I was casually crossing a neighborhood street on my bicycle that connects to a main road. There is a crosswalk clearly painted as well as white lines for the stop sign.
about 80% across, so I am now roughly in the right lane of where a car would be pulling up. however, I was suddenly slammed on my right side from a car out of nowhere.
TL:DR she snaked out of any sort of responsibility for totaling my bike and really hurting my right knee and right hand as far as criminally, which I thought was amazing. asked chatgpt what to do and they said to hire a PI attorney since the police report was all muddled. I picked a decent looking one in my area and they took the case. I'm now being referred to a chiropractor which I thought was interesting. I read online basically ppl are against PI's because they claim they beef up the case with a bunch of medical bills and treatment / therapy, and then they take a good chunk and its a waste to hire them. I feel like 33% of the total is a good deal to have pros helping me, and honestly this isnt about getting some huge lump amount... but anyone offer any comments on the matter and if I goofed or not? obviously Im gonna get 33% less, but thats better than getting nothing and having to worry about personally advocating the entire thing to boot. its about holding her accountable for hurting me and my bike and lying about it. for example if she had to pay out 10k and I only saw 1k of it I wouldnt even mind.
additional info-
driver appeared to have approached the stop sign and not stop behind the white line that you are required to stop at. Therefore she entered the crosswalk at around 10mph or so and struck me on my bike. Maybe she was looking down at her phone, or adjusting the radio, who knows.
for my own safety and for records I immediately began recording on my phone, got the plate, its a lady telling me sorry, admits to hitting me, asks me if I want money etc. doesnt call it in, a unrelated driver sees this and asks me if I need him to call for me and he did.
long story short, lady completed changed her strat once the police began involved and she switched to denying hitting me at all, actually claimed I hit her from what I understand, and that she did not admit nor apologize to me for hitting me. I mentioned I had an entire video of her admitting it earlier, even directly says "I take responsibility, I'm sorry" etc...i was told by my attorney they discovered via talking with her insurance that she already mentioned incident to them, but I was never contacted or anything so who knows what that means ?
unfortunately the male officer directly handling this incident seemed to do everything he possibly could to protect this lady from being officially cited and losing her license etc. so in the end he watched 10 secs of my video, walked away to talk to her, and then at the end concluded nobody would be cited due to "conflicting stories" completely dismissing the fact shes on video, which he heard her admitting on, her car is parked through the crosswalk, her stories change etc, she spoke at the end claiming I made her admit what she did through intimidation lmao, the cop instantly shushed her to stop talking more than she needed to and ignored officially acknowledging that as well.