Denver Motorcycle Accident Lawyers

Why Choose Flesch Law Denver Injury Accident Lawyers for Your Motorcycle Accident Case

We've built a proven track record representing injured riders across the Denver metro for decades. Insurers try to shrink a rider's claim by undercounting what the injury will cost long after the crash. We push back with a full accounting for medical bills, projected future care, lost wages, reduced earning capacity, and any permanent disability or pain and suffering from the accident.

We handle the insurance company so you can focus on recovering. That includes gathering evidence, calculating the full value of your claim, negotiating directly with adjusters, and taking the case to trial if a fair settlement is not on the table.

At Flesch Law Denver Injury Accident Lawyers, you aren’t just another number. Every motorcycle case starts with the client, not the case file. You’ll get personalized attention and clear guidance as we walk you through your motorcycle accident claim.

What You Should Know Before Filing a Motorcycle Accident Claim

Motorcycle claims move through the same civil justice system as other motor vehicle accident claims, but three factors set them apart in practice.

Injuries Carry More Weight Than a Typical Crash Claim

A motorcycle offers no structural cage, so injuries tend toward the catastrophic end of the spectrum. Traumatic brain injury, spinal cord damage, and fractures are common even in crashes that a car or truck occupant would walk away from uninjured. Your claim needs to reflect the true cost of that injury, not a generic payout.

You're Starting the Claim Already Fighting a Bias

Adjusters, defense attorneys, and even jurors often assume that anyone who chooses to ride a motorcycle accepted an elevated risk and therefore bears some responsibility for whatever happens next. That assumption is not a legal standard, but it can still affect settlement offers, which is why the attorney handling your claim needs to actively counter it.

Laws Written Specifically for Riders Get Misapplied Often

Colorado's specific statutes for negligence, damages, and rider conduct, particularly lane filtering, are narrow and frequently misapplied by insurers who either do not know the current law or benefit from pretending they do not. Flesch Law Denver Injury Accident Lawyers works hard to catch these misapplications, so you get the settlement you deserve.

What to Do After a Motorcycle Accident

The steps you take immediately after a crash can determine how strong your claim is later.

1. Get medical attention, even if you feel fine. Adrenaline masks pain, and some injuries, like internal bleeding or concussions, do not show obvious symptoms right away.
2. Call the police and get a copy of the crash report. This report becomes a foundational piece of evidence.
3. Document the scene with photos of your bike, the other vehicle, the road conditions, and any visible injuries, if you are physically able to do so.
4. Get witness contact information. Witnesses tend to disappear, and their memory fades, so capturing names and numbers at the scene matters.
5. Avoid giving a recorded statement to the other driver's insurer before speaking with an attorney. Adjusters are trained to ask questions that elicit answers they can later use to shift fault.
6. Keep every receipt and record related to medical treatment, lost wages, and property damage.
7. Contact a motorcycle accident attorney before accepting any settlement offer. An early offer rarely reflects the full cost of a serious injury. An experienced motorcycle accident lawyer can help you pursue maximum compensation and defend your rights.

Compensation You Can Recover after a Motorcycle Crash in Denver

Colorado law allows injured riders to pursue three categories of compensation.

Economic damages 

Economic damages cover the costs you can attach a receipt or invoice to, including future medical treatment, lost wages, reduced earning capacity if the injury limits future work, and property damage to the motorcycle and gear. These damages are uncapped.

Non-economic damages 

Non-economic damages cover harm without a direct dollar figure attached, including pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, and emotional distress. Colorado recently raised the cap on these damages substantially. For civil actions filed on or after January 1, 2025, House Bill 24-1472 increased the non-economic damages cap to $1.5 million. The cap for wrongful death claims rose to $2.125 million under the same legislation. 

Punitive damages 

Punitive damages are available in limited circumstances, generally where the at-fault driver's conduct went beyond ordinary negligence into willful and wanton behavior, such as extreme intoxication or intentionally dangerous driving. These damages punish the at-fault party rather than compensate the injured rider directly, and Colorado limits the amount a jury can award relative to actual damages.

How Long You Have to File under Colorado Law

Colorado's statute of limitations for motorcycle injury claims, under C.R.S. 13-80-101, gives an injured rider three years from the date of the crash to file a lawsuit. If the crash resulted in a death, the wrongful death statute of limitations shortens that window to two years in most cases.

If a government entity, such as a city or state transportation department, bears any responsibility for the crash (a poorly maintained road, a malfunctioning traffic signal), Colorado's Governmental Immunity Act requires filing a formal notice of claim within 182 days of the incident, far sooner than the standard filing deadline. Missing this shorter window can bar a claim against the government entity entirely, even though the deadline against a private driver would still be open. If a government entity may have played a role in your crash, raise it with your attorney immediately so the 182-day clock does not run out.

