Austin Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

If you’ve suffered serious injuries as a result of a motorcycle accident, Austin motorcycle accident lawyer Adam Loewy can help you put your life back together. The team at the Loewy Law Firm has been helping motorcycle accident victims for more than 15 years. During that time, we’ve helped our clients recover millions of dollars in compensation.

With our help, you’re much more likely to get the maximum amount of compensation for your injuries and financial losses after an Austin motorcycle accident. Get a free initial consultation from our motorcycle accident attorneys by calling (512) 280-0800 or visiting our contact page.

Compensation After a Motorcycle Accident in Austin

Between your physical injuries, the emotional anguish you’ve suffered, and the financial costs of treating your injuries, the losses from a motorcycle accident can quickly add up. Texas law gives you the right to recover for each category of loss when another party caused the crash, and the value of your case depends on how thoroughly every loss gets documented and presented. In motorcycle accident cases, your losses are generally referred to as “damages” and put in several categories.

Economic Damages

Economic damages cover the measurable financial harm from your crash:

• Emergency care, hospitalization, surgery, and follow-up treatment
• Future medical care for serious orthopedic injuries or traumatic brain injuries you may need long after the crash
• Physical therapy and rehabilitation
• Wages you lose while you recover
• Loss of future earning capacity if your injuries prevent you from returning to the same job or pay rate
• Repair or replacement of your motorcycle
• Replacement of riding gear destroyed in the crash, including your helmet, jacket, boots, and gloves
• Out-of-pocket costs for transportation to medical appointments and for household help while you recover

Non-Economic Damages

Non-economic damages compensate you for harms beyond your direct financial losses:

• Physical pain and suffering during recovery
• Mental anguish, including anxiety and trauma responses connected to riding or being back on the road
• Disfigurement and scarring, particularly from road rash that leaves permanent visible marks
• Physical impairment that limits your movement or activity going forward
• Loss of enjoyment of life when your injuries prevent you from riding or doing the activities you valued before the crash

Recovering Compensation When You Share Fault

Shared fault doesn’t end your case in Texas as long as your share stays at 50 percent or less. Under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 33.001, a finding of 50 percent or less reduces your recovery by your percentage of fault, and a finding of 51 percent or more bars recovery entirely. With $200,000 in damages and a 20 percent fault finding, you recover $160,000. At 51 percent, you recover nothing.

Fault apportionment in a motorcycle case is where the other driver’s insurance company puts most of its energy. Expect arguments about your lane position, your speed, your braking, your helmet, and whether you were lane splitting, along with assumptions about riders (rider bias) that have nothing to do with what happened in your specific crash. Crash reconstruction, scene photographs, witness statements, and medical records are what push back on those arguments with evidence.

What you do after a motorcycle crash directly affects what you can recover later. Here’s how to protect yourself and your right to compensation. 

1. Call 911. First responders get medical help to anyone who needs it and bring police to the scene to investigate. The responding officer’s crash report becomes a foundational document in your case, and you can request a copy once it’s available.
2. Take photos. Photograph the position of the vehicles before anything is moved, the damage to both, your visible injuries, the road surface, skid marks, debris, traffic signals, and any nearby signage. Photos taken at the scene preserve details that decide fault later.
3. Stay quiet about the crash, especially on social media. A casual statement can be used against you for the life of your case. Don’t post about the wreck online, don’t discuss fault with the other driver, and politely decline if the other driver’s insurance company asks you for a recorded statement. You are under no obligation to give one.
4. Keep every medical record and bill. Your treatment records and billing statements are the backbone of your economic damages. Save discharge paperwork, prescriptions, imaging reports, therapy notes, and receipts for anything you pay out of pocket, including mileage to and from appointments.
5. Start a pain journal. A short daily entry about your pain level, what you couldn’t do that day, and how you slept gives your non-economic damages something concrete to stand on. Specific entries carry more weight with adjusters and juries than general descriptions of pain months later.

Call Loewy Law Firm. A motorcycle accident attorney handles the investigation, the insurance company, and the case-building work while you concentrate on your recovery. The sooner we get involved, the more evidence we can preserve before it becomes inaccessible, including surveillance footage that can sometimes get overwritten on regular intervals.

