A New York motorcycle accident lawyer at Silver Law Group represents injured riders and the families of riders killed in crashes across all five boroughs: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island. If another driver caused your crash, you pay no fee unless we recover money for you, and your first call costs nothing. Consultations are free, available 24/7, and offered in English, Spanish, and Russian. Call 212-470-4544.
Do You Have a Motorcycle Accident Case in New York
You have a case when another person’s negligence caused your crash and left you hurt. In practice that usually means a driver who turned left across your lane, rolled through a light, changed lanes into a bike they never checked for, or opened a car door into your path.
New York runs car-accident victims through a no-fault system that forces them to clear the serious-injury threshold in Insurance Law 5102(d) before they can sue for pain and suffering. Motorcyclists are left out of that system entirely. You do not have to prove a fracture, significant disfigurement, or a permanent limitation before your claim counts.
That means you can sue the at-fault driver directly for everything the crash cost you: medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering, starting from the first dollar of loss. The exclusion that usually gets treated as a disadvantage for riders is the one rule that works in your favor once a claim begins.
How New York No-Fault Law Treats Motorcycle Riders
Insurance Law 5104(a) defines the “motor vehicle” covered by no-fault in a way that leaves motorcycles out. Because of that single definition, you receive no Personal Injury Protection (PIP) benefits after a crash, and the no-fault death benefit does not reach a rider’s family either.
That changes how your early treatment gets paid. A car occupant’s first medical bills run through PIP no matter who caused the crash. You do not have that cushion. Your own health insurance, or optional MedPay coverage if you bought it before the crash, pays for the ambulance, the ER, and the surgery while your case is pending.
The trade is real, and worth understanding before you speak with anyone. You lose the automatic first-party benefits a driver gets. In exchange, nothing limits your liability claim against the person who hit you: no threshold to clear, no restriction on the categories of loss you can pursue. For a seriously hurt rider, unrestricted access to the full claim is usually worth far more than the PIP a driver collects.
What Causes Motorcycle Accidents in New York and the Bias Riders Face
Most motorcycle crashes in New York trace back to a driver who did not see the bike, or did not look. The patterns repeat:
- Left-turn and failure-to-yield collisions, where a driver turns across your path
- Distracted driving, usually a phone
- Unsafe lane changes into a rider the driver never checked for
- Dooring, when someone opens a car door into the lane of travel
- Speeding
- Driving under the influence
The risk is not abstract. NYC DOT’s Vision Zero data counted 51 deaths among riders of motorized two-wheeled vehicles, the category that includes motorcycles, through the first three quarters of 2025, down from 60 over the same stretch of 2024.
Then there is the bias. Jurors and insurers carry an assumption that riders are reckless, that anyone on a motorcycle was probably speeding or weaving through traffic. That assumption costs riders money before a claim is even heard. We counter it with proof: your speed, your lane position, your headlight, the right of way you held, the signal that was green for you. When the record shows you were riding lawfully and carefully, the reckless-rider story falls apart, and the adjuster loses the discount they were counting on.
Injuries Motorcyclists Suffer and What a New York Claim May Be Worth
A rider absorbs the full force of a crash with nothing between skin and asphalt. The injuries reflect that:
- Road rash, which can go deep enough to need skin grafts
- Degloving, where skin is torn away from the tissue beneath
- Fractures, often in the legs, wrists, and pelvis
- Spinal cord injuries, including partial or complete paralysis
- Traumatic brain injury, which can happen even to a helmeted rider
- Amputation, at the scene or later in surgery
What a claim can recover follows from what the injury does to your life. New York lets you pursue past and future medical bills, lost income and lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, disfigurement, and long-term disability. A spinal injury that ends a physical career reaches years of future earnings and a lifetime of care, while a healed fracture does not.
No one can put a real number on your case from a headline or a template. Value depends on your injuries, your prognosis, the work you can no longer do, and the facts of how the crash happened. Any lawyer who quotes you a figure on the first call is guessing.
