Michael Rehm - (916) 233-7346
Motorcyclists make up a small percentage of all vehicle miles traveled in California — and a disproportionately large percentage of traffic fatalities. According to the California Office of Traffic Safety 2023 crash rankings, Sacramento ranked among the worst of California's fifteen largest cities for motorcycle killed and injured victims. The city's overall crash record is severe — Sacramento ranked second statewide for total killed and injured across all vehicle types (4,214 victims), first for speed-related crash victims (745), and first for alcohol-involved victims (454). Motorcyclists feel the worst of all of it. A speed differential that leaves a car driver with a sore neck leaves a rider in the trauma unit.
Attorney Michael Rehm handles motorcycle accident cases throughout Sacramento County. If another driver's negligence caused your injuries, I can evaluate your claim, identify every available source of liability and insurance coverage, and take the case through litigation if that is what it takes to recover what you are owed. Motorcycle cases require different thinking than car accident cases — the injuries are more severe, the comparative fault fights are more aggressive, and the defense playbook is more sophisticated. I handle them accordingly. There is no fee unless you recover.
Call (916) 233-7346 for a free consultation — home visits and hospital visits available.
How Motorcycle Accident Claims Work in California
The same legal foundation applies to motorcycle cases as to any motor vehicle claim. Civil Code section 1714(a) requires every person to use ordinary care to avoid injuring others. To prevail at trial, a plaintiff must establish three elements under CACI 400: that the defendant was negligent; that the plaintiff was harmed; and that the defendant's negligence was a substantial factor in causing the harm. CACI 700 states the driving standard directly: "A person must use reasonable care in driving a vehicle. Drivers must keep a lookout for pedestrians, obstacles, and other vehicles. They must also control the speed and movement of their vehicles."
What changes in motorcycle cases is how each element gets contested. The defendant rarely disputes that a crash happened or that the rider was injured. The fight is almost always about who caused it and to what degree. Understanding the specific fact patterns that generate motorcycle cases in Sacramento — and the legal framework that governs them — is where the case gets built or lost.
Left-Turn Cases: The Most Common Fact Pattern
The single most common serious motorcycle crash in Sacramento: a car turns left across oncoming traffic directly into the motorcycle's path. The turning driver either didn't see the motorcycle or misjudged its speed and distance. Vehicle Code section 21801(a) puts the duty squarely on the driver making the left turn: the driver must yield to oncoming vehicles that are close enough to constitute a hazard at any time during the turning movement. CACI 704 amplifies this in multi-lane scenarios — a turning driver must check that no oncoming vehicle is close enough to be a hazard before proceeding across each lane.
The "someone waved me through" defense comes up regularly in these cases. It doesn't work. As the court held in Gilmer v. Ellington (2008) 159 Cal.App.4th 190, while a motorist may waive their own right of way, that waiver does not extend to any other motorist in adjacent lanes. The turning driver's duty under section 21801(a) requires checking all oncoming lanes — not just the one where someone flashed their lights. Left-turn cases are often liability-favorable when the rider's speed and lane position can be established cleanly.
Lane Splitting
California legalized lane splitting in 2016. Vehicle Code section 21658.1 defines lane splitting as driving a motorcycle between rows of stopped or moving vehicles in the same lane, on divided and undivided streets, roads, and highways alike.
What section 21658.1 does not do is set a specific numerical speed standard. A prior CHP brochure referenced 30 mph and a 10 mph speed differential as benchmarks — those figures were withdrawn in 2015 after a court challenge and are not current official guidance. The standard that governs is the basic speed law: Vehicle Code section 22350 requires every driver to travel at a reasonable speed given the actual conditions. Under CACI 706, a violation of the basic speed law is negligence per se — if the jury finds the rider was traveling at an unreasonable speed, negligence is established. Reasonableness is a jury question on the specific facts.
In practice, the defense almost always claims a lane-splitting rider was traveling too fast or too close. The response is factual: what was the rider's actual speed, what were the surrounding traffic conditions, and what did the adverse driver see — and when. Deposing the adverse driver on exactly what they observed and when they saw the motorcycle is critical to anchoring a comparative fault percentage that reflects reality rather than the insurer's opening anchor.
Comparative Fault
California follows a pure comparative fault system under Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804. Any percentage of fault attributable to the plaintiff reduces — but does not eliminate — recovery proportionally. A motorcyclist found 30% at fault recovers 70% of proven damages. Defense counsel and insurers know this, and they exploit it: the standard opening position in a motorcycle injury claim is to assign the rider inflated comparative fault — 30%, 40%, sometimes 50% — as a negotiating anchor.
Countering inflated comparative fault assignments requires locking down the facts early. The adverse driver's testimony on speed perception, sight lines, and reaction time needs to be in the record before the defense has built a narrative. In cases where event data recorders are present — and many post-2018 motorcycles carry ECU data capturing pre-crash speed, throttle position, brake application, and lean angle — that data either corroborates your client's account or reveals problems that need to be addressed directly. Get to the bike before it is repaired or sold.
What You Can Recover
Motorcycle crashes produce catastrophic injuries at a rate far exceeding car accidents. The damages framework in California is the same across vehicle types, but the dollar amounts and the complexity of proving them are materially different in motorcycle cases.
