Maryland Motorcycle Accident Lawyer Blog
Over the last few years, what with the shift in many individual’s employment circumstances and financial condition, many people have traded their four-wheeled transportation for the two-wheeled variety. For dyed-in-the-wool enthusiasts, the motorcycle is a passport to freedom on the open road. Yet that freedom does come at a cost. The opportunity for severe injuries is ever-present when riding a bike, as opposed to driving an automobile.
Since one doesn’t need to be in love with riding to own a motorcycle, many people who choose the own a scooter or small-displacement bike may not have the same deep-seated desire to be one with the road. For those individuals, people who may ride mainly to save gas money or avoid the cost of expensive auto loan payments, the innate safety mindset of the typical lifetime biker may not have fully developed. It is these individuals who can sometimes be caught off guard by an emergency traffic situation. What’s worse, riding a lower-powered motor vehicle means the bike will have less get-up-and-go to get a rider out of a tight spot.
As Baltimore personal injury attorneys, I and my colleagues know that motorcycle accidents happen on a fairly regular basis. And while they may be routine, the injuries sustained by riders involved in a serious motorcycle-automobile accident can be anything but routine. Head and back injuries are common, as are broken bones and spinal cord damage. These accidents can happen spontaneously and without any warning in rural areas as well as urban areas like Rockville, Gaithersburg and Washington, D.C.
As automobile and commercial trucking accident lawyers, our charge is to provide assistance to victims of traffic collisions. In cases where a rider has died through the negligence of another driver or other party, we can help the victim’s family to look into the possibility of filing a wrongful death suit against the responsible individuals.
Not long ago, a biker was killed when his motorcycle crashed into a police patrol car in Calvert County. The accident, according to news articles, a biker was killed when he reportedly lost control of his vehicle causing it to collide with a sheriff’s office vehicle along a stretch of Broomes Island Rd. The crash, which occurred on a Wednesday evening, left the 31-year-old North Beach, MD, rider dead at the scene of the accident.
Based on police reports, William Hammer, Jr. was operating his Kawasaki just after 8pm when the wreck took place. When additional police officers arrived at the accident site, they apparently discovered the damaged police car off to the side of the roadway, in the trees to one side of the eastbound lane of Broomes Island. Additional investigation revealed the man’s bike lying in the grass just off the eastbound shoulder; the lifeless body of the victim at the westbound shoulder of the same stretch of road. Reports indicate that the man died from multiple life-threatening injuries.
According to police investigators, the rider was heading westbound when he must have, for some reason, lost control of the bike. Police believed the motorcycle began to slide across the centerline of the roadway, colliding with an oncoming police cruiser being driven in the eastbound lane. It can only be assumed that if the opposing traffic had not been present that the biker may have survived the crash. Sadly, as is the case with many traffic wrecks, fate resulted in the head-on collision which likely killed the victim.
Emergency responders arriving at the site of the collision pronounced the victim dead at the scene. The officer driving the patrol car was shaken but relatively uninjured. He was taken to Calvert Memorial Hospital for treatment of minor injuries and subsequently released. While police stated that the victim was wearing a helmet at the time of the collision, news articles suggest that investigators suspect that the rider may not have “met all required safety standards.”
Motorcycle rider killed after collision, SoMDNews.com, August 16, 2012