Motorcycle Accidents And Passenger Liability

Motorcycles quite literally require a balancing act with only two wheels. When one person is riding, that can be difficult enough. However, adding a passenger into the mix can further complicate things. In fact, according to a motorcycle accident lawyer, passengers can even be held liable for causing accidents.

How Passengers Cause Accidents

First and foremost, passengers can cause balance issues that lead to accidents. If a passenger is not situated correctly when it is time to mount or dismount a bike, this can cause it to topple over. Additionally, when motorcycles take turns, everyone on the bike needs to lean a certain way. If the driver goes one way but the passenger goes another, this can unbalance everyone and cause a crash.

Passengers are there for fun and to provide companionship, but that also means they can be so-called backseat drivers. If a passenger yells out suddenly or tries to correct the driver, this can lead to an accident. Additionally, passengers might just be distracting in general talking too much when a driver needs to concentrate through a tricky situation or if they need to listen to other vehicles around them.

Finally, passengers might refuse to wear safety gear or sit properly. This can lead to them interfering with controls on the bike. For example, when a motorcycle goes to slow down or brake, the passenger should put their hands on the gas tank and push against it to take some of their weight off the driver. If this does not happen, the driver might smash forward causing the bike to swerve or even hit the kill switch on accident.

Who Is Liable

Passengers can in fact be held liable for accidents, it just has to be proven that they were the ones who caused it. This is done through witness statements, videos, and accident reconstruction experts. This is also determined by what exactly happened. If a passenger purposefully was messing around on the bike despite the driver making their best efforts to stop them, then the passenger is liable.

However, if a driver does not properly educate their passenger about the hand on the gas tank when slowing, then the driver can be at fault. In this particular situation, liability would most likely be shared between both parties on the motorcycle as the driver failed to educate their passenger, and the passenger failed to perform proper stopping procedures.

These cases are especially tricky because multiple parties can be at fault. As our friends at Cohen & Cohen can share, accident lawyers will work to collect videos and images of the crash before, during, and after it happened. They will speak with witnesses and examine police reports to determine fault. Finally, they might bring in a reconstruction expert who will use forensics from the scene to recreate the scene, showing who caused the accident and how.

From there, lawyers will work to get you the compensation you deserve from at-fault parties and insurance companies. If you or a loved one has been involved in a motorcycle accident, contact a lawyer near you for help determining fault, especially if the passenger on the motorcycle contributed to the accident.