Queens Motorcycle Accident Lawyer 

New York’s no-fault law excludes motorcycles

Insurance Law § 5102(f) defines what counts as a “motor vehicle” for no-fault purposes, and it says the term “shall not include … a motorcycle.” Section 5103(a)(1) closes the door from the other side: an auto policy pays first-party benefits to injured people other than occupants of another motor vehicle “or a motorcycle.”

So there is no personal injury protection. No automatic payment of your hospital bills. No automatic lost-wage benefit while you are off work. Not from your own policy, and not from the policy of the driver who hit you.

This surprises people because it used to be otherwise. Motorcyclists were once treated as pedestrians for no-fault purposes and did receive benefits; in 1977 the Legislature amended the law to take that away. The old rule still circulates online as though it were current. It is not.

What you gain: you can sue from the first dollar

Here is the part that works in your favor, and it is significant.

If you are hurt in a car in New York, you generally cannot recover anything for pain and suffering unless your injury clears a statutory bar called the serious injury threshold. Insurance Law § 5104(a) removes the right to recover for non-economic loss — which is the legal name for pain, suffering and loss of enjoyment of life — except where there is a “serious injury” as the statute defines it. Broken bones, significant disfigurement, permanent loss of use, and a handful of other categories qualify. A great deal of real, painful injury does not.

But look at who that section applies to. It operates “in any action by or on behalf of a covered person against another covered person for personal injuries arising out of negligence in the use or operation of a motor vehicle in this state.”

For these purposes a motorcyclist is not a covered person. Section 5102(j) defines a covered person by reference to the owner, operator or occupant of a motor vehicle, or anyone otherwise entitled to first-party benefits — and the statute has already removed motorcycles from the first category and motorcycle occupants from the second.

The New York State Department of Financial Services, which regulates insurers in this state, puts it in plain words in its own guidance for the public: a motorcycle operator or passenger involved in an accident is excluded from no-fault benefits, and “you may sue from first dollar loss.”

What that means in practice is that the injury which would have been dismissed as not serious enough had you been in a car is not automatically barred when you were on a bike. That is a real difference, and it is one reason a motorcycle claim should never be written off on the assumption that the injuries are not severe enough to bother with.

So who pays the bills in the meantime?

Usually your health insurance, and there is a New York rule about that worth knowing.

General Obligations Law § 5-335 says that where a personal injury claim settles, the settling person is generally not subject to a subrogation claim or a claim for reimbursement by an insurer, and the insurer has no lien or right of subrogation against them. In ordinary language: your health insurer usually cannot come after your settlement to be paid back for the treatment it covered. There are carve-outs — Medicare, Medicaid and workers’ compensation among them — so it is not universal, but the general rule is more favorable to injured people than most of them expect.

Beyond that, some riders carry medical payments coverage on their motorcycle policy. Many do not, because nobody explained the gap at the point of sale.

As for the driver who hit you, New York’s minimum liability limits are low and they are the same for every vehicle on the road, motorcycles included. Vehicle and Traffic Law § 311(4) sets them at 25,000 dollars for bodily injury to one person and 50,000 for death of one person, 50,000 and 100,000 where two or more people are hurt or killed, and 10,000 for property damage. A great many drivers carry exactly that and no more.

Worth checking your own policy for uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. If the driver who hit you had the state minimum and your injuries are serious, that coverage is sometimes the only meaningful source of recovery. Note that the threshold you escape in a claim against the driver can reappear inside your own underinsured motorist claim, because those policies contain their own serious injury exclusion and the Court of Appeals has held such exclusions enforceable. It is not a reason to skip the claim. It is a reason to have someone read the policy properly.

The helmet question, answered honestly

New York is an all-rider helmet state. Vehicle and Traffic Law § 381(6) makes it unlawful to operate or ride upon a motorcycle without a helmet meeting the federal standard — that wording covers passengers as well as riders. Section 381(7) separately requires operators to wear goggles or an approved face shield.

If you were not wearing one, you will be told your case is worthless. That is not right, and the actual law is more particular.

Not wearing a helmet is not an argument that you caused the crash. New York analyzes safety-device non-use under the framework set in Spier v. Barker in 1974: it goes to mitigation of damages — whether you did what was reasonable to limit your own injuries — and not to who was at fault for the collision. For seat belts the Legislature later wrote that rule into the Vehicle and Traffic Law in so many words.

It is also the defendant’s burden, not yours. They have to plead it and they have to prove that the helmet would actually have prevented the injury they are pointing at. That is a harder job than simply saying you had no helmet on.

We put this plainly because the honest position is stronger than the comfortable one. Where the Legislature wanted to shut the argument down completely it did so expressly — Vehicle and Traffic Law §§ 1238 and 1265, covering young cyclists and young horse riders, state that non-compliance is not contributory negligence and cannot reduce damages at all. It wrote no such provision for motorcyclists. So the argument does exist. It is narrower than insurers pretend, and it does not end a case.

Lane position: the rule that helps you and the one that does not

Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1252 does two things, and most people only know the second.

Subsection (a) is yours. It says all motorcycles are entitled to full use of a lane, and no vehicle may be driven so as to deprive a motorcycle of the full use of that lane. Drivers who crowd a rider, squeeze past within the lane, or treat a bike as something that can be shared with are contravening it. That is a useful provision when a driver claims a rider “came out of nowhere”.