Contributing Factors of Motorcycle Crashes

On a motorcycle, you have far less physical protection than someone in a car or truck, and you are harder for other drivers to see. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2024 motorcyclists were almost 27 times more likely than passenger car occupants to die in a crash and almost 5 times more likely to be injured, measured per mile traveled. Most of these crashes are caused by another driver’s conduct, and a handful of factors appear repeatedly: 

Distracted Drivers

Motorcycles are uniquely vulnerable to distracted drivers because a bike sits lower and takes up less of a driver’s field of view than a car or truck, so a driver glancing at a phone or reaching for something on the passenger seat can miss a motorcyclist entirely during a lane change or left turn. Texas Transportation Code § 545.4251 bans reading, writing, or sending an electronic message while driving, and Austin’s local ordinance goes further by prohibiting any handheld device use behind the wheel. A driver who hits you while violating either law has committed negligence per se, which helps establish their fault without you having to prove the underlying carelessness separately. 

Texting While Driving

Texting takes a driver’s eyes, hands, and attention off the road at the same time, which is why it’s the most dangerous form of distraction behind the wheel. Reading or sending a single text at highway speed pulls a driver’s eyes from the road for roughly five seconds, long enough to cover the length of a football field without looking up. For a motorcyclist sharing that stretch of road, those five seconds are the difference between a driver seeing you and a driver running into you. Texting while driving violates Texas Transportation Code § 545.4251, and Loewy Law Firm can subpoena the driver’s phone records to confirm a text was sent or received in the moments before the crash. 

Drunk Drivers

Alcohol slows a driver’s reaction time, narrows their field of vision, and impairs their depth perception, which puts every motorcyclist on the road in greater danger because spotting a bike and judging its distance already takes more attention than spotting a car. A drunk driver who hits you has broken Texas Penal Code § 49.04, and a DWI conviction or even a charge can be used as evidence of negligence in your civil case. Texas also recognizes dram shop liability under Chapter 2 of the Alcoholic Beverage Code, so if the driver was over-served at a bar or restaurant before the crash, the establishment can be named as a defendant alongside the driver, which opens a second source of insurance coverage for your recovery. 

Speeding

Speed reduces the time a driver has to recognize a motorcycle and react, and it lengthens the distance their vehicle travels before it can stop. The faster the driver, the more force transfers to the rider at impact, which is why speeding crashes produce a disproportionate share of catastrophic injuries to motorcyclists, including traumatic brain injuries and spinal cord damage. Speed also affects fault analysis in your case. The investigating officer’s crash report, witness statements, and data pulled from the at-fault vehicle’s event data recorder can establish how fast the driver was going at impact, and a speed well above the posted limit can support a claim for exemplary damages under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 41.003 when the conduct rises to gross negligence. 

Aggressive Driving

Aggressive driving puts motorcyclists at higher risk than other road users because the maneuvers that define it, like tailgating, weaving between lanes, sudden braking, and turning without signaling, give a rider almost no margin to react. Texas Transportation Code § 545.401 makes reckless driving a criminal offense, and a citation or conviction carries significant weight in your civil case. Road rage adds another layer because intentional conduct can support exemplary damages, and an auto policy that excludes intentional acts may shift recovery toward the driver’s personal assets or an umbrella policy.  

Driving While Fatigued

A fatigued driver reacts slower, scans the road less, and in the worst cases falls asleep at the wheel, any of which can leave a motorcyclist with no time to evade. Studies from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety have found that driving after 20 hours without sleep impairs a driver to a degree comparable with a 0.08 blood alcohol level, the legal threshold for DWI in Texas. Fatigue rarely leaves obvious physical evidence at the scene, so building this kind of case relies on cell phone records showing late-night activity, work schedules, hotel or travel records, and statements from passengers or coworkers about the driver’s hours before the crash. 

Inclement Weather

Bad weather doesn’t excuse a driver from causing a crash. Texas Transportation Code § 545.351 requires drivers to operate in a way that’s reasonable and prudent for the actual conditions on the road, which means slowing down, increasing following distance, using headlights in low visibility, and avoiding aggressive maneuvers when the pavement is wet or slick. A driver who doesn’t make those adjustments and hits you can still be held negligent, even if they were under the posted speed limit at the time. Weather becomes a defense for the at-fault driver only when conditions were genuinely unforeseeable, which is almost never the case in central Texas. 

