Motorcycle accident claims

Claim for your gear. Almost nobody does

Your helmet, jacket, gloves, boots, armour and any electronics in them are property that was damaged in the accident. They are recoverable in the same way the bike is, and the overwhelming majority of riders never mention them.

The helmet matters most. A helmet that has taken an impact must be replaced even where it looks undamaged — the protective liner crushes once, by design, and cannot do it again. Nobody expects you to keep riding in it, and nobody should expect you to pay for the replacement yourself.

• Photograph everything before you throw any of it out, including the inside of the helmet.
• Keep the damaged gear if you can. An insurer that wants to dispute the claim will ask for it.
• Find receipts if you have them, or note the make and model. Good riding gear is expensive and a list of brands is more persuasive than a round number.

Photograph the road surface before you leave

Gravel, spilled diesel, a pothole, a raised service cover or a badly repaired patch will unsettle a bike in a way it never would a car. For a rider this is a far more common cause than it is for a driver, and it is the evidence that disappears first — the next rain, the next sweeper, or the council patching it the following week.

Take wide shots showing where the hazard sits relative to the road and to where you came off, and close shots of the surface itself. If the cause was the road rather than a driver, that can point at the road authority, and that is a different kind of claim with its own notice requirements.

Get checked, even though you feel fine

Riders come off adrenaline sharply and late. It is entirely normal to feel unhurt at the roadside, ride or get a lift home, and discover the following morning that a shoulder, wrist or back is not working. By then the connection between the accident and the injury has to be argued rather than assumed.

Be seen the same day if you possibly can, and make sure the record says it was a motorcycle accident and gives the date. That one line does more work in a claim than almost anything else you can do on the day.

“I didn’t see the bike” is a pattern, not an excuse

A driver turning across your path and saying they did not see you is the most recognised collision pattern in motorcycling. It is well documented, and it is not a defence — a driver is required to look for what is there, and failing to notice a motorcycle is a failure to keep a proper lookout rather than an explanation.

If that is what happened, say so plainly and in those words when you report it and when you claim. Do not soften it into "they didn’t see me, so it was just one of those things".

Have the bike looked at by somebody who knows bikes

Frame and fork damage is not reliably visible. A bike that has been down can look straight, start, and ride, and still be out of alignment in a way that shows up as a weave at speed. A general smash repairer is not the right person to make that call.

You are generally entitled to choose your own repairer. An insurer suggesting one is a suggestion, not an instruction.

Helmets and what happens if you were not wearing one

Be straightforward about this rather than hopeful. In several states a finding of contributory negligence is mandatory where a rider was not wearing a helmet as required by law, and in the Northern Territory the reduction is a fixed 25 per cent. It is not a bar and it does not end the claim.

A reduced claim is still a claim, and it is worth a great deal more than the nothing you get by deciding for yourself that it is not worth making. That decision belongs to a lawyer who has seen the file, not to you at the roadside.

Pillion passengers

A pillion passenger is covered exactly like any other passenger. CTP covers injury to any person caused by the rider’s negligence, and there is no passenger exclusion — being on the back of the bike rather than in a car changes nothing about the entitlement.

That holds even where the rider was a friend or a partner, and even where the rider was the one at fault. The claim is against the insurance attached to the registration, not against the person.