Colorado Motorcycle Accident Statistics

In recent years, the number of deaths due to Motorcycle accidents has been notably high.

• 165 riders died on Colorado roads in 2024, which was a record high, according to CDOT's Motorcycle Safety Campaign data.
• Motorcycles account for just 3% of Colorado's registered vehicles, yet riders made up nearly a quarter (24%) of all traffic deaths that year. 
• Nearly half (49%) of motorcyclists killed in Colorado over the past five years were not wearing a helmet. Colorado only requires helmets for riders under 18, so most adult riders on the road are choosing to go without one.
• 2025 brought improvement, with fatalities down 11% from the prior year's record, to 147 deaths. Encouraging as that trend may seem, it still leaves Colorado with a rider death toll wildly disproportionate to how few motorcycles share the road.

An experienced motorcycle accident attorney knows how insurers use rider statistics and bias against you, and how to push back on both. Talk to one before you accept any offer.

Common Motorcycle Accident Injuries

Because a rider has no structural protection, even moderate-speed collisions tend to produce injuries at the more severe end of the range.

• Traumatic brain injury (TBI). A blow to the head, whether or not a helmet was worn, can cause lasting cognitive, memory, and motor-function damage.
• Spinal cord injury. Damage to the spinal cord can produce partial or complete paralysis depending on the location and severity of the injury.
• Road rash. Sliding across pavement strips away skin layers and can require skin grafts in severe cases, along with a lasting infection risk.
• Fractures. Femurs, pelvises, collarbones, and wrists absorb impact and fracture frequently in motorcycle crashes.
• Internal injuries. Blunt force to the torso can rupture organs or cause internal bleeding that is not immediately obvious at the scene.
• Amputation and degloving injuries. A limb caught between the motorcycle and another vehicle, or dragged across pavement, can suffer damage, sometimes severe enough to require amputation.

If you’ve experienced an injury from a motorcycle accident, Flesch Law Denver Injury Accident Lawyers can help guide you through the claims process, so you can focus on healing.

Dangerous Roads and Intersections for Denver Motor

A handful of roads and intersections across the Denver metro present a heightened risk for motorcycle collisions. If your crash happened on or near one of these roads, tell your attorney the exact location. Intersection and traffic patterns can be a factor in how negligence gets proven.

Colorado Motorcycle Laws Denver Motorcyclists Should Be Aware Of

Helmet and Eye Protection Requirements

Colorado law requires helmets only for riders under 18, but eye protection is mandatory for every rider regardless of age unless the motorcycle has a windscreen. An adult rider who wasn't wearing a helmet was not breaking the law, and Colorado's rules generally block that fact from being used to argue the rider caused their own injuries. Insurers still try this argument. We know how to shut it down.

Lane Filtering Under SB24-079

Colorado became the fifth state to legalize a limited form of lane filtering when Governor Polis signed SB24-079 on April 4, 2024. The law took effect on August 7, 2024.

Lane filtering means moving a motorcycle between stopped vehicles in adjacent lanes traveling in the same direction. Colorado law permits it only when all of the following apply:

1. Traffic in the rider's lane and the adjacent lane is completely stopped.
2. The motorcycle travels no faster than 15 miles per hour while filtering.
3. The lane is wide enough to pass safely without contact.
4. The rider passes only on the left, and never enters a lane of oncoming traffic to do so.
5. The maneuver is performed in a safe, controlled manner.

Lane splitting, which means passing between vehicles that are still moving, remains illegal under Colorado law regardless of speed or lane width. The distinction matters because insurance companies may attempt to label a rider's legal filtering maneuver as illegal splitting in order to shift fault and reduce or deny a payout.

SB24-079 is not permanent as written. The filtering provision is scheduled to repeal on September 1, 2027 unless the legislature extends it. 

Colorado’s Modified Comparative Negligence Rule

Under the state's modified comparative negligence law, C.R.S. 13-21-111, your compensation decreases in direct proportion to your percentage of the fault. It disappears entirely once that share hits 50 percent. Say your damages total $150,000 and an insurer manages to assign you 30 percent of the blame. You'd still recover $105,000, but their entire strategy is built around pushing your percentage of the fault as high as they can to lower your settlement value or remove it entirely.

Insurance Minimums and UM/UIM

Most riders assume their own insurance has them covered if the other driver can't pay. That's not automatic. Colorado only requires drivers to carry $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident in bodily injury coverage, plus $15,000 in property damage. These limits get exhausted quickly against a serious motorcycle injury. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage (UM/UIM) can close that gap, but Colorado doesn't require anyone to carry it. Verify your coverage by reviewing your insurance declarations page.

