Bicycle Accident Lawyer in Long Beach

What do Long Beach’s crash figures show for bicycle accidents?

In the California Office of Traffic Safety rankings for 2023, where rank 1 is the worst in the group, Long Beach ranked 2nd of 15 cities in the state’s largest population group, meaning second worst in that group, for cyclists killed or injured, with 213 victims. Cyclists under 15 also ranked 2nd of 15, again second worst, with 18 victims. Long Beach sits in the group of California cities with more than 250,000 people, so these are comparisons with the state’s largest cities rather than with mid-sized suburbs, and in the same figures the city ranked 1st of those 15, the worst in its group, for total people killed and injured in traffic, with 3,774 victims. The rankings are rate based, adjusted for population and daily vehicle miles travelled, so they establish that Long Beach is worse than comparable large cities for people on bikes, not that it records California’s highest raw cycling count.

The City’s own figure is the sharper one. Safe Streets Long Beach: A Vision Zero Action Plan, published in July 2020 on 2013 to 2017 data, says of pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists together that these three travel modes account for only 14 percent of collisions but represent 65 percent of all traffic deaths and serious injuries. That is why a bicycle case is rarely a minor case, and why the first valuation an insurer puts on one is usually built before anybody knows the full extent of the injuries. Head and soft tissue injuries in particular are frequently understated in the first week, and a demand made before the medical picture is complete is difficult to revisit.

Two things decide a Long Beach cycling claim more often than anything else: who had the right of way, and who owned the surface. The first is won or lost on physical evidence, which is why the bike should be photographed and kept rather than repaired or scrapped. The damage pattern on the bike and the vehicle, the lane markings, whether a bike lane was present or obstructed, and any camera covering the junction are what answer it. The second point is unusually live here because of how much state highway runs through the city. The City’s High Injury Network, built in the July 2020 Vision Zero plan from five years of crash frequency and severity data, names Pacific Coast Highway from Pacific Avenue to Temple Avenue, Cherry Avenue from Anaheim Street to 19th Street, and Anaheim Street from Hayes Avenue to Ximeno Avenue among its top corridors for people walking and cycling. Pacific Coast Highway carries State Route 1, so that roadway is the state’s rather than the City’s, while Cherry Avenue and Anaheim Street are City streets. A surface defect, a drain grate or an obstructed bike lane therefore points at different public entities depending on the block.

The Long Beach Police Department investigates on City streets, and the California Highway Patrol normally handles the I-405, the I-710, the SR-91 and the I-605.

Where is a Long Beach bicycle accident case filed, and what are the deadlines?

California is a pure comparative fault state, so a share of the blame reduces what you recover rather than ending the claim. The deadlines then split, and for a cyclist that split is often the whole problem: two years from the date of injury against a driver under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1, but only six months to present a written claim to a public entity under Government Code section 911.2, and the shorter deadline governs. The City of Long Beach publishes that rule itself and takes claims at the City Clerk, 411 West Ocean Blvd, by post, in person or online. Metro is a public entity too, while Long Beach Transit is not a City department and is covered below. A case is filed where the incident arose under Local Rule 2.3(a)(1)(A), which for Long Beach means the South District at the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse, 275 Magnolia Avenue.

More on local practice on the Long Beach personal injury page, and on the law itself on the Los Angeles bicycle accident page. The other collision types with Long Beach’s own published figures: car accidents, pedestrian accidents and motorcycle accidents. Mass tort claims are taken on for Long Beach residents as well, and those are set out on the mass torts page.