Who Can Be Held Liable for a New York Motorcycle Crash
The driver who hit you is rarely the only party who has to answer for it. More than one can share responsibility, and each may carry separate insurance:
- The at-fault driver
- The employer of a commercial or delivery driver who was working when the crash happened
- A government entity responsible for a dangerous road surface, a missing sign, or defective signage
- A property owner whose lot, driveway, or landscaping created the hazard
- The manufacturer of a defective motorcycle part, if a mechanical failure contributed to the crash
Finding every liable party is how a motorcycle accident attorney reaches every available source of coverage. That matters most when your injuries are severe and a single policy will not come close to covering them.
The New York Helmet Law and How It Affects Your Claim
VTL 381 has required every motorcycle operator and passenger in New York to wear a DOT-approved helmet since 1967, along with goggles or a face shield. New York is a universal-helmet state, and the rule applies to every rider on every ride.
If you were not wearing one, your claim survives. New York follows pure comparative negligence under CPLR 1411, which means your own conduct can reduce your recovery but never erases it. A missing helmet can only cut damages for a head injury the defense actually proves a helmet would have prevented. It does nothing to the driver’s liability for causing the crash, and nothing to your recovery for injuries below the neck that a helmet was never going to touch.
What to Do After a Motorcycle Accident in New York
The hours after a crash decide what evidence survives. Take these steps if you can, or have someone take them for you:
- Get medical care and keep treating consistently. Because you have no PIP record documenting your injuries, your treatment history is the proof, and every gap in it becomes the insurer’s argument that you were not really hurt.
- Call the police and get a copy of the crash report.
- Photograph the scene, the vehicles, the road surface, and your injuries.
- Collect names and numbers from witnesses, plus the other driver’s insurance information.
- Say nothing to the other driver’s insurer. Do not give a recorded statement, and do not accept any offer, before you speak with a lawyer.
What It Costs to Hire a New York Motorcycle Accident Lawyer
You pay nothing to hire us, and nothing while your case moves. Silver Law Group works on contingency, which means our fee is a percentage of the money we recover for you, and if we recover nothing, you owe no attorney’s fee at all. There is no retainer, no hourly bill, and no invoice arriving while you are out of work.
That structure matters more for a rider than for almost anyone else. You already have no PIP paying your bills, so your own health coverage is carrying the treatment. A contingency fee lets you go after the at-fault driver without stacking a legal bill on top of the medical ones. The cost of the case comes out of the recovery at the end, or it does not come out of your pocket at all.
Deadlines to File a Motorcycle Accident Claim in New York
New York injury claims run on a clock, and motorcycle cases often run on more than one at once:
- CPLR 214 gives you three years from the date of the crash to file a personal-injury lawsuit.
- EPTL 5-4.1 gives a family two years from the date of death to bring a wrongful-death claim.
- GML 50-e cuts the window sharply when a city vehicle, a public agency, or a dangerous public road is involved: you must file a Notice of Claim within 90 days, and under GML 50-i you then have one year and 90 days to sue.
Miss the shortest deadline that applies to you and the longer ones may stop mattering. Motorcycle cases turn on evidence that can vanish within hours: skid marks fade, the other vehicle gets repaired, and witnesses forget what they saw. The sooner a lawyer starts working the case, the more of it survives to prove.
Why Choose Silver Law Group for Your New York Motorcycle Case
Riders come to Silver Law Group because the terms are plain. You pay no fee unless we recover for you. Your consultation is free, available any hour of the day, and handled in English, Spanish, or Russian by an experienced motorcycle injury lawyer.
We prepare every case as if it will be tried. Insurers know which firms fold at the courthouse door and which do not, and a claim built for trial is the kind they pay fairly to settle. You deal with the attorney working your file, not a rotating desk. And if your injuries keep you home or in a hospital bed, the attorney comes to you.
Call 212-470-4544 for a free consultation. There is no fee unless we win your case.