Poor Road Conditions

Road hazards that a car would absorb without incident, like potholes, uneven pavement, loose gravel, or standing water, can put a motorcycle on the ground in seconds. When a poorly maintained road causes your crash, the responsible party may be a government entity rather than another driver. The Texas Department of Transportation handles state highways, while cities and counties handle local roads, and each can be held liable when they knew or should have known about a hazard and didn’t repair it or warn riders about it. Cases against governmental entities fall under the Texas Tort Claims Act, which caps damages and requires written notice within six months of the crash under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 101.101.

Injuries in Motorcycle Accidents

A rider has no airbags, no crumple zone, and no steel cage between their body and the road, so even a low-speed crash can produce injuries that would never happen to someone in a car. Helmets are 37 percent effective in preventing fatal injuries to motorcycle riders according to NHTSA, but no helmet protects the rest of the body from impact with pavement, guardrails, or another vehicle. The injuries we handle most frequently in Austin motorcycle cases include:

• Traumatic brain injuries, ranging from concussions to severe TBIs that change cognitive function permanently
• Spinal cord injuries, including incomplete and complete paralysis
• Fractured and broken bones, particularly in the legs, arms, ribs, and pelvis
• Road rash deep enough to require skin grafts and leave permanent scarring
• Crushed or amputated limbs, sometimes requiring prosthetics and lifelong care
• Internal organ damage from blunt force trauma
• Soft tissue damage to muscles, ligaments, and tendons
• Facial fractures and disfigurement
• Back and neck injuries, including herniated discs and whiplash

The value of your case has to account for the full arc of recovery, including future treatment, lost earning capacity, and the long-term effect on your daily life. A serious TBI or spinal cord injury can produce lifetime care needs in the millions of dollars, and any settlement that covers only the bills you’ve already received leaves the rest of your recovery uncompensated.

Motorcycle Fatality and Injury Statistics

The Texas Department of Transportation reported 581 motorcyclist deaths and 2,534 serious injuries on Texas roads in 2024, which works out to roughly one rider killed every day. Motorcyclists made up about 15 percent of all Texas traffic fatalities despite representing a small fraction of registered vehicles. NHTSA data for the same year shows motorcyclists were 27 times more likely than passenger car occupants to die in a crash and 5 times more likely to be injured, measured per mile traveled.

A few details from the Texas data are useful because they affect how cases get investigated and proven:

• 40 percent of motorcycle fatalities happen at or near an intersection. A driver turning left across the path of an oncoming motorcyclist is one of the most frequent fatal crash scenarios. Cases like these depend on whether the driver yielded the right of way and whether they should have seen the rider, which makes traffic camera footage, witness statements, and signal timing critical evidence.
• More than half of fatal motorcycle crashes are collisions with another vehicle. Most Texas motorcycle fatalities have a second driver whose conduct contributed to the wreck, which means most riders or their families have a viable case against another party.
• 61 percent of motorcyclist fatalities occur between May and October, with Saturdays the deadliest day. More riders on the road, heavier summer traffic, and weekend alcohol use explain the seasonal spike.
• 37 percent of Texas motorcyclists killed in 2024 were not wearing helmets. Texas allows riders 21 and over to ride without a helmet if they meet certain insurance or training requirements under Texas Transportation Code § 661.003. Helmet use can be raised during fault apportionment, but riding legally without one is not itself negligence.

Austin ranks among the Texas cities with the highest motorcycle crash counts, alongside Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Fort Worth, a result of traffic density, the speed of roads like I-35 and MoPac, and intersection volume. 

Data References
https://www.txdot.gov/safety/traffic-safety-campaigns/motorcycle-safety.html

https://data.texas.gov/stories/s/Texas-Department-of-Transportation-Traffic-Safety-/hz2w-23dc/

https://www.nhtsa.gov/road-safety/motorcycles 

Put Loewy Law Firm on Your Side After an Austin Motorcycle Crash

The other driver’s insurance company will push to settle your case quickly, sometimes within days of the crash and before you know the full extent of your injuries. The offer will likely be built around the bills already in hand, not the surgeries, therapy, or lost income still ahead. Loewy Law Firm takes over from the day you hire us. We handle the recorded statement requests, the medical records, and the investigation into every party who may share responsibility. Call the motorcycle accident lawyers at Loewy Law Firm in Austin at (512) 280-0800 before you accept any offer or give a recorded statement to the insurance company. The consultation is free and if we take your case you’ll pay nothing unless we recover compensation.