Economic damages are the objectively verifiable losses: past and future medical expenses, lost earnings, impaired earning capacity, and property damage. Under Civil Code section 1431.2 (Proposition 51), economic damages are joint and several — each defendant is liable for the full amount of economic losses regardless of their individual share of fault. In catastrophic injury cases, future medical costs are the largest component and require a certified life care planner to document lifetime care projections. Expert testimony is required; a jury cannot award speculative future damages without evidentiary support.
Noneconomic damages — pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, physical impairment, emotional distress — are several only under Proposition 51. Each defendant pays their proportionate share. CACI 3905A gives the jury this instruction: "No fixed standard exists for deciding the amount of these noneconomic damages. You must use your judgment to decide a reasonable amount based on the evidence and your common sense." In catastrophic injury cases involving permanent disability, one approach available to plaintiff's counsel is the per diem argument — presenting noneconomic damages as a daily cost over the plaintiff's life expectancy and asking the jury to calculate an amount accordingly. This approach is well-established in California and is particularly suited to motorcycle cases where chronic pain, permanent impairment, and loss of mobility are part of the daily reality.
Punitive damages are available in cases where the defendant's conduct meets the standard in Civil Code section 3294: clear and convincing evidence of malice, oppression, or fraud. In motorcycle cases, this most commonly applies to drunk drivers. Proof that a driver was under the influence at the time of the crash is not, by itself, sufficient — the standard requires despicable conduct with willful and knowing disregard for the rights or safety of others. Prior DUI convictions are evidence of heightened conscious disregard and should be obtained from the driver's full DMV record and any prior criminal files.
Wrongful death cases — when a rider is killed — proceed under Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60, which defines who may bring the claim, and a parallel survival action under CCP section 377.30, which allows the estate to recover damages the decedent would have recovered. The scope of recoverable damages in survival actions depends on the current state of CCP section 377.34 — which has been the subject of recent legislative amendment — and should be evaluated at the time of filing.
Catastrophic Injuries in Motorcycle Cases
There is no crash structure around a motorcycle rider. No airbag, no crumple zone, no steel cage. The injuries that result from serious motorcycle crashes are categorically different from what car accident cases typically present, and evaluating them correctly requires expertise that goes beyond standard orthopedic analysis.
Traumatic Brain Injury
Motorcycle TBI is frequently missed at initial emergency room evaluation. The rider was helmeted, GCS on scene was within normal limits, CT was negative — and the ER discharges the patient with a concussion diagnosis. Weeks later, the rider has persistent cognitive deficits, behavioral changes, emotional dysregulation, and chronic headaches. What the CT didn't show was diffuse axonal injury — microscopic shearing of white matter tracts that standard imaging cannot detect but that fMRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) can document. Neuropsychological testing provides the functional baseline. Build the TBI case early. Do not wait for the defense neurological examination to establish the injury.
Spinal Cord Injury
Spinal cord injuries from motorcycle crashes range from incomplete injuries producing partial sensory and motor loss to complete injuries producing permanent paralysis. The lifetime care costs for a complete cervical spinal cord injury run into the millions — the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation's data puts the first-year costs of a high cervical injury above $1 million, with annual subsequent costs exceeding $180,000. A certified life care planner is not optional in these cases. It is the foundation of the future damages calculation.
Traumatic Amputation
Motorcycle impacts produce a disproportionate share of traumatic amputations — lower extremities in particular. The life care plan for an amputee includes prosthetic limbs (typically requiring replacement every three to five years), surgical revisions, physical therapy, psychological treatment, occupational adaptation, and home modification. Over a working-age plaintiff's lifetime, the aggregate cost is substantial and must be documented by someone with specific expertise in amputee rehabilitation costs.
Degloving and Road Rash
Full-thickness road rash — partial or complete degloving of skin from the impact surface — is routinely undervalued by insurance adjusters who categorize it as a soft tissue injury. It is not. Full-thickness degloving requires skin grafting, produces permanent scarring and contractures, often results in loss of sensation in the affected area, and carries significant infection risk during healing. A plastic surgeon needs to be involved in the care and the damages evaluation. The long-term consequences — visible scarring, impaired function, psychological impact of permanent disfigurement — are recoverable noneconomic damages under CACI 3905A and need to be presented with the same rigor as any other permanent injury.
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome
Fractures from motorcycle impacts — particularly to extremities — carry elevated risk of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. CRPS presents as burning or aching pain, allodynia (pain from normally non-painful stimuli), and autonomic changes in the affected limb, typically developing weeks to months after the initial injury. It significantly inflates future care costs and is notoriously difficult to defend against because it does not produce consistent objective findings on standard imaging. If your client develops signs of CRPS after a fracture, get a pain management specialist and a neurologist on board immediately. The condition and its costs need to be in the record before the defense hires its own expert.
The Bias Problem, the Helmet Defense, and What the Insurance Company Is Doing
Motorcycle cases are different from car accident cases in one way that has nothing to do with the law: a significant percentage of jurors arrive at the courthouse with preexisting assumptions about motorcyclists. Reckless. Speeding. Asking for it. Insurance adjusters know this, and they factor it into every early offer. Managing the narrative from day one — through investigation, discovery, and case presentation — is part of the job in every motorcycle case I handle.
