Call For A Free Consultation(602) 345-1818
Call For A Free Consultation(602) 345-1818
You were riding legally. Someone in a Tahoe turned left across your lane. Now you’re staring at a hospital bill, a totaled bike, and an adjuster who already sounds skeptical of your story. That pattern, the left-turn-into-an-oncoming-rider, is the single most common motorcycle crash we see in Phoenix, and it almost never plays out fairly without legal pressure.
This page is for riders who were just hit in the Phoenix metro and need a straight answer about what comes next. Below: how fault works under Arizona law, why adjusters treat motorcyclists differently, what the 2022 lane filtering update changed, and how to protect a claim before the other side starts framing it.
If you’d rather talk than read: Free case review with Jared J. Pehrson, (602) 345-1818. We answer 24/7.
We handle Arizona motorcycle accident cases from the first phone call to the final check. That includes:
Jared handles the case personally. Not a paralegal queue, not a rotating intake team. That’s the wedge for choosing a boutique firm over a volume-driven model.
Talk to us before talking to insurance: (602) 345-1818.
If any of these apply, get a lawyer involved early:
Riders get hurt worse, on average, than people in cars. NHTSA traffic safety data shows motorcyclists are roughly 28 times more likely than passenger-vehicle occupants to die in a crash per vehicle mile traveled. That severity gap is exactly why insurers fight motorcycle claims harder: the medical numbers are bigger, and the carrier knows a quick “lowball plus bias” approach often works on unrepresented riders.
Arizona follows a pure comparative negligence approach (codified in Arizona statute). That means your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, but you can still recover even if you were 40%, 60%, or 90% responsible. There’s no bar at 50% like some other states have.
Example: a jury values your damages at $200,000 and assigns you 20% of the fault (maybe for going slightly over the speed limit). You recover $160,000.
Read more on Arizona’s comparative negligence rule before you agree to any percentage with an adjuster.
Arizona traffic law requires a driver turning left to yield to oncoming traffic that’s close enough to be a hazard. When a car turns left across an oncoming motorcycle’s path, the turning driver is typically at fault. The common defense, “I didn’t see the bike,” is not a legal excuse. It’s an admission they failed to yield.
That presumption is strong but not absolute. The defense will look for any speed, lane-position, or visibility argument they can stack against you. Counter it with witness statements, scene reconstruction, and the actual statute, not with a guess on a phone call.
Here’s what most riders don’t realize until it’s costing them money. Adjusters often work from a quiet assumption that motorcyclists were doing something risky. Speeding. Weaving. Wheelying. Not wearing gear. The bias shows up in three concrete ways:
Counter the bias with documentation, not arguments on the phone. Photos, medical records, witness contacts, gear receipts, and crash-scene measurements all matter more than anything you say in a recorded statement.
Two laws confuse riders and get misused by adjusters constantly.
Under Arizona law, only riders under 18 are required to wear a helmet. Adults can legally ride without one. Eye protection is required for everyone unless the bike has a windscreen.
Not wearing a helmet does not make a crash your fault. It can, however, come up as a comparative-fault argument on head-injury damages specifically. The defense will try to argue a helmet would have reduced the injury. That’s a damages-side argument, not a liability one, and it’s heavily fact-dependent.
Arizona’s 2022 lane filtering law made limited filtering legal. The rules are narrow:
Full lane splitting (moving between cars at speed on the freeway) is still illegal in Arizona. The distinction matters because adjusters routinely conflate the two to blame the rider. If you were filtering legally at a stopped Phoenix intersection and got rear-ended or sideswiped, the lawful filtering doesn’t shift fault to you. We’ve seen carriers ignore the 2022 amendment until pushed on it.
The insurance side of a motorcycle case looks different from a car case in three ways.
For policies issued or renewed beginning July 1, 2020, Arizona’s minimum liability limits are 25/50/15. That’s $25,000 per person, $50,000 per accident, $15,000 property damage. A single overnight hospital stay for orthopedic surgery can blow through $25,000 before lunch the next day. If the driver who hit you carries the legal minimum, their policy may not come close to covering your medical bills.
Arizona law requires insurers to offer uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. Consumers can reject it in writing. For motorcyclists, that rejection is often a mistake.
Here’s why UM/UIM matters more for riders: orthopedic and head injuries are common, the at-fault driver’s policy is frequently maxed out, and your UM/UIM coverage stacks on top of theirs to fill the gap. Check your declarations page today. If you have it, we’ll pursue it. If you rejected it, we’ll look at every other layer of coverage available, including household policies.
Many bike-specific policies have low or zero med-pay coverage. Health insurance carriers often place subrogation liens on settlements. Sorting the lien stack at the end of a case is where a lot of unrepresented riders lose money, sometimes more than they recovered from the carrier.
Some Phoenix corridors come up again and again in our motorcycle files:
For broader context on the most dangerous roads in Arizona, the patterns hold: high-speed corridors and unprotected left turns are where riders get hit.
In rough order of priority:
Under A.R.S. § 12-542, you have two years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit in Arizona. There are narrow exceptions (minors, certain discovery situations, and government-entity claims, which carry their own much shorter notice requirement under A.R.S. § 12-821.01), but the default is two years and it is strict.
Two years sounds like a long time. It’s not. Witnesses move. Camera footage cycles out. Memories fade. The case is built in the first 90 days, not the last 90 days. See Arizona’s two-year statute of limitations for more detail.
The boutique-firm model is the point. When you call, you talk to Jared or to someone who works directly with Jared. There is no intake-to-paralegal-to-junior-associate handoff. We turn down cases we can’t move the needle on, which means the ones we take get real attention.
What that looks like in practice on a motorcycle case:
If your case is in another part of the metro, our Phoenix personal injury team covers Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale, Peoria, and Avondale.
We work on contingency. No attorney’s fees unless we recover for you. Specific fee terms and case-cost handling are spelled out in the written fee agreement, which we walk you through before you sign.
No. Arizona follows pure comparative negligence. You can recover even if you were largely at fault, with damages reduced by your percentage. Adjusters often inflate the rider’s percentage hoping you accept it. Don’t.
Yes. Arizona law only requires helmets for riders under 18. For adult riders, no helmet is legal. Not wearing one may come up as an argument on head-injury damages specifically, but it doesn’t shift liability for the crash itself.
Probably not, if you were at an intersection. Arizona’s 2022 lane filtering law made limited filtering legal under specific conditions: speed limit 45 mph or less, between stopped vehicles, no faster than 15 mph, only at intersections. Full lane splitting on the freeway is still illegal. The facts of your specific situation matter, so let us look at it.
Generally, no. You have cooperation duties under your own policy, but you typically don’t owe a recorded statement to the at-fault driver’s insurer. Talk to a lawyer before agreeing to one.
Two years from the date of the crash under A.R.S. § 12-542. Claims against government entities have a much shorter notice deadline under A.R.S. § 12-821.01. Don’t wait.
If you were hit on a bike anywhere in the Phoenix metro, we’ll review your case at no cost and tell you straight what we think it’s worth pursuing. No pressure, no script.
Free case review with Jared J. Pehrson: (602) 345-1818. We answer 24/7.
By Jared J. Pehrson | Impact Legal Car Accident Attorneys
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