A rollover accident in a side-by-side can happen in seconds. These thrilling vehicles allow you to explore off-road areas that you can’t get to in a car. The fun of running the ditch alongside a township road can quickly become disastrous if you drift farther than planned, lose control, and roll the vehicle. The cage may hold, but what about your body, which was thrown outside the protection of the cage?
There is a gap between the sturdy, armored appearance of a side-by-side and what it will actually protect you from. Side-by-side riders get into a machine with doors, a roll cage, and four-point belts, often assuming that they have protection more like a truck than an ATV.
One bad crash and you’ll realize just how little protection you had.
If you were seriously injured in a side-by-side crash in or around Fargo, the side-by-side ATV accident attorneys in Fargo can tell you what your claim is actually worth and who should be paying for it. Lowe Law Group is ready to answer your questions and help you get justice.
One of the most defining features of a side-by-side is its roll cage, which is a metallic frame designed to protect occupants from fatal injuries in the event of a serious collision or rollover crash. Specifically, it keeps the occupants from being ejected from the vehicle.
However, a roll cage only does its job if everything inside it stays there. Unfortunately, that often doesn’t happen.
The most common reason for a roll cage failure is simply human reflex. When a vehicle starts to tip, it’s human nature to brace for the collision. You might stretch your arm to the ground or extend your leg past the door frame, and suddenly you have several hundred pounds of vehicle coming down at great force.
Although manufacturers add safety protections like nets, half doors, and shoulder restraints, these are not always used with 100% accuracy. Plenty of side-by-sides also get sold, rented, or resold without a full battery of safety features. Missing safety features can be disastrous.
Improper restraint usage matters, too. A lap belt alone lets the upper body fold forward and sideways. Belts that are frayed, loose, or retracted improperly can transfer crash forces into the pelvis and lumbar spine instead of spreading them across the torso. Some riders never buckle at all because the trail seemed slow and the ride seemed short–or because they are out of the habit of doing so.
Speed is an issue, too. Sport models routinely exceed 70 miles per hour on terrain that has no engineered surface, no guardrails, and no consistent grade. A car crash at that speed happens on pavement designed to be driven on. A side-by-side crash at that speed happens in a field, a ditch, or a river bottom, creating potential for catastrophic injuries.
Lastly, there’s one more issue to consider. Most side-by-side injury claims involve a passenger, and passengers make no decisions. They do not pick the speed, the line, or the terrain. That distinction carries real legal weight in North Dakota. We’ll discuss that below.
Side-by-side crashes produce an injury pattern that follows directly from how these machines fail. Limbs that leave the cage during a roll absorb crushing loads. Occupants who stay belted absorb the deceleration through the harness and the seat.
Here’s what that looks like:
Some of these injuries do not show up immediately, even if the damage is done at the time of the crash. Internal bleeding, brain injuries, and nerve damage can look mild for the first hours, especially when adrenaline is working hard. Sometimes, injuries don’t make themselves fully known for days.
You might refuse an ambulance and head home, only to wake up the next morning, unable to grip your coffee cup or recover from terrible pain in your head.
At Lowe Law Group, our medical director Dr. Andrew Georgi reviews these cases from the start rather than after the fact. His background as an anesthesiologist across more than 10,000 surgeries gives him a working understanding of how force translates into tissue damage, and he catches complications that a busy emergency department, focused correctly on stabilizing you, is not set up to document for a legal claim.
Riding here in Fargo does not look like riding in the Badlands.
The Red River Valley is flat and farmed, so most Cass County trail miles are really ditch miles, township gravel, field edges, and the routes people take out to the Sheyenne River corridor or down to the Sheyenne National Grassland about 40 miles southwest.
That kind of geography creates specific hazards. First of all, ditches are drainage infrastructure, not trails. They contain culvert headwalls, riprap, buried tile outlets, and field approaches that rise several feet without warning at highway speed. It’s fun for a ride, but it’s also dangerous when a machine that clips an approach at an angle rolls hard.
Beyond terrain, the causes we investigate most often include:
Work-related crashes belong on that list too. Plenty of side-by-sides in this part of the state never see a trail, because they are busy running fence lines, hauling feed, and moving crews around commercial, federal, state-owned, and private lands.
An injury that happens during that work opens up questions about employer liability and workers’ compensation alongside everything else.
Most people call a UTV crash lawyer in Fargo assuming there is one defendant. That assumption can cost you money, because there are usually more responsible parties than just one.
North Dakota follows what is called modified comparative fault. This statute allows the responsibility for an accident to be divided among multiple parties. In fact, even if you were personally responsible for the accident yourself, you may still be able to hold other parties responsible.
A claim that is built against just one defendant will lead to less compensation than what you really deserve. On the other hand, a claim built against multiple parties ensures that you can get the maximum amount of compensation for the damages you have experienced.
One of the key elements here is that each party tends to carry its own separate insurance. This means that instead of reaching just one responsible party’s cap, you have the opportunity to make a case against multiple insurance claims.
Responsibility may be shared among people like:
Some people are hesitant to sue all parties, especially if the responsible party was a friend. We understand this hesitation, and we are happy to talk about your options. It’s important to keep in mind that you are not making a claim against a friend, but rather, a claim against a policy that friend pays premiums for. That policy is designed to cover exactly this scenario.
