This photo is from a Jeep/Bike crash.
The crash happened on a 2 way city street – a very WIDE and unusual street, as discussed below.
The 18 yr old Jeep driver tried to pass the cyclist and struck him at, probably, 40+mph. You can see the point of impact next to the headlight and the subsequent points of contact on the front fender, mirror, rear door… there’s also a big dent in the A pillar from, probably, the client’s helmeted head, which led to a significant TBI – the rider suffered catastrophic injuries here….
On top of that, Jake at the Simply Fabulous Insurance Company advised us that they were DENYING the claim on Day 3, while the client was still in a coma.
Why?
Well, the police decided upon 5 minutes or so of their arrival that …!!TA DA!!… the cyclist was at fault for a “suicide swerve” during a “U-Turn” – this came from an “eye witness” who was 150+ feet away, coming in the opposite direction, around a blind curve… but … I digress…
After the impact, the Kid in the Jeep went left of center, hopped a curb and slammed the Jeep into some short concrete steps in the front yard of a house.
When the Kid got out and came back to where the cyclist was lying in the road a witness indicated he said “What happened?” But, after the crash, while the police were milling around, the witness huddled up with the Kid and …!!TA DA!!… when the kid told police his story it matched the witness… suicide swerve/U-turn… How about that?
However, the Kid also told police that he had sped up to pass, exceeding the 35 mph speed limit… which was helpful in the end. He also admitted the pass attempt occurred in an intersection – a No No under state traffic law… As for Ohio’s the three foot law, he was kind of stuck… was he giving the rider 3′ and the rider “suddenly swerved” to the left MORE than 3 feet? That seemed a bit far fetched… but the cops didn’t really inquire – they took the word of the “eye witness” that there was some kind of suicide swerve & wrote it up that way.
Police DID map the scene using the Total Station. The Total Station is like a laser-guided surveying device. Once it is properly set up police will take measurements of different critical pieces of a scene to generate data that can be used to prepare a scale replica. This takes the scene image from the old school “NOT TO SCALE” pen/straight edge to the 21st century where you have a laser-measured scale drawing.
The client’s brother had been in a bad bike crash down in Georgia some years earlier &, while the client was still in a coma, the client’s wife got a referral from the Georgia bike lawyer to… !!TA DA!! us here at the Ohio Bike Lawyer’s World HQ high atop Mt. BikeMore –
I brought in Chris Carville, the Kentucky Bike Lawyer – we co-counseled this case.
Since SF denied the claim they also denied us the opportunity to inspect the car so we sued immediately & obtained a TRO – Temp Restraining Order – prohibiting any work on the Jeep until our expert could inspect it.
We also had our expert examine the bike and, more importantly, the client’s GPS, which police…!!TA DA!! … IGNORED…
The Garmin was a Gold Mine…
We spent two years aggressively litigating this case. We sued the driver, the Kid, and his mom, who owned the car. We also sued the client’s UM carrier, which ended up being the same company that insured the vehicle. The case was… vigorously… defended by defense counsel with whom we were quite familiar. This is helpful, I think. They knew us, we knew them. They knew we knew what we were doing on this bike stuff and we knew they knew how to defend and work a case.
Extracting phone data is complex and we eventually negotiated a protocol to obtain the Kid’s phone data which was… also a Gold Mine. The data showed… !!TA DA!!… the Kid was TEXTING HIS GF right around the time of the crash…
We also obtained 40+ hours of cruiser/body cam footage. This proved to be extremely helpful for unexpected reasons.
Because police decided early on that this was NOT going to be a situation leading to any criminal “charges” we believe they were far more lackadaisical in their data/evidence collection than if they were thinking about felony traffic charges. We found critical witnesses on the body cam who were not even mentioned in the 50 page crash report. One Key witness, for us, was simply … !!TA DA!! … completely IGNORED by police. He was questioned for less than 20 seconds – gave his name and told police he was coming the opposite direction from the cyclist & Jeep. He said he was near/next to the crash scene when he HEARD the big impact. He looked in his mirror and saw our client flying in the air!
He stopped his car, got out & ran back. Meanwhile, the Kid had gone left of center and crashed the Jeep into a couple concrete steps in the front yard of a house 100+ feet down the road from the point of impact. The Kid came back to where our client was lying in the street [about where the helmet is placed in the photo] and said “what happened?” -He didn’t know what had happened…
In the photo above you can see how far down the Jeep ended up. You can also see the van-type vehicle sitting first in line. This was the “eye witness” – a word I keep putting in quotes because we came to seriously question what exactly the eyes of this witness could have possibly seen. As you can see by the line of traffic, the road bends around under the overpass. The van was coming out from under the overpass before the crash – the driver said he stopped where the van is shown as the Kid drove the Jeep into his lane. The Jeep hopped the curb and hit the steps. So how much of the critical seconds leading up to the crash could the driver of the van have seen? Virtually nothing.
After the crash, while the police were milling about, the Kid huddled up with the witness who said the cyclist “swerved” into the car during a “U-turn.” They were talking several minutes. One of the officers noticed this and pointed it out. She felt the two could be cooking up a story, and the body cam picked up her concerns – but the officer in charge didn’t seem concerned…they had already decided it was the cyclist’s fault and when they finally asked the Kid what happened … -suddenly the kid said the same thing as the guy in the van – the rider did a suicide swerve in a U-turn… !!TA DA!! See… Kid’s OK, Cyclist is at Fault…
As we dug into the police video we saw that one Cruiser cam angle also showed, in the background, the Kid’s dad getting 2 big dogs out of the car.