How to Prove Negligence After a Motorcycle Crash

To recover compensation, Colorado law requires proving four elements of negligence:

1. Duty of care - Every driver owes other road users, including motorcyclists, a duty to operate their vehicle reasonably and follow traffic laws.
2. Breach of duty - The at-fault driver failed to meet that duty, whether through a traffic violation, distraction, impairment, or simple carelessness.
3. Causation - The driver's breach directly caused the crash and the resulting injuries.
4. Damages - The rider suffered actual, measurable harm, whether medical expense, lost income, or pain and suffering.

Evidence that supports these elements includes the police crash report, photographs of the scene and vehicle damage, witness statements, traffic and surveillance camera footage, and medical records connecting the injuries to the crash. In more complex cases, an accident reconstruction expert who can model vehicle speeds and points of impact may be involved. The sooner this evidence is gathered, the harder it is for an insurer to dispute what happened.

Insurance Company Tactics to Watch Out For

Insurance adjusters are trained to minimize payouts, and motorcycle claims give them a particular set of tools to do it. Three patterns show up often in motorcycle claims:

1. Default fault assumption - Adjusters sometimes start from the premise that a rider was filtering illegally, riding aggressively, or exceeding the speed limit simply because the injured party was on a motorcycle.
2. Helmet-as-defense - Some insurers argue that not wearing a helmet contributed to the severity of the injury, using it as leverage to reduce a settlement.
3. The quick payout - Insurers frequently make a fast, modest settlement offer before a rider has finished medical treatment or understood the full extent of the injury, hoping the rider will accept before knowing the true cost of recovery.

Countering these patterns is a large part of what a motorcycle accident attorney does day to day. Reach out to Flesch Law Denver Injury Accident Lawyers today to work with a team that knows how to counter insurance company tactics and will fight tooth and nail for the best outcome possible.

Common Causes of Motorcycle Accidents

Most Denver motorcycle crashes trace back to a small set of recurring driver failures.

• Left-turn violations. A driver turning left across an intersection misjudges a motorcycle's speed or simply never sees it, then turns directly into its path.
• Unsafe lane changes. A motorcycle sits in a car's blind spot far more easily than another car does, and a driver who fails to check that blind spot before merging can sideswipe or force a rider off the road.
• Following too closely. Motorcycles brake faster and more abruptly than cars in many situations, and a tailgating driver who cannot stop in time rear-ends the rider.
• Distracted driving. A driver glancing at a phone scans the road less carefully, and a motorcycle's narrow profile makes it easier to overlook than a car.
• Impaired driving. Slow reaction time and lack of judgement due to alcohol or drug use often are the cause of motorcycle wrecks.
• Road hazards. Potholes, gravel, uneven pavement seams, and wet metal surfaces like grates and railroad tracks pose a far greater risk to a motorcycle's two-wheel balance than to a car's four-wheel stability.
• Dooring. A parked driver who opens a car door into traffic without checking for an approaching motorcycle can knock a rider from the bike entirely.

Motorcycle Accident FAQ

If I share some blame for the crash, can I still recover money?

Usually, yes. Colorado's modified comparative negligence rule lets you recover as long as your share of fault stays under 50 percent, though your payout drops by that percentage. Cross the 50 percent line, though, and the claim is barred entirely, which is why we push to build an independent account of fault rather than let an insurer's version stand unchallenged.

What does it cost to hire your firm?

Nothing out of pocket. We work on contingency, which means our fee comes directly out of whatever we recover for you. If we don't win your case, you don't owe us a fee.

I already gave a recorded statement to the other driver's insurance company. Did I ruin my case?

Not necessarily, but it's worth having us review it right away. Adjusters are trained to ask questions designed to get you to downplay your injuries or accept partial blame, and a poorly worded answer can follow your claim for months. The sooner we see what was said, the sooner we can address anything that needs correcting.

Will my case have to go to trial?

Most motorcycle claims settle before trial. That said, insurers tend to negotiate more seriously with firms that are willing to file suit, so we prepare every case as though it's going in front of a jury. If a fair settlement doesn't materialize, we're ready either way.

The police report says I caused the crash, but I don't agree. Does that end my case?

No. A police report is one piece of evidence, not a verdict. Officers often write reports quickly, based on limited information at the scene, and get the sequence of events wrong more often than people expect. We regularly build cases that contradict an initial report using witness statements, traffic camera footage, and accident reconstruction.

Injured in A Motorycle Crash in Denver? Schedule a Free Consultation

If a motorcycle accident in Denver left you injured, do not navigate the claims process alone. Call Flesch Law Denver Injury Accident Lawyers at (303) 218-9394 for a free, confidential consultation, or complete the form below. There is no fee unless we win your case.

Serving the Denver Metro