In Kansas, the law requires proof of liability insurance before a motor vehicle, including a motorcycle, can be registered and issued a tag. Liability insurance pays for bodily injury and property damage claims if you cause an accident. Further, the law mandates that every liability policy issued in Kansas contain certain benefits for the protection of Kansas citizens. Besides the usual liability, uninsured and underinsured provisions that each policy must provide “personal injury protection benefits,” commonly called no-fault or PIP. Kansas law then carves out an exception, one only for the motorcyclist, from that mandate. The motorcycle owner is allowed to decline these benefits, which covers drivers and occupants of Kansas insured vehicles.
What are these benefits?
- Probably most crucial to the injured motorcyclists is a wage loss benefit, which provides payment up to one year at a mandatory minimum of $900 a month, or 85% of the weekly wage up to the $900 mandate.
- A second benefit is a medical expenses payment of a mandated minimum $4500.
- Next is an essential service benefit. This is where someone would be paid $25 a day to help perform daily activities that the injured party cannot perform for their self or others due to the injury.
- Another benefit is rehabilitation benefits in the amount of $4500.
- Last and God forbid, a funeral benefit of $2000.
Who needs these benefits most when a collision occurs? Would insurance companies want this exception in the law to save money? Can you solve this problem and protect yourself?
You bet you can. We all want to save money when buying insurance. Adding no-fault benefits to your motorcycle liability policy is a low cost investment that could pay you tens of thousands of dollars in the long haul. For example, an elderly lady turns left in front of you and you find yourself in a hospital bed looking at steel rods holding your fractured leg bones in place. You know you won’t be working for months and now have to deal with the pain. Have the ease of mind by adding this policy to help protect you.
“This should not happen to me as I am an experienced motorcyclist with years of experience and I would lay the bike down.” That’s what the local sales manager of a motorcycle manufacturing company told me he expected as he suffered what I described above. This happened to be the second time in one year that he broke the same leg due to elderly women turning left in front of him, unexpectedly, leaving him with no time to react.
Protect yourself before you are injured in an accident by calling your insurance agent and add or verify that you have personal injury protection benefits (commonly referred to as no-fault benefits) to your motorcycle policy. After you are injured in an accident, call us- The lawyers at the Law Center for Car Accident Injuries– the name says it all.