Allen Patatanyan, co-founder of West Coast Trial Lawyers and its Managing Partner.

This past May, as we observed National Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month, the news was sobering. Despite repeated campaigns to raise awareness about rules of the road and reinforce “share the road” messages, cyclists continued to suffer death and serious bodily injury at an alarming rate. Most accidents involved passenger vehicles failing to make allowance for cyclists—riding too close, cutting off lane splitters—and the cyclists always came out on the losing end.

The truth is that motorcyclists have always had the deck stacked against them. U.S. Department of Transportation statistics show that more than half of all multi-vehicle accidents involving motorcycles aren’t the cyclists’ fault, yet motorcycle drivers are 27 times more likely than passenger vehicle occupants to die in a motor vehicle crash and five times more likely to be injured.

To add insult to injury, when motorcycle riders go to court to seek damages for their injuries, it’s an uphill battle for plaintiffs attorneys to get a modicum of justice for them. Even with the strongest of cases, including those involving the lifelong impact of severe injuries and head trauma, juries are disinclined to find in favor of plaintiffs or to award them significant damages. Deep down, they believe that the plaintiffs are not entitled to compensation.

It has nothing to do with the law; it has everything to do with the human brain. Even when the facts clearly show a safe motorcyclist and an out-of-control car driver, both judges and juries have already pegged motorcyclists as risky daredevils. The evidence may tell them that the cyclist was a victim, but their guts tell them, “he was asking for it.”

Psychologists have a name for this phenomenon: the “reptile brain.” The concept was captured in the popular book “Reptile: The 2009 Manual of the Plaintiff’s Revolution,” by David Ball and Don Keenan, which is based on the work of neuroscientist Paul MacLean. Back in the 1960s, MacLean identified three discrete parts of the human brain, reflecting the stages of evolution: a reptilian complex at the core of the brain (primitive and survival-based); a paleomammalian, or limbic, complex located in the mid-brain (focused on emotion, reproduction and parenting); and a neomammalian, or cortical, complex at the top (capable of language, logic and planning).

Marketers have long understood that there are “codes,” or unconscious meanings that people assign to products, services, relationships and people. Studies show that products designed to appeal to the cortex, or logical part of the brain, often fail because consumers make buying decisions largely through their reptilian brains—the survival instinct—which is only accessible via the subconscious. In a three-way battle between the thinking, emotional and reptilian areas of our brains, the reptilian always wins: Survival comes first.

When a connection is made between the limbic and the reptilian brains, the emotional system imposes a logic that deals with our urges, instincts and basic human needs. Successful marketers tap into the logic of emotion by following the proper order, appealing to the brain’s unconscious before addressing emotions. Successful plaintiffs lawyers likewise start with the reptilian brain and work their way forward to the thinking brain. Cases are won by getting the reptilian brain to talk to the logical part of the brain.

Understanding “codes” can make or break a product launch or a jury verdict. In the case of a motorcycle accident, the smart plaintiffs attorneys must recognize that they must overcome the bias the jury generally has against motorcycle riders. This bias arises from the “code” associated with motorcycle riders—daredevil. So to win the minds and hearts of the jury, the plaintiffs lawyers must use everything in their disposal to convince the jury that their client was acting off the code.

As a plaintiffs attorney representing motorcycle drivers, my most important job is to learn how to address those codes with juries, tapping into their most primitive instincts of safety and self-preservation. I must first acknowledge the codes with which the jurors have been programmed. Car drivers generally operate their vehicles while motorcyclists take risks. Then it’s my job to lead them through the looking glass, to show them that both the plaintiff and defendant were operating outside of their prescribed codes. The vehicle driver acted in a reckless manner while my client engaged in safe practices.

The jury must view the defendant’s conduct as a threat to their own safety, as well as to the safety of others, and they must feel a basic connection with the plaintiff. The “aha” moment happens when the jurors understand that the “safe” driver was acting in a way that put other lives and risk. They look at the plaintiff through different lenses and think to themselves, “That could have been me.”

When plaintiffs attorneys frame the narrative to speak to jurors’ biological need for security, they can tap into their reptilian brains. Whether the plaintiff is a motorcycle rider, a stunt driver, a hitchhiker or anyone else whose code signals “risk taker,” the attorney must flip the code switch off before moving forward with the case. It takes patience and persistence, but the outcome speaks volumes: actual justice for actual injuries.

Personal injury attorney Allen Patatanyan is a partner with West Coast Trial Lawyers in Los Angeles.