Obviously, the perception is that the sports bikes have a higher fatality rate than the cruiser bikes. It turns out that is correct, so there is no surprise there. The last study that I could find was done back in 2010 and it shows that sports bikes per 10,000 riders are four times more likely to get into a fatality wreck than cruiser bike riders.

However, as a motorcycle injury lawyer in Atlanta, I think the perception and thought process of why sports bikes have a higher fatality rate, is actually wrong. Most think it’s because these go faster, they’re lighter, riders weave in between lanes, and more. It turns out it’s because of the age of the typical sports bike rider versus the typical age of a cruiser rider.

What Do The Statistics Say?

A more recent survey in 2016 found that somewhere around 59% of sports riders are under the age of thirty. This is in contrast to cruiser riders, in which less than 25% are under the age of thirty. In reality, the causal effect is that you have a much younger population riding sports bikes and this is in tandem with the fact that there’s a bunch of inexperienced young riders arguably, riding these sports bikes. These bikes are also lightweight, super-fast etc. In short, these statistics suggest that young age plus sports bikes is kind of a deadly combination.

I find this interesting because I went to find one answer, confirm that answer, but the stats actually showed something that I had never even thought about before. I know I have done a video in the past about the age of riders in general and what that means for a likelihood of fatality wrecks. We found that a younger population are at a higher statistical probability of having a fatality wreck, but those stats didn’t really correlate or narrow the difference between cruiser style versus sports bike style wrecks.

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As an Atlanta motorcycle accident attorney, I have to ask, how many of you know that Georgia Law requires that your headlamps be illuminated at all times while you are riding on the roads of Georgia?

It is a moving violation if you don’t have them on, and, more particularly, it could be used against you if you’re found to not have a properly operating headlamp at the time of a motorcycle accident. There could be an argument that somehow kept the driver from seeing you and therefore put some fault on you.

What Does the Federal Code Say About Head Lamps?

At the end of the day, make sure your headlamp is working at all times similar to a running daylight lamp. Currently, these come standard, but you just want to make sure that they’re working. That’s all that the Georgia Code says. The Federal Code actually goes further and allows modulating headlamps. Many riders like these modulated headlamps because they pulsate and go from 20% illumination up to a 100% back and forth every few seconds.

The theory is that these lights give more conspicuity to other drivers to see you during the day, similar to an ordinary daytime running lamp. I’ve heard from a number of motorcyclists that they’ve actually had the general public either stop them or see them and say, “Hey, why are your lights flashing? How is that not a violation of Georgia Law? It seems to be a distraction…”

My understanding is that as long as the Federal Code allows it, then it should be fine here in Georgia.

Again, the Georgia Law is very simple in the fact that it says, “You just have to have a working headlamp on at all times.” So, it is safe to assume that the oscillating lamps should be allowed.

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I wanted to do this video to show you how you can be armed with another tool to protect yourself in the event you’re in a wreck caused by another driver.

Hopefully, that doesn’t happen, but you need to be protected in advance in case. I’ve championed UM Insurance in the past and explained how you need to make sure you’ve got as much UM coverage as possible to protect yourself and pay your bills, even when the wreck’s not your fault.

As a Lawrenceville motorcycle accident attorney, what I’ve been seeing this year, more so than in the past, is that I’ve had a number of motorcycle wreck cases that have been huge accidents. This includes everything from clients being life-flighted, to staying in a hospital for multiple days, etc. As you can imagine there are enormous medical bills associated with these accidents that a distracted driver, a DUI driver, etc cause.

What’s been happening in each of these cases is that the medical bills alone are more than all of the various auto insurance policies including UM coverage and everything else that’s available.

How Can Med-Pay Coverage Help?

In these situations, you’ve got bills that the available insurance won’t cover, and it’s a very rare circumstance where you’re going after the individual for their assets. Unless it’s Donald Trump, there’s really no point in going after the individual.

So, how else do you protect yourself in this situation beyond just getting as much UM coverage as possible? Well, that’s the number one way to do it. It’s affordable, protects you, and to put it simply, you’ve got to purchase this coverage.

The number two way is medical payment coverage. When you’re choosing your motorcycle coverage, it’s a separate line item. When you choose this, you get liability that protects when you’re at-fault, when you’re not at fault, and if the other side doesn’t have enough insurance. In the end, you will have your medical payments covered.

Maximize Your Coverage

Now, what I’m seeing is most people either don’t get it at all to save a few dollars on their premium every six months, or they’re only getting $1000 worth of coverage. $1000 doesn’t get you anywhere.

