What most riders in New York are never told
New York’s no-fault system does not cover motorcycles. Riders are written out of it by statute, which means there is no $50,000 in automatic medical and wage benefits waiting for you the way there is for someone in a car. It is the single hardest fact about being hurt on a bike here, and it is why bills start arriving while you are still in a brace.
The same exclusion cuts the other way, and it matters enormously. Because you are outside no-fault, you do not have to clear the serious injury threshold of Insurance Law § 5102(d) before you can sue. A car occupant with a soft-tissue injury may be barred from recovering anything. A rider with the same injury is not. The full claim against the at-fault driver is open from the start.
The other fight is the story. Insurers reach for the same assumption about every rider — that they were speeding, lane-splitting, weaving. It is answered with physical evidence: scene photographs, the position of the debris field, camera footage from nearby buildings, and witnesses found before they scatter.
The cases we handle most
Left-turn collisions
A driver turns across the rider’s lane and claims not to have seen the bike. The most common serious motorcycle case in Queens.
Lane-change and blind spot
A merging driver moves into an occupied lane. Mirror position and impact angle usually settle it.
Dooring and parked vehicles
A door opened into traffic makes the person who opened it liable, not the rider who could not stop.
Road defects
Potholes, steel plates and sunken grates that a car shrugs off will put a bike down. Municipal claims run on much shorter deadlines.
What we do once you call
We open the file and put the at-fault driver’s carrier on notice, and we check your own policy for underinsured motorist coverage — often the only real money when the driver carries minimum limits.
We photograph the bike and your gear before anything is repaired or thrown away, request nearby camera footage before it is overwritten, and get witness statements.
We arrange treatment with providers who will work on a lien where no-fault would normally have paid, so care is not rationed by what you can afford this month.
We demand, negotiate, and file suit when the offer reflects the stereotype instead of the evidence.
Common questions
I wasn’t wearing a helmet. Is my case over?
No. New York requires a helmet and not wearing one can reduce what you recover for head injuries, but it does not bar the claim and it has no bearing at all on injuries to the rest of your body. It is an argument about the number, not about whether you have a case.
Who pays my medical bills if there is no no-fault?
Your health insurance is usually first, and it will later assert a lien against the recovery. Where there is no coverage, we arrange treatment on a lien so providers are paid out of the settlement. This is the practical problem in most rider cases and it is solvable — it just has to be handled deliberately.
The driver says I came out of nowhere. Does that hurt me?
It is what almost every driver says, and it is an admission that they did not see you — not evidence that you did anything wrong. Comparative fault in New York reduces a recovery by your share of the blame; it does not eliminate it. Even a rider found partly at fault still recovers.