In 2024, over 5,000 motorcyclists were reported seriously injured, and approximately 340 motorcyclists were killed, representing around 21% of all road fatalities. And here’s the thing: you can be the safest rider on the road, but you can’t always account for other people’s actions or trust their driving.
While getting into an accident on the road isn’t something anyone wants to experience, sadly many people do, and they don’t always know what their rights are post-accident.
Let’s take a little look at some of this in more detail.
General Damages
General damages cover the physical and emotional impact of an injury sustained whilst riding a motorcycle. So it’s pain, suffering and any loss of amenity, meaning your ability to enjoy activities and daily life the way you did before you had the accident. The amount awarded depends heavily on the severity of the injury and its long term effects. So a broken wrist that fully heals is valued very differently to a spinal injury with lasting consequences. Courts and solicitors typically refer to published guidelines that set out compensation brackets for specific injury types. This gives a rough sense of what a case might be worth even before it’s fully assessed. The benefit of general damages is that the law recognises that an accident’s costs aren’t just financial.
Special Damages
Special damages compensate for the actual financial losses caused by the accident outside of any lost earnings, medical and rehabilitation costs and the cost of replacing damaged protective gear like a helmet, jacket or leathers.
Unlike general damages, this figure is calculated from actual receipts, payslips and documented costs, which makes keeping every piece of paperwork from the accident prior to it and afterwards really important.
This can also extend to the immediate aftermath too. It can cover future loss of earnings if the injury affects long-term ability to work or ongoing care costs for more serious injuries. Riders who don’t track these costs can end up undercompensated because there’s no evidence to support a higher payout figure.
Time Limits
This is a sensitive one as you don’t get an unlimited amount of time to make any claim. The window for court proceedings to start is generally within three years of the date of the accident. After this, you lose the right to claim entirely, regardless of how strong the case might have been.
There are exceptions to this, and for children it starts from their 18th birthday. They get three years from the day they turn 18 to make a claim, and the rules differ for cases involving reduced mental capacity where the time limit does not apply in the same way.
Starting the claims process well before that deadline, rather than losing out to it, gives more time to gather evidence and build a stronger case since evidence like witness accounts and CCTV footage tends to become harder to obtain the longer a claim is left unaddressed.