What I want to see you do is maximize not only your UM coverage but maximize your medical payment coverage. I want to see at least $10,000 worth of Med – Pay coverage.

What would be much better is $25,000 or even $50,000 of Med – Pay coverage. See what those rates are and what it would cost you, because it’s massively important.

If you get in a wreck and you’re life-flighted, the helicopter alone is going to cost you $19,000 to $25,000. What if the person who hit you only has $25,000 in coverage and you have no UM, or you only have $25,000 in UM, you are not going to get enough to cover your medical bills, to pay for your Lawrenceville personal injury lawyer to represent you, and to have compensation for lost wages, pain and suffering, etc.

People miss it all the time, and I think agents are making a mistake in not really championing the need for this, just like with UM. Get as much medical payment as possible on all of your policies, especially your motorcycle policy

If you’ve got any questions or concerns, shoot me an e-mail or send me a message via the contact us page on my website.

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Can Witness Information Help?

Being a motorcycle accident attorney, this is something that I see constantly that becomes a big problem in motorcycle wreck cases, and that is police officers seem to almost consistently not put witness information on a police report.

So, you get in a wreck and have one or more people that saw it. They stop and talk to the police. Time and time again, I get the police report, and the client tells me, “Oh yeah, there was this lady or that guy stopped, you know, he was in a truck.”

We have no clue who it is, we have nothing to identify that person, and we can’t find them. It’s unbelievable. I’ve trained police officers on how to do this, yet they still don’t do it.

How Can I Be Prepared?

Here’s what you guys need to do to help protect each other. If you’re riding in a group and one of your fellow bikers goes down, you’re a witness there. Yes, you need to help them first and foremost with any injuries until the police, ambulance, firefighters, etc. arrive.

If there are witnesses and you’re talking to them, get their name, number, and address if you can. You have to protect your fellow bikers, because unlike in cars when you’re in an accident, you can often walk away and get this kind of info yourself as the injured party.

When it’s a biker, you’re often times incapacitated, you’re dealing with a broken bone, and you’re not consumed with who saw the accident, who they are, and what’s their information. When we’re there with a fellow biker, get that information for your friend, give it to them, and give it to their lawyer.

Let me give you an example, I’ve got a recent case where a truck ran into the rear of a motorcyclist waiting to turn left at a stop sign. At the scene, he was conciliatory, admitted fault, and was so sorry.

It seemed like a very straightforward rear-end collision, well guess what? We get involved, the insurance companies are involved, and he changes his story to his own insurance company. They’ve delayed the property damage claim for weeks because they’ve got their insured saying something different that sounds like the motorcyclist might have some comparative negligence.

No witnesses are on the police report, even though we knew one was there. We even have a picture of his truck. Still, we don’t have a license, and we don’t have any other kind of identifying information to find this guy who can blow it up and say this is precisely what happened, it was a rear-end collision and this guy’s entirely at fault.

Let’s Help Our Fellow Bikers

So, now the insurance company is delaying processing this motorcycle accident claim to investigate further. In the end, we’ve got to help our fellow bikers get that information on witnesses for them so they can worry about their injuries and getting to a hospital.

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What Is The Highway 80 Infrastructure?

I want to highlight a really neat motorcycle advocacy piece that the State of Georgia has taken the lead on. I’ll also explain to you the two reasons why I think it’s important for us to highlight this petition and how a motorcycle accident law firm in Cumming, GA can help.

Let me tell you first what it is. Some of you may have heard of it, but it’s a great example for us going forward. This is the highway 80 petition that has been filed regarding an eastbound curve on highway 80 in Phenix City.

What’s happening there is on this curve, it’s over a bridge, and it’s a 40-foot drop to a road below It started with one particular motorcycle accident, and then it was highlighted that this has happened before several times, which shows that this is a very dangerous curve for motorcycle riders.

So, what happens is when there’s a wreck on this curve, several motorcycle riders have been propelled in the air from the wreck and have gone over the very low barrier on this curve of the bridge, and then they fall 40 feet down to the road below.

There have been several deaths from that, and what it highlighted is infrastructure issues in how motorcycle riders are not being properly thought of when DOT is looking at roadway design, safety measures, and things like that. This petition, in particular, is focusing on this one stretch of highway to try to get this barrier heightened to keep motorcycle riders from going over and down 40 feet potentially to their death.

