Bandera
Motorcycle Insurance

When the Rider Ahead Goes Down

Bandera is a staging town. Riders gather here, run the Hill Country in twos and threes and eights, and come back through in the afternoon, which makes group riding the normal condition rather than the exception. It also introduces a liability question that solo riders never face. When a rider mid-pack brakes hard for a low-water crossing and the two behind cannot stop, the resulting pile is not one accident, it is several, and fault gets apportioned among people who were riding together by choice. Your liability coverage is what answers to the rider behind you; theirs answers to you. Following distance and staggered formation are the riding fix, and they are genuinely effective, but the insurance fix is to carry limits that assume you may be found responsible for another rider’s bike and another rider’s body rather than for a dented car door. There is a second wrinkle particular to group riding here, which is that groups often include someone on a borrowed bike or a rental, and the coverage on that machine may be thin or absent. And the roads themselves supply the usual Hill Country arguments — fords that come up fast, cattle guards taken at an unfortunate angle, and stock on unfenced road.