In July 2025, a man and a woman were riding on a motorcycle together on Woolworth Road in Caddo Parish. For reasons that investigators are still trying to determine, the man lost control of the motorcycle, and both riders fell from the motorcycle, eventually landing at the bottom of an embankment 20 feet below. The first responders transported both of them to Ochsner LSU Health’s Trauma Center, but news reports said that neither rider suffered life-threatening injuries. Both were wearing helmets and other protective equipment, which may have prevented them from suffering injuries worse than those they sustained. The stretch of Woolworth Road where the accident occurred is known for a lot of what the KTAL Shreveport news website described as “animal activity,” so it is possible that the man lost control of the motorcycle when he was trying to avoid striking a deer or other animal that was attempting to cross the road. If you have been injured in an accident where the catalyst was an animal distracting a driver, contact a Houma car accident lawyer.
Everyone alive today is too young to appreciate this today, but automobiles and humans took some time to get used to each other; the traffic safety laws and vehicle safety features we take for granted today developed over time. It seems like a no-brainer that seatbelts should be a standard feature of vehicles and that drunk driving should be against the law, but traffic fatalities were more common before these rules went into effect.
Domestic animals, on the other hand, did not get the memo about how to behave in and around cars. Everything is fine as long as your dog sits in the passenger seat and sticks its head out the window to enjoy the ride, but when animals roam freely inside a car, it can distract the driver. You can easily see how things can go wrong if your dog climbs from the backseat to the driver’s seat for a cuddle just as another car pulls out in front of you.
Except in busy, downtown areas, the chances are high, at certain times of year, that wild animals will attempt to venture to the other side of the road. Deer, opossums, and alligators likewise did not get the memo about looking both ways before they cross the street. Animals tend to be bolder about crossing the street during their breeding season. For alligators, the breeding season is between April and June, and for deer, it is in the fall.
A personal injury lawyer can help you if you got hit by a car because the at-fault driver was paying more attention to a pet inside the driver’s car or to a wild animal crossing the road than to you. Contact the Law Office of Patrick H. Yancey in Houma, Louisiana, to set up a consultation about your case.
Sources
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/motorcycle-crash-leaves-two-injured-in-shreveport/ar-AA1IqrOC
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