The Role Of Advocacy

Really great advocacy is important. This is the type of stuff that unfortunately riders have got to get more involved in, which is the micro-local issues, safety issues in particular.

There’s also other issues, but in particular, we have to try to help us stay safe. We know we’re going to get in wrecks out there and we know that these vehicles are not looking out for us. We’re getting numbers that are worse and worse every day especially, this year.

We need to have a DOT that is looking at infrastructure, not just from your typical motor vehicle with four wheels, but also motorcycle riders that have unique characteristics to their accidents. So, a great argument here is for motorcycle rights and in particular, safety.

Infrastructure Concerns For Motorcycle Riders

Number two, is what I’ve highlighted before in a prior video which is infrastructure concerns. I want you guys to be particularly aware of that. I want to hear from you so we can share to help protect each other and again, maybe highlight other areas that we can get organizations like the state of Georgia involved locally to try to help petition and change some of these infrastructure concerns for motorcycle riders.

What’s clear from all of this and from what I’ve researched is, the United States does not properly look at motorcycle safety when they are constructing infrastructure for roads. I know this from the legal work that I’ve done in pursuing infrastructure design negligence. They have a ton of data and they do a lot to try to make these roads safe for commuters, but again they’re missing the motorcycle rider.

Europe and Asia are way ahead of us in taking into consideration every time that they create some infrastructure that motorcycle riders, in particular, are going to be safe in whatever they’re designing.

So, again there is an interesting advocacy perspective here in the micro-local community to try to protect motorcycle riders.

What infrastructure issues have you seen on certain roads that are similar to what’s going on with this petition? We’re not talking about the things that we all know that’s out there which are grass clippings and those sorts of things.

I’m talking about hard infrastructures that the state or the federal government are designing that are dangerous as you’re out there riding. Let us help bring awareness for all of us when we’re out there riding and maybe give us some more advocacy issues that we can raise on the local level.

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Today I want to provide my professional opinion as a motorcycle accident attorney and talk about a study that I saw regarding forward collision warning systems and whether they are really calibrated to help protect motorcycle riders as well as the general public on four-wheel vehicles.

What I had found is the ultimate answer to the question is unfortunately no. This is yet another example of how the motorcycle riding community tends to fall back to the foreground when it comes to a lot of new legislation and a lot of new safety type devices.

Legislation Is Lagging When It Comes To Motorcycle Safety

I had talked previously about the Harley tire defect and how that brought up some issues with the law where there are standard federal requirements that cover four-wheeled motor vehicles but don’t cover motorcycles, which are the ones that need it the most when it comes to tires.

Now, here we are again with this forward collision warning systems that are now becoming more and more standard equipment on vehicles. I know I have one, and if you recall, it’s where if you’re approaching a vehicle and the system calibrates that based off of your speed and the vehicle in front of you in the distance, if it doesn’t feel that you’ve got enough time to stop, it’s giving you an advanced warning of the vehicle ahead of you.

What Does The Study Say About Forward Collision Warning Systems?

The first thing this study looked at is what is the minimum requirement for this warning system to go off to keep a collision from occurring? They say this warning should go off at least 2.1 seconds before you’re going to impact the vehicle in front of you to give you a safe distance to stop.

The study found that 40% of the time these advanced warning systems on vehicles were failing to detect a stopped motorcycle in front of the vehicle. To me, that’s astounding.

That’s not talking about intersection-type collisions, where you’ve got two vehicles moving, but is it going to detect that motorcycle? You can kind of understand that it may not pick it up with a moving motorcycle.

We’re talking about a stopped motorcycle in front of the warning system vehicle and it not even going off at all, much less 2.1 seconds or longer, to give that vehicle time not to run into the motorcycle rider.

How Can We Bring More Awareness To Issues Like These?

This is again yet another example of how the safety industry, the legal industry, legislation, and everything else, tend to forget about motorcycle riders. Again, I’ve been a proponent of this on our group. It is massively important to have groups like ABATE on the national scene and local scene, as well as some of the other motorcycle advocacy groups out there to try to tell lawmakers “Hey we’re out here. Don’t forget about us.”

These things need to be designed not only for the larger population of motor vehicles but also for the motorcycles out there. Let’s cover everybody and why not motorcycle riders, especially when the chance of severe injuries or death is so much higher in a motorcycle accident than it is compared to our four-wheeled friends?

Again, this is concerning information, and maybe someone out there watching this can help do something about it. If you have any questions or concerns about this topic, feel free to respond. You can even shoot me an email, as I’d be happy to discuss anything with you.

