You’re riding your Harley or Honda down Glen Avenue when suddenly you get T-boned by a truck heading 
north on Sheridan. This is an all too familiar situation for motorcyclists. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how careful you are, a biker is low profile and sometimes hard to see. And people are driving distracted constantly.
As a Peoria motorcycle accident lawyer, we’ve seen every type of accident from T-bones, to rear-enders to single-vehicle crashes. Accidents involving 2 motorcycles, bikes and bicyclists, bikers getting leveled by an 18-wheeler and we’ve even had accidents where a motorcyclist was hit by a cop car.
If you are injured in a motorcycle accident, reach out to us today for a free consultation at 1-847-305-4105. We are available to all Peoria clients including clients in East Peoria, West Peoria, Bellevue, Bartonville, Norwood, Washington, and Peoria Heights.
What does full coverage insurance mean?
It has happened so many times, a biker gets in an accident and they call up the office and we ask them – do you have motorcycle insurance? And they always say the same thing – “I have full coverage.” But what does that mean?
In most situations, it means that they have motorcycle insurance but they either 1. Don’t know what they have or 2. They have the minimum limits of $25,000 in insurance required by the state of Illinois for all drivers.
How does this happen? Well, insurance is a commodity – you can buy it yourself online through a website or go through an agent. Either way, Allstate and State Farm know if they don’t offer the lowest price then you’ll go elsewhere. Agents know the same thing.
The result? You get pitched a low-price product that you grab up because it’s such a great deal but the reality is it will not provide you the insurance coverage you need – especially when riding a motorcycle.
How Much Motorcycle Insurance do I Need?
We’ve talked about this many times on this website so we won’t dive into it at length right now. However, we highly recommend that you have at least 100/300k in liability and uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage.
You should also consider having collision/comprehensive coverage to pay for your own property damage if you need it, medpay to pay some or all of your medical bills and you should think about getting GAP insurance to cover the balance between what your totaled vehicle is worth and what you owe a finance company.
Should I Work with My Insurance Company?
This is an important topic. Let’s take a hypothetical situation. You get in an accident with a car and they caused the accident. However, you should and you do file a claim with your own auto insurance company. Your insurance company calls up and they say they want to inspect the vehicle and take a recorded statement. What do you do?
First, you should call a Peoria motorcycle accident attorney to consult with them about having an attorney on the call with you. Second, you work with your insurance company because chances are you are obligated to do so by the terms of the insurance contract you signed with them. And, if you do not work with them, they can deny your claim or perhaps even drop you as a client altogether.
A word of warning – let’s say the guy who hit you in the scenario above has a small $25,000 insurance policy and you have $100,000 in medical bills, what do you do. Well, you are going to get approval from your own insurance company first to accept the $25,000 from the defendant, then you are going to pursue your own underinsured motorist coverage against your own insurance company.
This is significant because now you’re going after your own company for compensation. As a result, they become adverse to you – they’re against you. They want to limit your recovery as much as they can almost to the same extent as if you were not their insured.
Should I Work with the Other Driver’s Insurance Company?
This is a trickier question. A lot of time bikers who get in accidents ask if they should work with the insurance company for the guy who hit them. The answer is it depends. If you suffered injuries, then I would argue no. They will try and diminish your recovery any way they can. Get an attorney to represent you.
However, if you only suffered property damage and your only real issue is to get the damage to your bike fixed, then sure – go ahead and work with their insurance company.
They may ask you to do a recorded statement. We usually argue against this even in this situation but if you need to (and again you suffered zero damage at all) you might want to consider doing it as this may be the only way to get them to move forward on repairing your vehicle.
Facts About Peoria
Peoria is one of the most populated cities in Illinois and just a stone’s throw from Chicago. Whether you were injured driving on a highway like I74, I474 or I155, were involved in an accident at Main and Jefferson or hurt going over the Murray Baker Bridge, contact your Peoria motorbike accident lawyer today for a free consultation at 1-847-305-4105.
