Navigating Bicycle Accident Claims in NYC: Your Legal Rights & Options

Cycling is a fun, healthy, and environmentally friendly method of transportation.  Many New York City residents ride their bikes to and from work on a daily basis, and that number is only increasing.  There are over 620,000 cycling trips made in New York City on a typical day, according to the United States Decennial Census’ American Community Survey.[1]

This healthy, environmentally-friendly activity is great, but it does come with risks.  Sadly, New York City cyclists are realizing those risks: more than 5,000 bicyclists were injured and 30 of them were killed in 2023 according to the New York City Department of Transportation (“NYCDOT”).[2]

The injuries stemming from these accidents can range from scrapes/bruises to broken bones, traumatic brain injuries, or even death.  If you or a loved one who have been injured in a cycling accident in New York City the bicycle accident lawyers at Dankser & Aspromonte are here for you.  Call us today at (516) 774-3988 to schedule your initial consultation free of charge.  You can also contact us through our online portal, which is linked here.

NYC Bicycle Accident Basics

Common Bicycle Accident Scenarios in NYC

Every bicycle accident case is different, but that does not mean there aren’t any specific scenarios in which cyclists are commonly injured.  These scenarios include:

• Dooring: The term “dooring” refers to incidents in which a cyclist is injured when a driver or an automobile passenger opens his or her car door into the bicyclist’s path without first checking for an oncoming bicyclist.
• Failure to Yield: Drivers are obligated to yield the right of way to cyclists—particularly when they come upon an intersection. Sadly, drivers often fail to yield, and this failure to yield accounted for 62% of the incidents where drivers hit cyclists.[3]  This statistic drives the importance of adherence to traffic laws home.
• Negligent Motorists: Distracted driving—whether caused by texting, eating, or some other reason—can cause motorists to simply not see the cyclist. Tragically, the crashes in which the motorist is at fault are more deadly than those in which the cyclists is at fault.[4]

NYC-Specific Traffic Laws That Impact Claims

New York City has taken a comprehensive approach to creating a safer environment for cyclists through the use of targeted statutes, the implementation of Vision Zero, and altering the city’s physical infrastructure.

Legal Protections in New York City

Under New York’s statutory law, drivers “shall exercise due care to avoid colliding with any bicyclists.”[5]  This requirement that motorists exercise due care to avoid collisions with cyclists requires, at a minimum, that motorists remain vigilant and take the precautions that are reasonably necessary to prevent collisions with cyclists.  New York law specifically requires motorists to do the following:

• yield to cyclists when making a turn across a bike lane;[6]
• allow cyclists to occupy the full traffic lane when the lane is too narrow for both the bicycle and the vehicle to safety share it side-by-side;
• pass cyclists at a “safe distance,” which is generally interpreted to mean at least three feet;[7] AND
• yield to cyclists who are legally riding their bike in a crosswalk or a pedestrian area.

New York City has also implemented congestion pricing.  Since January 5, 2025, the city has been charging $9 to enter Manhattan’s central business district.  Congestion pricing not only improves air quality, but it also enhances the safety of cyclists by freeing up the roads for their use.

Vision Zero

In January 2014, New York became the first city to implement Vision Zero.[8]  Vision Zero is a strategy to eliminate traffic injuries and fatalities while increasing safety, health, and equitable mobility of New York City residents.[9]  Vision Zero operates under a new philosophy centering the idea that human beings are fallible—particularly when driving an automobile—and emphasizes improving the systems in which these drivers operate to drive traffic injuries and fatalities down.[10]

Since implementing Vision Zeron, New York City has taken the following steps to increase pedestrian and bicyclist safety:

• reduce the speed limit to twenty-five miles per hours;
• launch a speed camera program in order to find the motorists who do exceed this speed limit; and
• begin educational initiatives for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists.[11]

Investments in Infrastructure

In recent years, NYCDOT has significantly expanded bike infrastructure, including adding over 50 miles of bike lanes annually and significantly expanding protected lanes to enhance cyclist safety.[12]  NYCDOT has also worked to transform sections of Broadway into pedestrian plazas and shared streets, where reduced automotive traffic means greater safety for cyclists.

