Bicycle Accident Injuries

Bicycle injury claims typically involve severe injuries including but not limited to lacerations and fractures which are things that wouldn’t happen if you were in a car with an airbag and a heavy metal frame to protect you. Bicycle injuries are especially severe because you’re in a moving vehicle that doesn’t have safety mechanisms in place. You also typically don’t have bicycle insurance to cover these injuries.
A common misconception is that you have to put your medical bills under your own private insurance if you’re struck by a vehicle while riding your bicycle. That’s not the case. Typically, you will have what’s called no-fault benefits of up to $50,000 available to you. That doesn’t mean someone’s going to send you a check for $50,000. It means you have an insurance policy of $50,000 for your medical bills your potential lost wages if you have to miss work because of this, and for mileage to and from the doctor. The no-fault benefits can come from a few places. If you own a car and have your own insurance policy, you can make a claim on that policy. If someone from your household owns a car and has their own insurance policy, you can make a claim under those benefits – assuming you’re in the state of New York and you live in the state of New York.

If you have neither of those things, the owner of the vehicle that hit you typically will have a standard insurance policy in place, and that standard policy will come with $50,000 of no-fault insurance benefits. However, there are strict deadlines with getting a no-fault application in. If you don’t get the application in on time, the insurance company can deny you those benefits. It’s important you meet with a personal injury attorney experienced in bicycle accidents right away so we can help navigate who the right insurer is and what your timeline is to submit those no-fault benefits. Otherwise, you could be stuck with those medical bills.

The second aspect to bicycle injuries is the liability portion, where we would make a liability claim against the driver’s insurance company. That involves us documenting your medical records, which is why it’s so important to get to the doctor and follow up with treatment recommendations and detail the liability. Even in cases where there are problems with liability, we can still make a claim, because at the end of the day, a motor vehicle should not have struck you while you were on your bicycle, and you likely have a pretty bad injury from the accident. That’s why you need an experienced personal injury attorney in your corner when you’re in this fight, which may be the fight of your life.