You focus on healing. We will fight the insurance companies, secure your lost wages, and demand the maximum compensation you deserve.
⭐ 5-Star Rated by NYC Clients | 🏆 Millions Recovered for Riders | 📍 Serving Manhattan & All 5 Boroughs
Injured in a Motorcycle Crash? You Don’t Have to Face This Alone.
Riding in New York City offers incredible freedom, but the reality for riders is often harsh. A single distracted driver, a suddenly opened taxi door in Midtown, or an unsafe lane change on the BQE can result in catastrophic, life-altering harm.
When you are down, the immediate aftermath is overwhelming. The medical bills pile up quickly, physical pain makes it impossible to work, and aggressive insurance adjusters are already building a case against you. They frequently rely on the unfair “reckless biker” stereotype to try and minimize or deny your claim.
You do not have to fight this battle by yourself. Michael J. Redenburg doesn’t just litigate motorcycle cases—he rides these streets himself. We know exactly how to counter these bad-faith insurance tactics, protect your credit, and fight for your complete physical and financial recovery.
Real Results for Injured New York Motorcyclists
When you are choosing a legal advocate, past performance matters. Insurance companies know which law firms settle for less and which ones are willing to take a case to trial. We have a proven track record of securing maximum compensation for injured riders across the five boroughs.
- $875,000 Settlement: Secured for a Manhattan rider who suffered a traumatic brain injury and severe road rash after being struck by a distracted rideshare driver making an illegal U-turn.
- $450,000 Verdict: Recovered for a client who experienced complex lower-extremity fractures requiring multiple surgeries due to a dangerous, poorly maintained NYC road defect on the FDR Drive.
- $325,000 Settlement: Won for a motorcyclist hit by a commercial delivery vehicle turning unlawfully in Brooklyn, covering all past medical bills and lifelong vocational rehabilitation.
Most New York drivers are familiar with “No-Fault” insurance (Personal Injury Protection or PIP). In a standard car accident, this coverage automatically pays for medical bills and lost wages, regardless of who caused the crash.
However, New York Insurance Law § 5103 explicitly excludes motorcyclists from these automatic benefits. Because the state classifies motorcycles as “inherently dangerous,” riders are left out of the standard pool of insured vehicles.
This exclusion creates a massive, immediate financial gap. If you are downed on the FDR Drive or struck in a busy Brooklyn intersection, your own auto insurance carrier is not legally required to pay for your emergency room visit, surgeries, or rehabilitation.
The Silver Lining and Our Legal Strategy
While this exclusion seems incredibly unfair, it changes your legal strategy in one very positive way: you are not required to prove a “serious injury” (as defined by NY law) to sue the at-fault driver for pain and suffering. This allows motorcyclists to pursue legal action for injuries that might be completely barred in a standard car-to-car collision.
To ensure your immediate bills are covered, the team at MJR Law will:
- Secure “Med-Pay”: We immediately search your policy for Medical Payments (Med-Pay) coverage, an optional add-on that acts as a mini version of No-Fault for riders.
- Issue Letters of Protection: If Med-Pay is unavailable, we can issue a legal “letter of protection” to your hospital and doctors, ensuring you receive continuous medical care without paying out of pocket upfront.
- Aggressive BI Litigation: We immediately pivot to aggressive litigation against the at-fault driver’s bodily injury (BI) coverage to guarantee your providers are paid and your personal credit is protected.
Local Legal Representation Across the Five Boroughs
While our firm operates at a city-wide level, we provide targeted, strategic advocacy tailored to the unique traffic patterns, road hazards, and court dynamics of each individual borough:
- Manhattan & Brooklyn: High-stakes litigation focusing on “dooring” accidents by parked vehicles, sudden lane changes by yellow cabs, and commercial delivery trucks navigating congested corridors like Broadway, Flatbush Avenue, and the FDR Drive.