What to Do Immediately After a Bicycle Accident

In the moments following a bicycle accident, the injured cyclist’s actions may determine not only their safety but also what their legal rights and options will be in the wake of the accident.

Make Sure Everyone is Safe

In any accident, the most important thing to do is to ensure that everyone—the cyclist, the motorist, and every other involved person—is safe.  To that end, one should immediately move himself and the other involved people to a safe place where the danger is averted or minimized.  Then, he should assess himself for injuries followed and check if everyone else is okay.

Call 911

After a bicycle accident, you should always call 911.  It is important to report the accident and request police assistance—even if the injuries are minor. This 911 call should result in some documentation of the incident.  Remember: never leave the scene until the police arrive and say it is okay to leave.

Be honest when speaking to the police, but do not admit fault.  Request a copy of the report or ask for the report number so you can get it later.

Document the Scene of the Accident

Documenting the scene can be difficult in the wake of the accident, but greater documentation likely means greater recovery.  Make sure to write down the time, date, and location of the accident.  Then look around to determine who saw the accident, and make sure to get their name and contact information.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and pictures and videos may be worth even more than that in this context.  Do your best to take photos and/or videos of:

• the bicycle and any damage to it;
• the vehicle or vehicles involved, with an emphasis on their license plates;
• your own injuries—to the extent they can be documented by photos or videos;
• the conditions of the roads, traffic signals, or other traffic signs; and
• any other hazards that contributed to the crash.

Seek Medical Attention

You should seek an evaluation from a trusted medical evaluation, regardless of how you feel at the time of the crash.  Many injuries are not apparent until later on.  Once you have been treated, make sure to keep your medical records and receipts so you can later provide them to an insurance company or use them as evidence in a possible legal case.

Your medical records are critical evidence in any personal injury claim based on your bike accident.  Effectively, those records are direct documentation of the money you lost as a result of the crash.

Witness & Driver Information Collection

Under no circumstances should you operate on the honor system in the context of a bicycle accident.  Make sure to get the driver’s full, government name, contact information, driver’s license number, vehicle information, and most importantly, their insurance information.  These conversations can be uncomfortable, but they are crucial.

Do Not Give a Statement Without Speaking to a Lawyer

An insurance agent or the driver’s attorney may ask you to give a statement about the accident at the scene.  It is your right not to provide a statement at the scene, and you should not provide one.  The insurance adjuster may pressure you to give one, but that is a tactic that these companies often use to avoid paying out significant settlements.

These statements are sought to hurt your case and drive down the amount of money that an insurance company will have to pay on your case.  These people are about the finances, not the facts.  Only by hiring a qualified attorney will you know that you have someone who can fight for your interests in these cases.

Hire a Lawyer to Negotiate With the Insurance Company

It may be tempting to negotiate with the insurance company personally rather than hiring a lawyer, but that decision is rarely a good idea.  Insurance companies do not care about injured people and are not interested in paying them the money they are owed.  These companies only care about one thing: the money they have to pay out on claims.

People who are represented by a lawyer frighten these companies into paying more money in a potential settlement.  This is evinced by the fact that the Insurance Research Council reports that injured people who have a lawyer settle their cases for almost 3.5 times as much money as those who do not have an attorney.[13]

Understanding Liability in NYC

Comparative Negligence in New York

New York is what is known as a “comparative negligence” state.[14]  In a comparative negligence state, the amount of money that a person receives in a personal injury lawsuit is reduced in proportion to the extent that the jury finds the injury to have been caused by the injured person’s actions.

For example, imagine a scenario in which a car hits a cyclist while that cyclist was riding the bike through a red light.  At trial, the jury awards $100,000, finding the driver to be 65% at-fault and assigning the remaining 35% to the cyclist.  The cyclist would then receive $65,000 in damages as a result of New York’s comparative negligence scheme.

Impact of NYC Infrastructure

New York law imposes a duty of care on governmental entities—like New York City—to maintain highways, roads, streets, sidewalks, and other thoroughfares in a reasonably safe condition and to warn uses of any hazards.[15]  The City can then be held accountable where it fails to fix conditions after it is informed of their existence.  In some instances, a bicycle accident with a motor vehicle can also be the result of the negligence of both a driver and a governmental entity.