Subsection (c) is not. Operating between lanes of traffic, or between adjacent lines or rows of vehicles, is prohibited. Lane splitting is illegal in New York, without exception for stopped or slow traffic. It is worth being straight about this: if you were splitting, it will be raised, and your share of the fault will count against you. How much it counts is less settled than it used to be. Since May 2026, a car accident claimant found more than half at fault recovers nothing for pain and suffering, and the courts have not yet decided whether that rule reaches motorcyclists, who sit outside the no-fault system. Either way, it is better dealt with early than discovered late.

Motorcycle crashes in Queens and Brooklyn

The numbers are worse than most people assume, and they come from the city and state themselves rather than from anybody’s marketing.

Across New York State in 2024 there were 4,681 personal injury motorcycle crashes, and 189 motorcyclists died. In 2023, motorcyclists made up 17 percent of everyone killed on the state’s roads.

In New York City, 2023 was the worst year on record with 55 motorcyclist deaths. In the first four months of 2024 the city’s transport department reported motorcyclist injuries running 33 percent above the same period the year before — 728 against 548. Motorcyclist deaths then fell by 32 percent in 2025.

The most recent official borough breakdown is the city’s Motorcycle Safety Study, covering 2010 to 2014. Across those five years it recorded 66 motorcycle fatalities in Queens and 62 in Brooklyn — the two highest of the five boroughs, and between them more than half of everyone killed on a motorcycle in New York City. The same study found the city’s motorcyclist fatality rate ran at nearly twice the upstate rate.

One finding from it is worth repeating because it is so often misread. Ninety-three percent of riders killed were wearing a helmet — but a quarter of those helmets either were not approved to the federal standard or had not been properly fastened. Wearing something is not the same as wearing the right thing correctly.

The crashes we see cluster where fast road meets ordinary street. In Queens that means the Van Wyck and Grand Central Parkway approaches, Queens Boulevard, Woodhaven and Cross Bay Boulevards, and the long arterials through Jamaica and Richmond Hill. In Brooklyn it is the Belt Parkway and the BQE service roads, Atlantic Avenue, Linden Boulevard, Flatbush Avenue and Eastern Parkway. The pattern is the same in both boroughs: a driver turning left across a lane who simply does not register a single headlight.

We work from two offices, one in each borough — Richmond Hill in Queens and East New York in Brooklyn — so wherever the crash happened, somebody who knows the road is nearby.

How long you have

Three years from the date of the crash to start a lawsuit against a private driver, under CPLR 214(5).

If a city vehicle, the MTA or New York City Transit is involved, the clock is far shorter: a notice of claim within 90 days, and the lawsuit itself within one year and ninety days.

And if your crash was caused by the state of the road — a pothole, a sunken plate, a defect that a car would shrug off and a bike will not — there is a further hurdle in New York City. Under the Administrative Code provision usually called the Pothole Law, the City generally cannot be held liable for a street or sidewalk defect unless it received prior written notice of the condition and failed to put it right within fifteen days. Actual or constructive knowledge is not enough — the fact that everyone in the neighborhood knew about the hole does not do it. That question needs answering early, and it is not one you can answer yourself from the curb.

What to do after a motorcycle crash

1. Get checked the same day, even if you walked away. A gap between the crash and the first treatment is the first thing an insurer points to, and adrenaline hides a great deal.
2. Get a police report. If the police do not attend, file one yourself.
3. Photograph the bike before it is moved or scrapped. Damage patterns show the angle and speed of impact and they are often the best evidence of what actually happened. Once the bike is gone, that evidence is gone.
4. Photograph the road surface if anything about it contributed — the pothole, the gravel, the metal plate, the unmarked lane shift.
5. Keep the helmet and the gear. Do not throw damaged gear away. A cracked helmet is evidence of the impact and of the fact you were wearing it.
6. Take names and numbers from witnesses. Drivers tend to describe motorcycle crashes in a way that favors drivers. An independent account is worth a great deal.
7. Do not give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurer. You are not obliged to, and it is rarely used to help you.
8. Do not assume the injury is too small to matter. The threshold that would have stopped you in a car does not stand in front of you here.

Motorcycle injury claims — common questions

I was not wearing a helmet. Is my case over?

No. It is not an argument that you caused the crash — New York confines safety-device non-use to the question of damages, and the other side has to plead it and prove the helmet would have prevented the particular injury. It is a narrower argument than it is usually presented as.

The other driver says I appeared out of nowhere. Does that stick?

It is the most common thing said after a motorcycle crash and it is usually a description of the driver’s own attention rather than your speed. Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1252(a) entitles you to full use of your lane. Independent witnesses, damage patterns and any available camera footage tend to tell a different story from the one given at the roadside.

My injuries were painful but nothing was broken. Is it worth a claim?

Very possibly, and more so than if you had been in a car. Because a motorcyclist is not a covered person under the no-fault law, the serious injury threshold that bars most car occupants from claiming for pain and suffering does not stand in the way in the same fashion. The state’s own insurance regulator describes a motorcyclist as able to sue from first dollar loss.

Who pays my medical bills while the claim runs?

Usually your health insurance, and under General Obligations Law § 5-335 it generally cannot claim that money back out of a settlement, with some exceptions. If you carry medical payments coverage on the bike, that helps too. What will not happen is a no-fault insurer paying automatically, because that system does not apply to you.

The driver had almost no insurance. What then?

Check your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage — on a serious injury it is frequently where the real recovery comes from. Bring the policy to the first conversation.

What does it cost to start?

Nothing. We work on contingency, so we take a percentage only if we recover money for you. If we recover nothing, you owe us nothing.