Motorcycle Crash: The Helmet Series, Episode 1
Video Transcript:
Hi I’m Mike Hancock of Hancock Injury Attorneys and we’re standing in my office today and over on my credenza we have three helmets. And most of my clients who come in for initial consultations end up asking me by the end of the consultation, “Hey Mr. Hancock do you ride motorcycles?”. I always have to tell them, no these are not my helmets these are helmets of number of my clients who have had a number of motorcycle accidents. I’ve used these helmets as evidence in their cases and I also keep their helmets on my credenza; just as kind of a reminder of who I represent.
This is the story today of this one helmet, the story behind the helmet. This was a gentleman, and this kind of typifies the type of case that I see with motorcycle accidents. This gentleman was one of my favorite clients. 38-years-old at the time of the accident, a member of the Armed Forces worked out at CENTCOM and computers. And he was the most responsible of riders and person he could be. Which is why I say it typifies the typical motorcycle accident.
My client was riding his motorcycle along highway 301 and somebody pulled out from the side business directly in front of my client and just did not see my client at all and it happened in such a way that he had no opportunity to avoid the accident and essentially he hit, t-boned the side of her car about 45 miles per hour. He hit the side of the car went up over the car. He suffered a lot of serious orthopedic injuries; including a crushed elbow broken pelvis on numerous internal injuries a broken femur and other injuries.
One of the things that typifies this accident is what I’ve seen in my experiences that no matter how careful of a rider you are no matter how much experience you have sometimes you have no way to avoid the accident just because of the way somebody might pull out right at the last second in front of you and that is one of the most common types of collisions we see in motorcycle accidents. Where someone either turns left directly in front of you or pulls out of a side business onto a street directly in front of you for whatever reasons the people just failed to see motorcycles as they’re coming down the road.
What I really remember about my clients and this helmet every time I see it and talk about it, is despite his serious orthopedic injuries, was the type of help we were able to provide my client. He almost could retire from the military and he was about 18 and a half years into his time. And he was trying to retire at 20 years due to the disabilities. He was in jeopardy of being forced to retire before his 20 years. Which, would have prevented him from getting a lot of the benefits of retiring at 20 years.
We were able to assist him in getting through to that 20 years so that he retired with the full benefits and we were able to settle his case for enough money to not only pay for all the numerous medical bills but make sure he had money for his family and for future medical bills that he’s definitely going to incur. What I always remember about this client is, even though after six months or so he was only able to straighten his elbow out to about this point he had such a positive attitude that that was a great thing for him.
He was excited that he could extend his arm out that far, and he just had such a great attitude. I will always remember that even though all the bad things that happen to him, he was like you know what I’m alive, I’m with my family and I can still go about and enjoy my life so that’s part of the story behind this helmet.