- The Bronx: Specialized investigation into high-velocity collisions occurring on notoriously hazardous routes, including the Cross Bronx Expressway, the Major Deegan, and the Grand Concourse.
- Queens: Aggressive advocacy for riders injured on major commuter thoroughfares, including the Long Island Expressway (LIE) and traffic-dense corridors throughout Astoria, Flushing, and Jamaica.
- Staten Island: Local representation addressing severe crashes caused by dangerous highway merges, blind spots, and sudden stops on Hylan Boulevard or approaching the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.
High-Velocity Risks & Common NYC Motorcycle Injuries
Riding a motorcycle in New York City offers unmatched agility, but the complete lack of structural protection means that even a low-speed impact on the FDR Drive, the BQE, or local gridlocked streets can be catastrophic. Unlike passengers in a car, a motorcyclist’s body absorbs 100% of the kinetic energy during a collision.
We routinely handle high-stakes litigation involving severe, life-altering injuries, including:
- Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI): The sudden, violent rotation experienced during an ejection can cause severe cognitive damage, memory loss, and neurological deficits—even when a rider is wearing a DOT-approved helmet.
- Road Rash & Degloving Injuries: Sliding across New York’s abrasive asphalt, which is frequently littered with construction debris, gravel, and metal plates, can tear through protective gear. This leads to deep tissue loss, severe nerve damage, and permanent scarring.
- Lower-Extremity Fractures: Because motorcycles often take the initial impact from a car bumper, a rider’s legs, knees, and ankles are highly vulnerable. We frequently see complex, shattered bones that require emergency open reduction internal fixation (ORIF) surgeries.
- Spinal Cord Trauma & Paralysis: High-impact collisions can compress or sever the spinal cord, leaving riders facing permanent paralysis, loss of motor function, or lifelong chronic pain management.
Determining legal responsibility in a New York City motorcycle crash is rarely straightforward. Because you are shut out of standard No-Fault benefits, tracking down every single liable party is the only way to ensure your medical bills, future surgeries, and lifetime lost wages are fully covered.
We aggressively investigate beyond the individual driver to identify corporate and municipal entities with the substantial insurance policies required to satisfy a catastrophic injury claim:
In today’s commercial landscape, a massive percentage of NYC motorcycle accidents involve rideshare drivers navigating unfamiliar neighborhoods while distracted by their phones. Under New York Vehicle and Traffic Law (VTL) Article 44-B, the insurance coverage fluctuates strictly based on the driver’s app status at the exact second of impact:
- Period 1 (App On, No Passenger): The driver is logged into the app but hasn’t accepted a trip. Liability coverage is typically capped at a lower contingent policy (often $75,000/$150,000).
- Periods 2 & 3 (Match Accepted or Passenger Onboard): The moment a driver accepts a ride request or has a passenger in the seat, coverage surges to a $1.25 million corporate liability and SUM policy.
- Our Strategy: Rideshare companies frequently overwrite or purge their internal GPS and digital logs within 30 days. We immediately issue data preservation subpoenas to lock down the driver’s exact digital status, forcing the maximum available policy into play.
2. Commercial & Fleet Liability: Amazon, FedEx, and UPS
If your accident involved a commercial delivery truck or sprinter van, we deploy the legal doctrine of Respondeat Superior (Vicarious Liability). In New York, an employer is fully liable for the negligence of its workers if the crash occurred while they were acting within the scope of their employment.
- The Independent Contractor Defense: Corporate giants routinely try to insulate themselves from lawsuits by claiming their drivers are independent contractors. We aggressively dismantle this defense by proving “operational control”—using delivery route apps, rigid tracking schedules, and corporate mandates to establish that the parent corporation is legally accountable.
3. Dram Shop Liability: Suing the Bar or Restaurant
If you were struck by a drunk driver, our investigation doesn’t stop at the motorist’s personal auto policy. Under New York’s Dram Shop Act (General Obligations Law § 11-101), it is illegal for an establishment to serve alcohol to someone who is already visibly intoxicated.
