Bicycle Injuries To Children
See Also: Bicycle Accidents : Proving the Case Section
Forensic Evidence
Keep the bicycle, keep the helmet, keep the clothes, keep the shoes. Do not wear the clothes again, ride the bicycle again, or use the helmet again.
The facts of the accident may be proven by forensic evidence, by the use of skid mark measurements, scattered debris, a groove in the pavement or a furrow on the grass and gravel on the side of the roadway.
Most of the time there is no such evidence to gather. The roadway has been swept clean, or the accident happened in the rain and the skid marks were not imprinted. The police arrived but were called to another accident and took no pictures.
Unless the police or highway patrol thought there was a possible traffic fatality it is unlikely that they would take pictures or attempt to preserve evidence. In a smaller municipality the likelihood increase of pictures accompanying a police report.
Some of the better remaining evidence may have a limited time to be located and preserved, because of the way the car accident process works.
The car that hit and hurt your child may not show much damage at all, but there may be a dent, a impression, a scratch or two, a paint transfer from a bicycle if your child was on a bike.
This little dent, scratch, paint may be important to inspect, photograph, measure and document. Sometimes, the angle of the impact or the brush pattern of the paint transfer can yield added information to support the way that the accident happened.
Some of the time, actually more often than not, the car of the negligent driver has been repaired or the damaged portions removed, before a child accident lawyer is consulted.
Even if you retain a personal injury attorney right away for your child’s injury claim, the car that hit your child may be taken to a body shop or be removed from the local area.
Without an immediate emergency motion to preserve evidence, the personal injury attorney will not be able to get at and preserve such evidence. It is rare, frankly, for attorneys to make such emergency motions to preserve evidence, and unless the claim is for clearly catastrophic injuries a law firm will not undertake to do so.
The location of a child’s fracture may be correlated with information about where on the vehicle contact happened.
Blood stains on the child’s clothes may require that the clothes be kept as if they are a medical waste product, do not mix them with other clothes or let them come into contact with others. Speak to your attorney about whether or not to preserve the clothes. It may be good enough, depending upon the facts, to take good photographs of the stains on the clothes and then to clean them and keep them.
In today’s electronic and Internet connected world, traffic intersection cameras may contain vital evidence. Dashboard cams may be present.
Responding Police Officer’s body cams may have recorded the scene but usually the recording will not been stored or archived, unless a criminal part or circumstance associated with the claim.
Importantly, the “black box” of the car that hit and hurt your child may yield valuable data such as speed and braking. Sometimes if the vehicle has been driven after the event such data is erased.
Recently in a case involving two vehicles, one of the vehicles was hit by the other and the vehicle in which my client was a passenger rolled over. The car of the other driver was towed away. The black box data was wiped clean upon arrival to the tow yard because of a dashboard fire. I was able to secure the evidence of the black box of my own client’s vehicle to prove that my client had not been speeding.
The point I hope to have made clear is that many children bicycle accident lawsuits may not have a super enormous amount of physical evidence, and you have to make the best of what you have. Sometimes quick action needs to be taken to preserve evidence.
In cases of catastrophic injuries to a child who riding a bike and was hit by a car having
and using skilled forensic experts early is often highly important. See also: Use Experts for Top Money Compensation