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If you are injured by another person’s negligence in Georgia, in a traffic collision, or in any other type of accident, what types of damages can you pursue with a personal injury claim in this state?

This is a brief look at the four types of personal injury damages, but if you are actually injured by someone else’s negligence here in Georgia, you’ll need the specific and personalized advice that an experienced Alpharetta personal injury attorney can offer, and you will need that advice at once.

What Are the Four Types of Personal Injury Damages?

What are the four types of damages that you have a right to pursue with a personal injury claim in Georgia?

• medical expenses
• lost wages
• out-of-pocket expenses that are not medical expenses or lost wages
• compensation for personal pain and suffering

Which Medical Expenses Can You Be Compensated for?

It’s not difficult to understand compensation for medical expenses. If you are injured by negligence and you prevail with a personal injury claim, you will be compensated for all of your past, present, and future medical costs arising from your personal injury or injuries.

You’ll want to know, as early as possible after you’ve been injured, what your medical prognosis is for the future. In some cases, your future medical expenses will have to be estimated, and your attorney may consult with medical and financial experts to arrive at that estimate.

Catastrophic injuries can result in complete or partial paralysis, temporary or permanent brain damage, disfigurement, or permanent disability. These medical conditions are tragic, and they may require a lifetime of treatments, surgeries, medical care, and medical expenses.

What Lost Income Can You Be Compensated for?

After an accident caused by another person’s negligence, you are also entitled by law to reimbursement for any lost income – sometimes called “lost profits.”

The exact amount of lost profits that a victim of negligence will be entitled to in Georgia will depend on whether you are a wage-earning employee, a salaried employee, or an independent contractor.

You will be entitled to whatever income you’ve lost because of the time you’ve missed from work due to your personal injury or injuries.

This means that if you take leave, sick time, or vacation time to recover your health – and you are technically being paid – you still have the right to be compensated for those days away from work because you are using those days for recuperation rather than for a vacation.

And like medical expenses, the right to reimbursement for lost income includes any past, present, or future lost income.

What Other Expenses Can You Be Compensated for?

The injured victims of negligence are also entitled to all of their out-of-pocket accident-and-injury-related expenses that are not medical expenses or lost income. Examples of what might be compensated include the cost of:

• transportation to and from medical appointments, including parking
• anything linked to your recovery that you have to purchase retail, such as bandages
• paying someone to help around the house while you’re recovering
• paying someone to care for your children while you’re recovering

It is imperative to keep every bill and every receipt that is generated as a result of your accident and injuries. If you don’t, you will be losing money that you are entitled to. Make copies of everything, and store all of the documents and receipts securely.

How Will You Be Compensated for Pain and Suffering Damages?

Finally, the victims of negligence in this state are entitled to damages for their personal pain and suffering. Pain-and-suffering damages are called “non-economic” damages because they do not reimburse you for actual monetary losses, and because you won’t have any receipts to produce.

While it can be difficult to determine a dollar amount for someone’s pain and suffering damages, Georgia’s judges and personal injury attorneys use standard and accepted formulas to determine what monetary amounts constitute fair and just awards in these cases.

How do these formulas work? In most cases, the economic damages are multiplied by a particular figure to arrive at an estimate for non-economic damages.

What Formula is Used to Determine Pain and Suffering Damages?

If your injuries were minor and you expect to recover quickly, multiply your economic damages by 1.5 to arrive at a rough figure for pain and suffering damages. If you were catastrophically injured and/or permanently disabled, multiply the economic damages by 5.

This can give you a rough idea of how pain and suffering damage amounts are determined in a typical personal injury case, but every case is different, and amounts will vary considerably. After reviewing the case, your attorney may be able to give you a more accurate estimate.

Like your other damages, compensation for your personal pain and suffering is compensation for your past, present, and future pain and suffering. If your doctor says that you will experience pain and suffering for life, you will need the maximum available compensation.

How Will a Personal Injury Lawyer in Ga Help You?

You’ll also need an experienced Alpharetta personal injury attorney who will advocate aggressively for the compensation you deserve and the justice you need.

Those are the four parts of most personal injury claims, but not every claim will include all four parts. If you do not work, for example, you won’t receive any compensation for lost wages. Nevertheless, a good accident attorney will fight hard for every cent that is rightfully yours.

Your attorney will launch an investigation of the accident, review the evidence, question any witnesses, and negotiate a settlement on your behalf. Most personal injury cases are settled out of court, so most victims of negligence don’t even have to make a court appearance.

