San AntonioMotorcycle AccidentLawyer

You were just riding.

To work. Out Highway 16 toward the curves. Home from a Saturday ride with your friends. Then a driver looked straight through you, and the pavement finished what their choice started.

If that’s how your crash happened, Texas law generally lets you hold that driver responsible for what it cost you: the surgeries, the missed paychecks, the bike, the parts of your life you had to set down. I’m Guy Muller, a motorcycle accident lawyer in San Antonio, and I work these cases across Bexar County and the towns around it, including Helotes and Castroville.

The rule on the road is simple. Look for riders. Check the mirror before the lane change, look twice before the left turn, put the phone down. That rule protects every family that shares these roads. When a driver breaks it, a rider pays in skin and bone.

Why motorcycle cases are different in Texas

Motorcycle cases usually turn on two things car cases don’t: physics and bias.

The physics part is plain. There’s no steel around you, so the crash energy a car door would eat goes into your body instead. Riders come out of so-called minor collisions with shattered wrists, broken collarbones, road rash (skin ground away by the pavement, which can take skin grafts to repair), and head injuries that may not announce themselves for days. The medical file in a motorcycle case is usually thicker, the recovery longer, and the stakes higher.

The bias part is the one nobody warns you about. Plenty of adjusters, and some jurors, start from the assumption that riders are reckless. The insurance company may build its whole file on that assumption, usually some version of “the motorcycle came out of nowhere.” Nobody comes out of nowhere. Riders are simply easier to blame, and blaming you is often cheaper than paying you. So part of my job in a motorcycle case is proving, with physical evidence and witnesses, that you were exactly where you were supposed to be, riding the way a careful rider rides.

What if they say the crash was partly my fault?

Expect them to try. Texas runs on proportionate responsibility (the system that splits blame for a crash by percentage), and two numbers decide everything. If you’re found more than 50 percent responsible, you generally recover nothing. At 50 percent or less, your recovery is generally reduced by your share of the blame. Say your damages come to $100,000 and a jury puts 20 percent on you. Your recovery would usually drop to $80,000.

The insurance company knows that math cold. Every percentage point they can push onto the rider is money they keep, so the blame-shifting may start with the very first phone call. You can generally decline to give a recorded statement until you’ve talked with a lawyer, and I’d recommend exactly that.

Does riding without a helmet ruin my claim?

Generally, no, and the helmet law itself surprises people. Texas generally requires riders to wear a helmet, but a rider 21 or older can legally ride without one after completing an approved motorcycle operator training course or while covered by a health insurance plan that pays for motorcycle crash injuries. That’s Texas Transportation Code Section 661.003, and the same law generally bars police from stopping a rider just to check whether the exemption applies.

The fight comes later. Even when riding without a helmet was legal, the insurance company may argue that a helmet would have changed your injuries, and Texas law generally allows that kind of evidence to be used when the jury decides how to divide fault. Those percentages carry real weight, since your share of the blame generally reduces your recovery and can bar it entirely above 50 percent. The helmet question is still separate from who caused the wreck in the first place, and depending on what your injuries are, it may not fit your case at all. Keep your helmet and your gear, whatever their condition. They’re evidence, and they often tell the story of the impact better than any witness.

What may be on the table after a motorcycle wreck

A motorcycle case may include money for the medical bills you actually paid or still owe, the care that’s still coming, the income you lost while you healed, the earning power the injury took for good, the bike and the gear, and the losses that don’t come with receipts: pain, scarring, the work and the riding you can’t do the way you did. When a rider doesn’t survive, Texas law may give the family a wrongful death claim. That’s its own conversation, and I’d rather have it with you than write about it here.

What should I do after a motorcycle crash?

Get examined, even if you got up and walked away. Adrenaline hides injuries, and head trauma is patient. After the doctors, the case usually rises or falls on what got preserved:

• Photos of the scene: the vehicles where they stopped, skid marks, gouges in the pavement, debris, the intersection, the signal.
• Your bike, helmet, and gear, kept exactly as they are. No repairs, no cleaning, nothing thrown out.
• Names and phone numbers for every witness, plus the driver’s insurance card and the crash report number.
• Your own memory, written down while it’s fresh, including what the driver said at the scene.

The other driver’s insurance company may call fast and sound friendly. They may ask for a recorded statement or float an early check. You can generally say no to both until you’ve had advice. Call me first if you want it. The consultation is free, and you talk to me. If I take your case, my fee is a percentage of the recovery, agreed in writing up front, and I’ll explain before you sign whether you could owe case expenses even if there’s no recovery.

How long do I have to file a motorcycle accident claim?

Generally two years from the date of the crash under Texas law, and I wouldn’t spend much of it waiting. If the injured person was under 18 or of unsound mind at the time, Texas law can pause that clock until the disability ends. If someone died from the crash, the two years generally runs from the date of death. Government defendants run on a shorter clock. They’re generally entitled to written notice within six months, San Antonio’s city charter requires written notice within 90 days, and other cities and counties in the area may set their own shorter deadlines, so get advice immediately if any government vehicle or employee was involved. Evidence disappears faster than any of those dates. Camera footage from businesses and intersections can be overwritten within days, skid marks fade, and witnesses scatter. The sooner someone is working your case, the more of the crash still exists to prove.

San Antonio, Helotes, Castroville, and the roads between

I take motorcycle cases across San Antonio, Bexar County, and west into Medina County. If you ride here, you already know the geography of the risk: commuters drifting across lanes on Loop 1604 and Bandera Road, the afternoon crush on 410 and I-10, weekend traffic pouring up Highway 16 toward the Hill Country, and the run west on US 90 through Castroville. My office sits on the northwest side, just inside Loop 1604, about two miles from the Helotes city line, and most of a motorcycle case runs by phone, text, and email anyway. Where you live matters a lot less than what happened to you. I’m licensed to practice law in Texas.

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