Shreveport cyclists get hit on Line Avenue and Youree Drive, on Kings Highway, and on the neighborhood streets that feed into them, and the rider is taken to the Level I trauma center at Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport on Kings Highway, to Willis-Knighton, or to CHRISTUS Highland. The Shreveport Police Department writes the crash report inside the city limits, and the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office handles the roads outside them. A Caddo Parish suit can be filed and tried at the Caddo Parish Courthouse at 501 Texas Street, in the First Judicial District Court. Trey Morris Injury Lawyers is at 509 Milam Street, across the street from that courthouse. We pull the crash report, photograph the lane and the point of impact, and look for any camera on the block.
Louisiana law governs a bicycle claim, and it reads the same in Caddo Parish as anywhere else in the state. Under La. R.S. 32:194, a person riding a bicycle on the road has the rights and duties of a driver, except where Louisiana’s bicycle rules say otherwise, including the rules on where in the lane to ride. A cyclist riding by those rules is a lawful road user, not an obstruction. We build a Shreveport bicycle claim outward from those lane rights, before the insurer reaches for your helmet status or your share of the fault.
Results for Louisiana Clients
- $49 MillionMotor Vehicle Accident
An impaired driver of a stolen vehicle driving the wrong way collided with our client head-on, resulting in brain injury and multiple broken bones.
- $12.1 MillionMotor Vehicle Accident
A commercial vehicle failed to stop at a red light subsequently crashing into our client causing serious brain injury and permanent loss of function.
- $7 MillionMotor Vehicle Accident
When the other vehicle struck our client, the result was a major hemorrhage and a stroke.
- $6.25 MillionMotor Vehicle Accident
A fatigued commercial-vehicle driver fell asleep at the wheel and rear-ended our client, leaving our client with severe neck and back injuries.
- $3.3 MillionMotor Vehicle Accident
Motor vehicle collision. Details not publicly disclosed.
- $3 MillionMotor Vehicle Accident
Out on the highway, the at-fault driver hit our client.
Past results do not guarantee future outcomes; each case is decided on its own facts.
Bicycle Accident Injuries in Shreveport
A car spends the crash on the driver’s behalf: steel, crumple zones, airbags. On a bicycle your body does that work, and the force difference between a two-ton vehicle and an unprotected body does not shrink with the speedometer. That is why a rider clipped at low speed on Youree Drive comes out far worse than anyone in the car, and why riders are killed in collisions that barely mark the car.
The injuries we see most after a Shreveport bicycle crash are traumatic brain injury, spinal cord damage, broken collarbones and wrists, pelvic fractures, road rash deep enough to need grafting, and internal bleeding. Traumatic brain injury is a blow or jolt to the head that disrupts how the brain works, from concussion to permanent damage. A helmet lowers the risk, but it was never engineered for the force of a vehicle.
Medical bills on a serious bicycle injury routinely run past $100,000, and spinal cord or brain trauma cases reach into the millions once a lifetime of care is priced out. Trey Morris Injury Lawyers has handled catastrophic brain, spine, and broken bone injury cases for over 20 years.
Call the records line at the hospital that treated you this week and ask for the complete chart and the imaging, not the discharge summary.
Local Office. Statewide Record.
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From the 1st JDC
Our 509 Milam St office sits across the street from the First Judicial District Court, where Shreveport injury suits are filed and tried.
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Trial attorneys, one team
Your case is handled by the firm's own trial attorneys, and we respond in minutes, 24/7.
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We come to you
Hospital, home, or the office at 509 Milam St. Free case review, and no fee unless we win.
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Cases resolved over $1 million
Verdicts and settlements of $1 million or more, won by the same trial team that handles Shreveport cases.
How Bicycle Accidents Happen in Shreveport
Most crashes here come down to a motorist who did not look, did not yield, or decided the lane was theirs alone. The patterns in Caddo Parish repeat: distracted driving, meaning texting, phone calls, and in-car screens; failure to yield at intersections on Market Street, Kings Highway, and Line Avenue; unsafe lane changes; and vehicles running inside marked bike lanes. Impaired drivers show up far out of proportion in cyclist fatality cases. Speed strips away the reaction time the driver needed, so a rider in plain view has no chance at all.
Common Crash Types by Mechanism
Rear-end. A motorist traveling too fast strikes a rider from behind, usually at dusk or after dark on a road with poor lighting. The cyclist gets no warning.
Dooring. Someone in a parked car swings a door into your path without checking the mirror or the blind spot. There is no reaction time, which is why dooring injuries are so often severe.