Still, you’ll need a lawyer who is an experienced trial attorney as well as a seasoned negotiator. Every case is different, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll be offered an acceptable out-of-court settlement.

When Should You Speak to a Georgia Injury Law Firm?

If you’ve been injured by someone else’s negligence in Georgia, you must act at once. The sooner you put your attorney on the case, the more likely you are to win the full amount of compensation that you seek.

Georgia has established a two-year statute of limitations for taking legal action in a personal injury case. Do not wait two years and then try to take action at the last minute. Don’t even wait two weeks. If you’re injured by negligence in Georgia, speak to a personal injury lawyer at once.

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I will continue to break down the report that was released last month from the Governors Highway Safety Association on crashes in 2017 and more specifically, fatalities involving motorcyclists.

To remind you, the report says that there were just shy of 5,000 motorcyclist deaths last year from vehicle collisions. As a motorcycle accident attorney, I want to break down one of the key highlights of the report, which is that in 25% of motorcyclist fatalities, the motorcycle rider had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit in that state.

Does Alcohol Play A Significant Role In Motorcycle Fatalities?

What I think is that we can hopefully take these statistics to heart and maybe alter our habits a little bit. As we know, it’s our responsibility unfortunately as the motorcyclists out there in Georgia to protect ourselves.

Most accidents happen because of the fault of the other driver, not the motorcycle rider. That being said, I’ve been harping on it for a long time, but we’ve got to stay vigilant ourselves to try to avoid these things. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the only way for us to stay safe.

With this statistic, I think what we need to take away from it is to please think twice before consuming alcohol and then riding; even if you’re under the limit, because here’s the problem. Given that we have to remain so vigilant out there to protect ourselves and be defensive riders, alcohol obviously dampens our reflexes, our decision-making processes and more. So, there likely is somewhat of a correlation between this blood alcohol level statistic and fatalities.

How To Stay Safe On The Road

Again, I don’t think it’s what they’re trying to make it out to be, that it’s all motorcycle riders drunk and are doing stupid things. I think it’s more of a warning to us that as much as we would love to do it, have a beer or two, we’re under the limit and go ride… I think we’ve got to be very careful even doing that. This is because it is going to affect our ability to avoid an accident and again, unfortunately, we’ve got to watch out for the ones that are violating the rules of the road, not us; and we need to have all of our skills and all of our awareness at its peak when we’re out there riding.

This is just something to take away from this statistic in an effort to try to help everyone out there; maybe give you a little bit of something to keep in the back of your mind. Again, I know it’s not the best news in the world, but we’ve got to be careful out there.

If you have any questions or concerns, reach out to me. Shoot me an e-mail, comment on this post or video, and I’d be happy to speak with you and discuss the topic a little bit more.

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The other day I had someone reach out to me and ask me a question because he had recently been in a wreck. He’s got a motorcycle accident lawyer already, but his question was about property damage on his bike and how the property damage insurance claims process works. Can he get a check or does he have to give it to the lawyer?

I wanted to take that opportunity to explain property damage a little bit more, especially for those who have been lucky enough not to have been in an accident in Atlanta yet. Just so you know how to handle it if you are in an accident at some point, and you’ve got damage to your bike.

How Does Spaulding Injury Law Handle Property Damage Claims in Atlanta?

The answer to the question for him was, “…well, you know, you need to talk to your lawyer. It depends on the agreement you have with your lawyer.” The way we handle it is that we never charge for property damage.

If we are helping with it as part of the overall injury case, we do that for free, whatever you get for the property damage. So, if it’s a total loss, you’re getting a check from the insurance company.

Oftentimes, the check will come to us and we will actually forward it to the client. If it comes to the client directly, you take it, and you’re off and running.

You’ve got to figure that out with the lawyer and what your agreement is. My argument would be you should never cut a deal with a lawyer where they’re going to take a portion of your property damage claim. They ought to be willing to do it like us, where they just do it for free as part of the overall representation of you in the accident.

Can You Handle A Property Damage Claim Without An Experienced Motorcycle Accident Attorney?

I also want to take this opportunity to talk a little bit more about the types of property damage claims in Atlanta and how to handle them, because quite frankly you can handle it on your own. It’s very rare you would need to get a lawyer involved.

There are two potentials that happen in the property damage realm, and that is it’s either going to be fixed, or it’s going to be deemed to be too expensive to be fixed based off of the value, and it’s going to be totaled.

