Pecatonica man riding motorcycle killed by left turning semi

A Pecatonica man was killed in a motorcycle accident yesterday.  The man was riding north on Pecatonica Road when a semi traveling south made a left hand turn in front of him, resulting in a wrongful death accident.

I have written several times about the frequency with which serious motorcycle accidents are caused by the failure of drivers to yield the right-of-way to motorcycles while making left turns or emerging from side streets or driveways.  Most frequently, the at-fault drivers are driving private passenger vehicles.  However, in this motorcycle wrongful death accident, the at fault driver was a truck driver.

Truck drivers are professional drivers and have a higher degree of training in the safe operation of their vehicles.  Further, because they frequently have to negotiate turns pulling long trailers and because they accelerate slowly from a stopped position, truck drivers know that they have to be careful to make sure that oncoming traffic is clear because when they begin to turn, they occupy the lane for oncoming traffic much longer than would a private passenger vehicle.  Any time a truck driver fails to yield the right of way while making a left hand turn, a serious truck accident is a likely result.

The news story on this indicated that the accident scene was closed for several hours for investigators.  It would be reasonable to guess that this was an accident reconstruction team which would have been taking measurements and photographs and otherwise extensively documenting the scene.  Unfortunately, as was the case with this fatal truck-motorcycle accident in Maryland, investigators do not always draw the right conclusions about what happened.  This may be due to a bias against or inexperience with motorcycles.  Because the investigation by local authorities will be a starting point for the case, this family would do well to hire an experienced Chicago personal injury lawyer to make sure that a proper accident reconstruction is completed.

The other alternative to the investigators being from the local police or sheriff's department is that the investigators were from the the trucking company or their insurer.  As we saw with the wrongful death train accident case in Minnesota, they should not be trusted to undertake an even-handed investigation into this motorcycle accident.