As the case developed we learned what the Kid had been doing that day through depositions, and a review of his phone data. The Kid was a senior in high school and this had been an off day so he was at home. Dad had gone to his shop/office with the 2 dogs. Dad called the Kid & asked him to come to the shop to A/pick up the dogs and B/pick up some tax forms to take to the CPA. Because much of this was set up through text messages we have a pretty good timeline.
The Kid had picked the dogs up from Dad a few minutes before the crash along w some papers he was taking to a CPA. From Dad’s shop to the crash site was less than 5 minutes. The crash time, on the police report, was listed at 1345. This ended up be a VERY important data point.
The Kid had a map app open on his phone to help him get to the CPA office. His phone was likely mounted in a cradle that was stuck to the top of the dash, further blocking his view of the right side of the lane ahead, where the cyclist was riding.
In a deposition 2 years after the crash the Kid initially said he thought the dogs were in the back end of the Jeep, but … we had a photo from police showing the back was filled w golf clubs and sports gear & he had to admit the dogs were closer. In fact, the cruiser cam video showed one of the dogs getting out of the FRONT seat.
Combining the phone data and time stamps with the GPS data, 911 calls and police officer’s laser mapping [confirmed by our expert’s own laser mapping] along with the testimony of our newly witness about the car in the opposite lane & the Kid’s admission of speeding and passing in an intersection, we were able to put an animation together for Mediation showing how easily the kid in the Jeep could have AVOIDED the crash by…gasp… paying attention and slowing down.
The video shows the path of the car, at different speeds, and the path of the BIKE mapped out through GPS coordinates. It shows them meeting at the spot that our expert determined was the point of impact.
The geography of the area also came into play here. As noted above, the street here was both “wide & unique.” The street had 20 FOOT lane width on both sides- highly unusual for a city street… However, this street was unique in that the eastbound lane, where the Jeep and bike was traveling, actually ENDED and the road turned into an on-ramp for a higher speed limited access highway where bikes are not permitted. The west bound lane actually started at the end of an OFF ramp from the same limited access highway.
This aerial shows in red path of the witness, the client on the bike and the Jeep. The witness coming from the offramp. The bike’s path was right to left towards a left turn into the side street. The Jeep’s path was coming from behind the bike. The length of the lines represent the approximate distance traveled by each vehicle in the final FOUR SECONDS before impact.
Clearly, the client’s intent was NOT to go up onto the limited access highway where bikes were banned. The client’s right-to-left movement on the bicycle during that final four seconds was consistent his lawfully riding “to the right” initially and then preparing for a left turn across the oncoming lane and into the small, short dead-end side street shown in the video. In fact, the client’s GPS had mapped out MANY prior rides over this same route where the client had made a left turn into the side street to turn around and go back the other way.
The client had no memory of the crash or his intent or actions. His only memory was of the bicycle suddenly being shoved out from underneath him & him being in the air… His next memory is several days later… without the high tech bike GPS data providing us with a window into his movement we very well may have struck out in this case.
However, with all the data we accumulated, we were able to retain experts to powerfully show that the Kid was likely distracted- he had the 2 big dogs- he was reading texts FROM his girlfriend – his last text TO her prior to the crash said “Have dogs in the car with me wanted to show” -this text was sent at 1:45 – the exact time listed as the time of the crash in the police report. We argued that he was clearly lining up a selfie with the dogs, or preparing a video call or some other way of “showing” her the dogs. He was likely on the very wide street where the crash occurred when he sent that last text and may have been surprised to realize:
– Hey there’s a cyclist
– Hey there’s a car coming in the opposite direction
– Hey I have to EXIT up here so the lane next to me is going to go away
– Hey that cyclist is moving right to left
– Hey, I’d better speed up and pass, but I can’t go over too far to the left because there’s a car coming but I have to get by quickly and get back in my lane to get up on the on ramp so I’ll just squeeze between this cyclist & the oncoming car…
So he speeds up – to a speed exceeding the speed limit – and he clobbers the cyclist, who has the right of way and the right to make his left turn after the oncoming car goes by.
Had the Kid simply realized a couple seconds EARLIER in the traffic game what he was facing ahead he could have slowed down…for a SECOND OF TWO… and passed safely – There was 15-20 feet of wide open space to the RIGHT of our client at that point, but the Kid was negligently committed to passing… Had the Kid been paying attention our client would NOT have suffered life changing, catastrophic injuries…
Combined with the speeding admission, passing in an intersection, failing to give 3 feet of clearance, having 2 bigs dogs running free, and other admissions of careless behavior, we were able to make a very strong argument that the kid was negligent… & that our client was NOT!
We also aggressively worked up the Damages side of the case, retaining experts to review the medical side of the head to toe neurological and orthopedic injuries… we had animations put together using the 3-D imagery done during MRI and CT scans at the hospital – amazing stuff that showed how very badly the client’s hip, shoulder & scapula were permanently maimed in this crash…
In the end we mediated the case and SF went from “We Ain’t Payin'” to “How Much…” and a significant figure was paid to resolve the claim.