Most insurance companies have a 50% ratio when they decide whether it is totaled or repaired. So if the repairs are 50% or more of the value of the vehicle, they’ll just total it out. Some like USAA total it out at 75%-ish. Some of them are a little bit better and they’ll cover more of the repairs and not total it.

That’s one thing to keep in mind between guessing on what the insurance company’s likely to do. If they’re going to repair it — you know by the way, I always tell folks – run it through the at-fault party’s insurance first, because if you run it through yours, you’re going to have a deductible, and you pay that up front. You’ll get it back eventually, but it could be a year or more before you get it back.

Why have that out-of-pocket cost when you can run it against the at-fault? What I also tell folks is if the at-fault insurance company isn’t going to treat you right, they’re undervaluing the bike, they’re not willing to do proper repairs with good OEM parts, not aftermarket parts, not repaired parts – just end it with them. In that situation, it’s worth it to go with your insurance company and spend that deductible. Otherwise, work with the at-fault insurance company and get it done.

What’s A Fair Settlement For A Motorcycle Accident Claim Involving A Totaled Bike?

If it’s totaled, you’re going to want to get at least three appraisals so you can calculate the average settlement amount for your motorcycle accident claim. You can do it yourself, so you don’t spend any money. In fact, Kelley Blue Book, edmunds.com are good sites. I think TrueCar now is a good one, as well. I would get a bunch of those and find out based off of mileage, condition, any additions you have to the bike, what’s the value of that bike the moment before the wreck?

That is what you have a right to, and you want to get these estimates, average it out, and that’s what your goal is, to shoot for a number right around that range.

Those are good tips considering property damage and again, be careful on the agreements that you reach with lawyers on. Are they taking a cut of your property damage? You need that money for a new bike or to repair the bike, not to spend it on a lawyer. Attorneys can help victims reach motorcycle accident verdicts or settlements in cases involving serious injuries, but you can handle this type of case on your own.

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I recently read a report from the Federal Highway Administration that discussed the top 10 infrastructure concerns for motorcyclists in the United States. While reading this, I found the number one concern to be quite interesting, and I looked up more about this concern, and what’s going on in the industry to address it.

Before I reveal it, what do you think is the number one concern? Here are the top 10, in no particular order, and then, we can see if you get it right.

Pavement condition repairs, high friction surface treatment, curve warning signs lighting, removal of roadside trees and poles, signals, guardrail continuous protection systems, punctual energy observers, limited sight distance warning signs and prohibitive signs.

What Is The Number One Infrastructure Concern For Bikers?

The number one infrastructure concern for motorcyclists is an interesting one. I’m revealing it because I want to have it stay at the top of mind as you’re out there on the roads, because it’s a big concern, and it’s not really being fully addressed.

I also want you bikers to get out there, get involved with some organizations like, ABATE, which is a great organization here in Georgia that us advocating for motorcycle safety, and they actually have a petition right now centered in one particular area regarding the number one problem.

The number one issue is guardrail continuous protection systems. What that means is that you know your standard guardrails are steel guardrails, horizontal, with a space below it before the pavement, and then you have all the space underneath and there lies the problem.

One, it’s too low for a motorcyclist that might hit it and then go up over it, and certainly, fall on a cliff or a bridge or something like that. You’re then going to fall down or if you’re having to lay your bike down in an accident, and your sliding across the pavement, going up under it, hitting the pole or again, going down off the cliff or the bridge, especially if it’s on an elevated surface.

What Are Advocacy Groups Doing To Address This Infrastructure Concern?

This is a huge problem, particularly in Georgia. What ABATE is doing is a petition to address the several motorcycle deaths where riders are hitting the guardrail, or they’re getting in an accident right next to the guardrail, and they’re flying over the guardrail off the bridge falling down to their death.

The petition is trying to get the government to heighten guardrails to protect against these incidences that have been happening. This something that I want bikers to be thinking of when you’re out there riding in places like Dragon’s Tail, where there’s a lot of curves, guardrails, elevated surfaces, etc. You want to slow down, be even more vigilant because you don’t want to get in an accident or have to lay down your bike when you don’t have the proper guardrail protection.

It’s also interesting because studies have been going on throughout the United States and in tandem with Europe regarding this issue. Spain’s one of the leaders on this issue and they’re actually mandating motorcycle friendly guardrail systems be placed on their highways and roads.

If you think of any other countermeasures or infrastructure concerns that run on the list, respond to this video, shoot me an email.

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