attorney to discuss your bicycle accident, your injuries, and who caused your accident. An attorney can go over the compensation you should pursue for your injuries, take a look at any settlement offer issued by the insurance company, and help you make an informed decision about when to accept an offer and when to continue to negotiate.
4. What four steps do I need to take to help protect myself after a Newark bicycle accident?
Whether you realize immediately after your accident that you suffered serious injuries and need to seek medical attention or you think you have walked away from the accident with relatively little damage, make sure you take the right steps to protect yourself. Failure to take those critical steps could leave you struggling both physically and financially after your accident.
Step one: Always report the accident. Your bike got banged up, but you think you walked away from the accident with relatively few injuries. The liable driver will pay for your accident, but does not want to report it because they do not want that accident on their record or their insurance. They may try to insist that you take their contact information without reporting the accident to the police.
Unfortunately, failure to report your accident can make it very difficult for you to prove exactly where and when the accident took place. Always report any accident that results in serious injury or property damage to the police so that you can more easily seek compensation later.
Step two: Collect evidence, if you can. You should not move around the scene of the accident to collect evidence if that evidence collection puts you in danger or has the potential to worsen your injuries. However, if you can safely move around the scene of the accident, or if you have a companion with you who can help you collect that vital evidence, you may want to collect photos and other information about your accident.
Start by snapping photos of the vehicle and damage to your bicycle. You may want to take a picture of their placement on the road and the vehicle’s license plate to help identify it. In addition, you may want to take photos of any injuries you suffered, including obvious evidence of road rash.
Finally, collect contact information from any witnesses and the driver that caused your accident. You may want to snap a photo of the driver’s insurance information with your phone to make it easier to find that information later.
Step three: Prioritize medical attention. If you suffer severe injuries in your accident, including broken bones or traumatic bleeding, you should make medical care your top priority. Never linger at the accident scene or insist on evidence collection if you fear it could make your injuries worse, especially if you notice your pain increasing as you move around the scene.
Seeking medical attention immediately after your accident offers two key benefits to you. First, it helps ensure that the doctor will identify any serious injuries you may have suffered. Sometimes, adrenaline from the accident can conceal the impact of even serious injuries. Other times, you may find that you suffered more serious injuries than you originally thought only after going home. By visiting a hospital or urgent care center, you can get a clear evaluation of your injuries and receive treatment quickly, which could prevent you from inadvertently worsening your injuries.
Second, seeking medical attention can help provide a valuable record of exactly when your injuries took place. Sometimes, when fighting a Newark bicycle accident claim, insurance companies will try to claim that you suffered those injuries at another time. If you allow too much time to pass after your injuries, it can be more difficult to establish exactly when they took place. On the other hand, if you seek medical care immediately after the accident, you would have records that more clearly establish when your injuries occurred.
Step four: Contact our Newark bicycle accident attorneys as soon as possible. If you suffered severe injuries in your bicycle accident, our Newark bicycle accident attorneys can give you a better idea of the compensation you deserve. Not only that, our Newark bicycle accident attorneys can negotiate with the insurance company on your behalf. The sooner you contact an attorney, the sooner that attorney can start working on your behalf and help you acquire the compensation you deserve.
5. Do I need an attorney to handle a Newark bicycle accident claim?
Yes. While many people fear that bringing in an attorney can substantially increase the costs associated with any type of accident claim, including a bicycle accident claim. That’s why many accident victims try to handle claims on their own, rather than bringing in a Newark bicycle accident attorney.
In reality, however, working with a Newark bicycle accident attorney can offer numerous benefits to your claim. Not only do many accident victims find that they can significantly increase the compensation they can receive for their injuries when they work with an attorney, even after considering their legal fees, an attorney can provide valuable peace of mind during the claim process.
An attorney can take over negotiation on your behalf, fielding frustrating calls from the insurance company and helping you understand the compensation you really deserve. Often, an attorney can help collect evidence related to your accident, which may help establish exactly who caused your accident and the compensation you really deserve for those injuries.
6. How much will it cost to hire an attorney to handle my Newark bicycle accident claim?
Hiring a Newark bicycle accident attorney at Jacoby & Meyers, LLP, will cost you nothing. We will start with a free consultation. During that consultation, the attorney can take a look at your claim and offer more information, including information about how much compensation you may deserve.
If we accept your case, we do so on a contingent fee basis. You will not have to pay upfront for your legal services, but instead would pay your legal fees out of a portion of your settlement or court award. For many bicycle accident victims, this makes an attorney much more affordable and legal fees much easier to manage. Our Newark bicycle accident attorneys are happy to discuss their specific billing procedures with you.
7. Will I have to go to court to settle my Newark bicycle accident claim?
The majority of auto accident claims, including bicycle accident claims, settle out of court. Going to court substantially increases the legal expenses associated with an accident for the insurance company. Since the insurance company wants to decrease its financial liability as much as possible after a serious accident, it will often try to reach an agreement out of court.
In some cases, however, especially in cases of disputed liability, you may need to go to court to establish the compensation you really deserve for your bicycle accident injuries. If you do have to go to court, having an attorney on your side can make a substantial difference.
8. How long will it take to settle my Newark bicycle accident claim?
You should not accept a fast settlement for your Newark bicycle accident injuries. It can take time to resolve your claim, even if you hire us and we begin the claim process quickly. Your Newark bicycle accident claim starts with a call to your attorney. Your attorney may need time to fully investigate your claim, including the circumstances that led to your accident. Your attorney may also advise waiting until you have had time to heal from your injuries, since the progress of your healing may impact both the extent of your medical bills and how much you will eventually recover from your injuries.
You will then need to go through negotiation with the insurance company. If your bicycle accident claim needs to go to court, it may take longer before you receive compensation for your injuries.
Contact Jacoby & Meyers, LLP today to get started.
Contact Our Newark Bicycle Accident Lawyers Today
If you suffered serious injuries in a bicycle accident due to the negligence of another party, a Newark bicycle accident claim can help you recover compensation for your injuries. Contact Jacoby & Meyers, LLP today at (973) 643-2707, start a live chat with one of our representatives, or fill out the form on our contact page for your free consultation.
Newark Office
550 Broad Street suite 608
Newark NJ 07102
973-643-2707