Right hook. A driver turns right across your path at an intersection or driveway, the most common urban pattern there is. Left cross: an oncoming driver turns left across a rider going straight, usually at a faster crossing speed. Sideswipe: a passing motorist clips you while changing lanes or squeezing by. Failure to yield at four-way stops and signalized intersections accounts for a large share of city cyclist injuries.
Write down today which of those five your crash was, and the direction each vehicle was traveling. That one sentence tells us which records to demand first.
Louisiana Bicycle Laws and How They Affect Your Claim
Louisiana gives cyclists particular rights and particular obligations. Insurers know the obligations better than most riders do, and they use any gap to shave your number down.
Start with the helmet, because it comes up in nearly every adjuster call. Louisiana requires a helmet only for riders under age 12 (La. R.S. 32:199). An adult riding bare-headed is not automatically negligent, and helmet non-use is not prima facie evidence of negligence. The adjuster will raise it anyway.
Comparative Fault
Comparative fault is the rule that cuts what you collect by your share of the blame, and Louisiana applies it under La. C.C. Art. 2323. For accidents on or after January 1, 2026, a rider found 51% or more at fault collects nothing. At 50% or less, your damages drop by your percentage, and a motorist found 90% at fault still owes 90% of your damages even where you carry part of it. The entire defense is built on moving your number across that line.
Prescriptive Period
Prescriptive period is the Louisiana term for the filing deadline. You have two years from the day you were hurt to file suit (La. C.C. art. 3493.1). Miss it and you lose the right to collect anything, no matter how plainly the driver was at fault. Settlement talk has a way of eating months, so put the date on a calendar you actually look at.
Road Sharing Rules
Vehicles may not drive in a marked bicycle lane except to cross at an intersection or reach a driveway (La. R.S. 32:197), and breaking that prohibition is evidence of negligence. Passing carries its own duty: Louisiana requires a safe lateral clearance when a motorist overtakes a bicycle, and coming inside that distance is a statutory violation. If the car that hit you was riding the bike lane, or buzzed you on the pass while you rode lawfully, that is direct support for your liability case.
Dooring Law
Louisiana prohibits opening a vehicle door into active traffic, and the person who opens it owns the collision. The question is whether they used due care before the door swung, and in practice almost nobody checks a mirror before stepping out onto Texas Street. If you were doored, preserve the door, the car, and the physical evidence at the scene. Photographs of where the door sat and where your bike struck it carry these cases, which turn on whether the occupant knew or should have known a rider was coming.
Lighting and Visibility Requirements
Riding at night, Louisiana requires a white front light visible from 500 feet, a red rear light visible from 500 feet, and red rear and side reflectors (La. R.S. 32:329.1). Defense attorneys raise lighting violations as comparative fault whenever the equipment was short. The question is whether the lighting caused anything. A missing rear reflector does not cause a wreck where the driver ran the red light. Photograph the light and reflector you were running this week.
What to Do After a Bicycle Accident in Shreveport
What you do in the first hours moves the claim more than anything later. In order:
Call 911 and stay until law enforcement arrives. The report is the spine of the claim. It fixes the scene, collects the driver’s information, and sometimes records the officer’s read on fault. Do not skip it because the driver asks you to.
See a doctor the same day, even when nothing feels broken. Concussions and internal injuries hide for a day or two, and a gap in treatment is the first thing the defense points at to argue the injury came from something else. Your first medical record ties it to the crash.
Leave the bicycle and the debris where they lie if you can do it safely. Photograph vehicle positions, road conditions, skid marks, signage, bike lane markings, the vehicle that struck you, and your injuries. Get the driver’s name, license plate, insurance carrier, and policy number before anyone drives off, and take witness names and phone numbers, because witnesses scatter fast.
Do not give the at-fault driver’s insurance company a recorded statement without a lawyer. Adjusters are trained to collect statements that shrink the payout, and you owe nobody one. Do not clean, repair, or discard the bike, the helmet, or the clothing, because the damage on them establishes impact geometry.
Talk to a lawyer before you accept any offer. Early offers land far below what the claim is worth, and taking one usually ends your right to ask for more when the next surgery gets scheduled.
Put the crash date, the responding agency, and the driver’s insurer on one sheet of paper this week.
Establishing Motorist Negligence
Negligence has four parts: duty, breach, causation, damages. Every Louisiana motorist owes a duty of care to everyone else using the road, you on a bicycle included. The work sits in what the driver did or failed to do.
Police reports, traffic camera footage, dashcam video from the at-fault vehicle or from a car two lengths back, and eyewitness accounts are the first layer. Reconstruction experts establish pre-impact speed, sight lines, angle of impact, and what the driver was doing in the seconds before. Cell phone records confirm phone use at the moment of impact. Breathalyzer and toxicology results are discoverable where impairment is suspected.