The Helmet Defense
Vehicle Code section 27803 requires every motorcycle operator and passenger to wear a Department of Transportation-compliant safety helmet. If a rider was not helmeted, the defense will raise it. The legal framework mirrors the seatbelt defense under CACI 712 — the defense must prove that (1) a compliant helmet was available, (2) a reasonably careful person in the rider's situation would have worn one, (3) the rider did not, and (4) the rider's injuries would have been avoided or less severe with a helmet.
The critical limitation: element four requires the defense to prove the specific injuries claimed would have been avoided or less severe. If the injuries are orthopedic — fractured tibia, traumatic amputation, road rash — the helmet has no relevance and the evidence should be excluded. The defense cannot use non-use of a helmet to inflate comparative fault across the entire damages picture when the injuries have nothing to do with head protection. Fight the admissibility of helmet evidence early and confine any comparative fault to the injuries it could plausibly have affected.
Protective Gear Arguments
Beyond helmets, defense counsel regularly attempts to introduce evidence that the rider was not wearing a jacket, gloves, or boots. No California statute requires protective gear other than a helmet. There is no negligence per se argument available. These arguments should be challenged on admissibility — the question is whether failure to wear non-required gear meets the standard for comparative fault under the specific facts of the case, not whether a jury might use it to punish the rider for choices that have nothing to do with who caused the crash.
Visibility
"I didn't see him" is the most common defense narrative in motorcycle cases. It is not an excuse. Every driver on a California highway owes a duty of care under CACI 700 to keep a proper lookout for other vehicles. The failure to perceive a motorcycle that was lawfully present in the driver's field of travel is itself evidence of negligence — not a defense to it. Discovery into the adverse driver's sight lines, speed, phone usage, and the timeline of their perception should be conducted with that framing from the outset.
The Insurance Playbook
Motorcycle injury claims follow a predictable defense script. Knowing it in advance shapes how the case is handled from the first contact.
The early low offer arrives before the rider has retained counsel — sometimes while they are still in the hospital. The adjuster has assessed the claim, factored in jury bias, and made an offer that is a fraction of what the case is worth to an unrepresented claimant who does not know their rights. The recorded statement request follows quickly: the adjuster wants the rider to describe the crash on the record before the rider understands comparative fault, lane splitting law, or the actual value of the claim. Do not give a recorded statement to an adverse insurer without counsel.
Once litigation begins, the defense independent medical examination is the next tool. The defense IME is not an independent evaluation — it is a paid opinion designed to minimize injury severity, attribute symptoms to pre-existing degeneration, and provide a ceiling for future care costs that the defense's life care expert can defend at trial. A qualified retained expert and a complete medical record that documents the injury progression from the date of the crash forward is the response.
Social media demands are standard in catastrophic injury cases. The defense will request every photograph, video, and post in which the plaintiff appears after the accident, looking for anything showing physical activity inconsistent with claimed injuries. Counsel clients on this early and document the actual functional limitations consistently in the medical record.
Sacramento Motorcycle Crash Data
Sacramento's road conditions and crash patterns create specific, recurring risks for motorcyclists. The corridors that appear most frequently in the city's injury data are the same corridors where motorcycle crashes concentrate.
- The Sacramento Vision Zero High Injury Network identifies four corridors responsible for a disproportionate share of the city's serious and fatal crashes: Florin Road, Stockton Boulevard, El Camino Avenue, and Marysville Boulevard. These are high-speed, multi-lane arterials with frequent left-turn movements, limited sight lines at intersections, and documented histories of serious crashes involving all vehicle types.
- The city's three highest-concentration KSI intersections are all on Stockton Boulevard: Stockton/Broadway, Stockton/Lemon Hill Avenue, and Stockton/47th Avenue. Left-turn conflicts at these intersections are among the most common serious crash patterns in Sacramento.
- Sacramento's high-speed freeway corridors — I-5, Business 80, Highway 50, and Highway 99 — concentrate the most severe-impact motorcycle crashes. Highway 99 south of Sacramento records more fog-related traffic fatalities than any other roadway in the United States. Tule fog advisories run from November through March. A motorcycle rider caught in a sudden fog event at highway speed faces conditions that can be fatal before the rider can safely reduce speed.
- Sacramento ranked first among California's fifteen largest cities for speed-related killed and injured victims (745) and first for alcohol-involved victims (454) in 2023. Both factors — speed and impairment — produce the crash conditions most likely to kill or catastrophically injure a rider.
- Downtown and midtown Sacramento have the highest concentration of DUI-related crashes in the city, according to the city's own crash data. These are also the neighborhoods with the heaviest motorcycle traffic. Nighttime weekend hours in the midtown grid generate a disproportionate share of DUI crash events involving motorcyclists.
Attorney Michael Rehm handles motorcycle accident cases throughout Sacramento County on a contingency fee basis. No fee without a recovery. Call (916) 233-7346 for a free consultation — home visits and hospital visits available.