Depending on how the machine was insured and where the crash happened, that can mean filing a claim against a specialty recreational vehicle policy, homeowners policy, umbrella policy, or even farm liability policy.
Your friend is not the one writing a check. The insurer does. We have this conversation all the time. Let’s make sure that you don’t suffer unnecessarily because of concern about who to make a claim against. You deserve to get the treatment you need.
You should not have to learn everything about North Dakota’s personal injury legal system just to get treated fairly. Here is what actually affects your claim:
Under N.D. Cent. Code § 32-03.2-02, you can recover as long as you were less than 50% responsible, with your award reduced by your share. Insurers lean on this hard in off-road cases. Expect arguments that you rode recklessly, ignored terrain, or should have known better, whether or not the evidence supports any of it.
N.D. Cent. Code § 28-01-16 gives you an unusually long window to file a claim: 6 years. However, waiting still hurts you, because the side-by-side itself is the most important piece of evidence in a rollover case and it does not sit around waiting to be inspected.
Under N.D. Cent. Code § 39-29-09.9, anyone under 18 must wear a DOT-approved helmet on an OHV. Riders under 16 without a license face additional restrictions on where they can operate. A helmet violation does not end an adult’s claim, though insurers will absolutely raise it.
Registered OHVs may operate on gravel, dirt, and loose-surface roadways, on certain posted paved highways, and in the bottom of the ditch or on the outslope of a right of way. Operating on the shoulder or inside slope is not permitted. These rules feed directly into fault arguments, and cities and counties can impose stricter limits than the state.
When a side-by-side manufactured with seat belts is operated on a highway, those belts must be worn. Passengers must be in a manufacturer-installed or manufacturer-recommended passenger seat, which is why bed riding creates liability exposure for the operator.
North Dakota’s modified comparative fault statute and its UM/UIM statute both define a covered “motor vehicle” as one designed primarily for operation on public streets and highways. A side-by-side generally is not. That means the PIP coverage you assume will pay your first medical bills, and the underinsured motorist coverage you have been paying for on your truck, may not reach an off-road crash at all.
Some auto and homeowners policies fill part of the gap. Others exclude recreational vehicles outright. Nobody should be guessing about this while injured, and we read the actual policies rather than accepting an adjuster’s summary of them.
The single most valuable thing that happens early in a SxS case is preservation of the machine. There are many pieces of physical evidence that need to be preserved. That way, we can assess the following:
If the side-by-side is repaired, parted out, sold, or hauled for scrap, a lot of product liability theories can’t be tested. One of the first things we do when we represent you is to send out preservation demands immediately. This ensures that engineers have access to the vehicle before anything changes.
From there, our SxS accident attorney can arrange for forensic reconstruction specialists to establish speed, roll sequence, and occupant kinematics, which is what defeats the “he was driving like crazy” narrative insurers tend to reach for by default in off-road claims.
Our Fargo personal injury lawyers have recovered more than $550 million for injured clients and won over 13,000 personal injury cases, and carriers are aware of that record when we appear on a claim.
Meanwhile, you don’t have to handle any of it on your own. No adjuster calls, no recorded statements, no paperwork deadlines. You go to your appointments and let us build the case. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation.
Yes, and it does not come out of his pocket. Passenger claims are made against insurance policies, and passengers rarely bear any comparative fault because they controlled nothing about how the machine was operated.
No. For adult riders, helmet use is one factor among many in a comparative fault analysis, and it only matters at all if it actually contributed to the specific injuries you suffered. A crushed ankle has nothing to do with headgear.
It changes which rules apply and sometimes who is liable, but it does not eliminate your claim. Landowners still owe duties regarding known hazards, and product defects are actionable no matter where the machine failed.
Sometimes partially, often not, and it depends entirely on your policy language and where you were riding. This is one of the first things we examine, because assuming coverage exists has left a lot of North Dakotans paying medical bills that someone else owed.
Six years for a personal injury claim under North Dakota law, and two years for wrongful death. Call much sooner than that. Evidence in rollover cases has a short shelf life.
Nothing upfront and nothing at all unless we win. We also offer a 30-day risk-free guarantee, so you can walk away in the first month with no obligation.
A serious off-road injury changes your life, leaving you focused on making it to appointments, navigating new restrictions, and trying to cover bills you did not plan for. You shouldn’t have to add arguing with an adjuster to what caused the crash.
We handle side-by-side and ATV/UTV accident claims throughout North Dakota, including Fargo, West Fargo, Horace, Casselton, Mapleton, and the surrounding Cass County communities.
Your case evaluation is free, there is no pressure, and you owe us nothing unless we recover for you.
Your priority now is to heal. Ours is to win your case. Here’s our 3-Step Approach:
Let us listen to your story. We’ll provide a free, no pressure case evaluation.
Our team handles everything: the legal process, gathering paperwork, reviewing your medical treatment, and more.
We win your case and maximize your compensation or we don’t get paid, guaranteed.
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Being in a car accident and dealing with everything from the car damage to the injuries and everything in between is very…
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Thanks to Ethan for his gentle persuasion and persistent efforts.
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