Newton, MA — A motorcyclist crashed into a dump truck in Newton, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, September 16, 2014. The accident took place at the intersection of Walnut Street and Mill Street, around two in the afternoon.
The motorcyclist was traveling along Walnut when he hit a dump truck that was turning left onto Walnut coming from Mill Street. He suffered serious injuries and was taken to Beth Israel Hospital.
The driver of the dump truck was uninjured. The names of both men involved in the accident have not been released. A spokesman for the Massachusetts State Police said it would take about six weeks before they had concluded their investigation.
Scene of the Accident
Commentary
To me, this accident seems pretty cut and dry. A quick look at Google Maps shows that Walnut and Mill connect in a T-intersection, which means that it doesn’t matter whether the dump truck was turning left or right. He was going to be turning into the motorcycle’s path either way. And if he’s turning into the motorcycle’s path, that means the onus is on him to make sure he’s not going to smash into it the second he does. So, case closed, right? Not exactly. Now we come to my favorite part in an accident like this, where the dump truck and the company that owns it and all their lawyers play a game of Motorcyclists Are Always Wrong. It turns out this is an incredibly easy game to play. All the trucking company has to do is tell a jury that their driver thought he had enough time to turn, but it turns out the motorcyclist was driving too fast.
The jury is ready to believe it, because most people are already predisposed to think of motorcyclists as Hell’s Angels who spend most of their time either speeding down the highway, or getting into wrecks and killing themselves while protesting helmet laws. For them, this isn’t a difficult thing to do. Now, the motorcyclist’s day in court is ruined, all because they can’t admit that their driver just wasn’t paying attention to the road.
This is one of the reasons independent investigations can be such a big help following an accident like this. So many people think that a trucking company is there to help them in these sorts of situations, and the truth is they’re not. They’re there to look after the company’s bottom line. Unfortunately, this is a bias that motorcyclists have to deal with. I wish things didn’t work like this, but they do. And so people will just need to learn how to adapt.
— Grossman Law Offices
