New York bikers can use GPS tracking to prove fault in accidents

After many accidents, one of the most challenging elements can be proving who was at fault for the crash. In some situations, there is an obvious answer. Accident re-constructionists can work wonders at re-creating the causes of accidents.

In other situations, there may be little re-constructionists can do. Proving fault in a bicycle accident may come down to little more than “he said, she said” arguments. However, some personal injury lawyers in New York have started using a more efficient method of proving fault in bicycle accidents.

Last year, one of the top bike racers in the county was involved in a bicycle accident with a car. The biker was crossing the street, and the driver was coming out of an alley. According to an article in the New York Times, the driver was looking over her right shoulder, stepped on the gas, and made a left turn directly into the biker.

Although the driver had a big dent in the hood of her car, she denied hitting the biker. When the police arrived, they that said that without proof of where the biker entered the intersection, they would be unable to give the driver a ticket.

Thankfully, the biker relied on the same technology that other bikers have started using in such situations: his GPS.

Many serious bikers invest in advanced GPS devices, and in accidents, those devices can act as “the cyclist’s equivalent of a black box.” Advanced GPS devices have a digital record of the biker’s speed, location, pedal rate and heart rate.

For the biker in the above example, the information in his GPS was his ticket to receiving compensation from the driver’s insurance company. The biker stated, “Clear as day, you could see where I stopped at the stop sign, where I got hit by the car and where my car came to rest. On the corresponding time stamp, you could see the speeds, the stops and even where my heart rate spiked as she hit me.”

Source: New York Times, “Bike Crash Wiped Details; GPS Data Filled Them In,” John Markoff, Sept. 5, 2011