Self-Representation vs. Hiring an Attorney

It may be tempting to represent yourself in your bicycle accident case, but this is never a good idea.  As an initial matter, it is possible to represent yourself in what you think is a small case, but an experienced bicycle accident attorney will know how the law impacts the financial value of your case.  What you think is a small case may indeed be a far more valuable matter than initially thought.

One other benefit of representing yourself is that you would not have to pay an attorney.  That’s particularly helpful when you do not have the funds to pay a lawyer upfront.  However, this reason becomes less convincing once one learns that bicycle attorneys like the ones at Dansker & Aspromonte work on a contingency fee.

A contingency fee is a payment structure in which the lawyer works on the case for free and then receives a previously agreed upon percentage of the lawsuit’s proceeds upon resolution of the case through settlement or trial.  Essentially, the lawyer only gets paid after your case is going to result in a settlement or collectable judgment at trial.  Under this structure, the lawyer is taking on all of the risk, and you only pay the lawyer if the lawyer gets you compensation by the insurer.

Conclusion & Call to Action

As discussed above, New York City and the State of New York have done much to protect cyclists by enacting new laws and regulations, creating comprehensive approaches to reducing bicycle injuries, and creating cyclist-friendly infrastructure.  That will not prevent every bicycle accident though, and you should take care to review the guidelines of how to handle the moments after a bicycle accident if you’re ever in that situation.  Effectively managing that time period will greatly increase your chance of recovering damages for any injuries you suffered due to the accident.

While useful, the information provided above is no substitute for effective assistance of counsel in a legal proceeding.  At Dankser & Aspromonte, our attorneys have years of experience fighting for people who were injured in bicycle accidents, and we will use our experience to help you receive the highest compensation available.

Contact us today by either calling us or reaching out to us online.  You can call us at (516) 206-6723, or send us a message through our online portal, which is linked here.

[1]  “Cycling in the City”, NYC DOT (accessed 3/16/2025), https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/cyclinginthecity.shtml.

[2]  “Bicycle Crash Data – 2023”, NYCDOT (accessed 3/16/2025), https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-data-report-2023.pdf.

[3]  Dan Roe & Dylan Jackson, “What’s Really Killing New York’s Cyclists,” Bicycling (Published 2/28/2020), https://www.bicycling.com/news/a31122171/nyc-cycling-crash-data/.

[4]  Dan Roe & Dylan Jackson, “What’s Really Killing New York’s Cyclists,” Bicycling (Published 2/28/2020), https://www.bicycling.com/news/a31122171/nyc-cycling-crash-data/.

[5]  N.Y. VEH. & TRAF. Law § 1146.

[6]  N.Y. VEH. & TRAF. Law § 1231.

[7]  N.Y. VEH. & TRAF. Law § 1122-a.

[8]  Surico, John, “New York City Just Had Its Safest-Ever Year For Pedesrians. What Went Right?”, Bloomberg (March 11, 2024), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-03-11/new-york-city-s-decade-long-battle-for-pedestrian-safety.

[9]  Vision Zero Network, “What is Vision Zero?” (accessed Dec. 2024), https://visionzeronetwork.org/about/what-is-vision-zero/.

[10]  Vision Zero Network, “What is Vision Zero?” (accessed Dec. 2024), https://visionzeronetwork.org/about/what-is-vision-zero/.

[11]  Surico, John, “New York City Just Had Its Safest-Ever Year For Pedestrians. What Went Right?”, Bloomberg (March 11, 2024), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-03-11/new-york-city-s-decade-long-battle-for-pedestrian-safety.

[12] NYCDOT Bicycle Network Development Report,” (2025), accessible via https://www.nyc.gov/dot.

[13]  “Attorney Involvement in Auto Injury Claims,” The Institutes – Insurance Research Council (published July 8, 2014), https://www.insurance-research.org/research-publications/study-finds-more-auto-injury-claimants-are-hiring-attorneys.

[14]  NY CPLR § 1411.

[15]  Friedman v. State, 67 N.Y.2d 271, 283-84 (Ny. 1986); Martin v. Reedy, 606 N.Y.S.2d 455, 456-57 (1994).