An event data recorder (EDR), which most people call the black box, is the module in a modern vehicle that stores pre-impact speed, braking force, and steering input for the seconds before a crash, so it shows whether the driver’s foot ever touched the brake. Manufacturers set retention as short as 30 days, so it is a race. Medical records and imaging tie your injuries to the crash mechanism, which matters because the defense attacks causation hardest on the worst injuries.
When a driver breaks a Louisiana right-of-way rule that applied to you, such as failing to yield at an intersection, that violation is evidence of fault. Louisiana does not treat it as automatic proof of negligence, so the case still shows that the rule was meant to protect riders like you and that the violation caused the crash.
Traffic camera and business surveillance video is often written over within 24 to 72 hours unless somebody asks in writing. Once the facts give an honest basis, we send the driver’s insurer a preservation letter and demand preservation of the surveillance footage, the police reports, and the physical evidence. There is more on how we investigate injury cases.
If a business camera on the corner might have caught it, walk in this week, ask the manager in writing to save the footage, and tell us where you went.
Damages You Can Recover After a Shreveport Bicycle Accident
Louisiana sorts damages into two categories, economic and non-economic.
Economic damages are the losses with paper behind them: the ambulance, hospitalization, surgery, rehabilitation, the paychecks you missed, the earning capacity you lose going forward. On long-term and permanent injuries we bring in medical experts and economic analysts before anyone talks numbers, and future care gets priced and reduced to present value by an economist, not estimated on a legal pad. A future loss that is not documented before settlement cannot be collected afterward.
Non-economic damages cover pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, emotional distress, and disfigurement. They are harder to quantify, which is exactly why insurers negotiate them the hardest.
Tort reform changed the Louisiana collateral source rule. Under La. R.S. 9:2800.27, in lawsuits filed on or after January 1, 2026, past medical bills paid by health insurance or Medicare are limited to what was actually paid, plus your deductibles and co-pays, not the billed amount. That changes how damages get presented and how a settlement number should be built.
Start one folder this week for every bill, explanation of benefits, and pay stub since the crash. That folder is what the damages number gets built from.
Wrongful Death Action
If the crash killed the rider, a wrongful death action under La. C.C. Art. 2315.2 belongs to the rider’s closest surviving relatives in the order the law sets, starting with the spouse and children; an unmarried partner is not on the list. It is those relatives’ own claim for their own losses: the financial support that stopped, the companionship, the funeral costs.
What Shreveport Clients Say
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Testimonials do not constitute a guarantee, warranty, or prediction regarding the outcome of your legal matter. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
How Trey Morris Injury Lawyers Handles Your Bicycle Accident Claim
Once you hire us, we work out who else is on the hook besides the driver. Their employer, if they were working. A government entity, if a road defect contributed. A manufacturer, if a part failed. Every additional defendant is another insurance policy to reach.
Contingency Fee
We take these cases on a contingency fee: our fee is a percentage of what you collect, and there is no attorney fee at all if you collect nothing. Nothing is owed up front, and the first evaluation is free.
UM/UIM
UM/UIM is the uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage in your own auto policy, and it pays when the driver who hit you carries nothing or too little. Louisiana requires insurers to offer it. It reaches a bicycle crash too, which surprises most riders.
We handle every call with the at-fault driver’s insurer and with your own UM/UIM carrier. You do not talk to adjusters. If the insurer will not pay a fair number, we file suit across the street from our office and try the case. Someone here answers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
We have verdicts and settlements across personal injury case types, motor vehicle collisions included, and our case results are public.
Pull the declarations page for every vehicle in your household this week and check whether UM/UIM was accepted or rejected, and at what limits. That page often decides how much there is to collect.
Your Shreveport Trial Team
The lawyers who work your file. Every Shreveport case is handled by the firm's own trial attorneys.
Why Bicycle Accident Claims Are Different From Car Accident Claims
Insurers do not treat a bicycle file the way they treat a car file. The injuries are worse, so the claim draws more scrutiny, and liability gets disputed more often, because the first move is almost always to argue the rider had no business in the road. Louisiana ranks among the most dangerous states in the country for cyclists, a product of road conditions and how little protected bike infrastructure got built here, and that matters when a defendant argues you took the risk onto yourself by riding that road.
Damages on a catastrophic, permanent injury are harder to pin down, and medical lien resolution gets tangled when the health insurer, the hospital, and the ambulance service all hold claims against the same settlement.
We have the trial record and the resources to take a Caddo Parish bicycle case the whole distance, whether it ends at the Caddo Parish Courthouse or, for a crash across the Red River, at the 26th Judicial District Court in Benton. Call with the date, the location, and the driver’s name, and we will start with the crash report and the policy limits.