- Our Strategy: We systematically secure security footage, bartender receipts, and witness statements from the venue the driver visited prior to the crash. Proving they were continuously served while showing clear signs of intoxication opens up a critical secondary commercial insurance source to cover your losses.
Strategic Motorcycle Accident Litigation: The Forensic Edge
When an insurance carrier refuses to offer a settlement that fully accounts for the true cost of your lifelong recovery, we do not hesitate to move your case into high-stakes litigation. In New York City courtrooms, winning a complex motorcycle case requires much more than a standard police report—it demands undeniable, scientific proof.
We provide our clients with a forensic edge by utilizing advanced engineering, technology, and medical illustration to build bulletproof cases:
1. Accident Reconstruction & Advanced Physics
We refuse to let your case rest on a “he-said, she-said” argument against an aggressive insurance company. Our firm works closely with world-class accident reconstruction experts who apply formal physics and engineering principles to the physical evidence gathered from the scene:
- Skid Mark & Momentum Analysis: By measuring tire marks left on the asphalt and evaluating the final resting positions of both vehicles, our forensic engineers calculate the exact speed of the defendant’s vehicle at the precise moment of impact.
- Time-Distance Relationships: We mathematically recreate the sequence of events leading up to the crash. This allows us to prove to a jury that the driver had ample time and visibility to see your motorcycle and stop, but failed to do so due to speeding, distraction, or recklessness.
2. The “Digital Fingerprint” of a Crash: Black Box Discovery
Most modern passenger vehicles, commercial trucks, and rideshare cars are equipped with an Event Data Recorder (EDR), commonly known as a “Black Box.” Under New York Vehicle & Traffic Law § 416-B, this data is heavily protected, but we use the formal discovery process to secure court orders forcing the defense to hand it over. This data provides objective, unarguable proof of:
- Speed at Impact: Establishing that the driver was speeding, even if they claim they were under the limit.
- Braking Activity: Showing exactly how many seconds before the impact (if at all) the driver attempted to hit the brakes.
- Steering Input: Revealing if the driver made a sudden, negligent swerve that caused the collision.
3. Defeating Jury Bias with Medical Illustrators & Life Care Planners
Insurance defense lawyers routinely rely on “Biker Bias”—the deeply unfair stereotype that everyone who rides a motorcycle is inherently reckless. We systematically defeat this prejudice by making the true physical toll of your injuries undeniable to a Queens, Manhattan, or Brooklyn jury:
- 3D Medical Animations: We collaborate with professional forensic animators to create accurate 3D visualizations of your emergency surgeries. Seeing a high-definition rendering of a shattered femur being repaired with hardware helps a jury truly empathize with your physical trauma.
- Comprehensive Life Care Planning: We work alongside vocational experts and medical economists to quantify your “loss of enjoyment of life” and project the 20-to-30-year cost of your ongoing medical treatment, ensuring your verdict covers your entire future.
How We Protect Your Payout: The New York Fault Factor
In New York City, insurance adjusters will do everything in their power to pin a percentage of the blame on the rider. Because New York follows a pure comparative negligence rule, any percentage of fault assigned to you directly reduces your final check. If the insurance company successfully claims you were speeding and a jury assigns you 25% of the blame, a $1,000,000 case instantly shrinks to $750,000.
We investigate aggressively to keep your fault percentage at zero.
| Total Case Value | Your Assigned Fault % | Your Final Financial Recovery |
| $1,000,000 | 0% (The other driver completely ran a red light) | $1,000,000 (Full Payout) |
| $1,000,000 | 25% (Insurer successfully claims you were speeding) | $750,000 (Reduced Payout) |
The 90-Day Warning: Why You Cannot Afford to Wait
If your motorcycle crash involved a city-owned vehicle or was caused by a dangerous road condition, you are facing a strict legal deadline that is significantly shorter than the standard three-year statute of limitations.
Under New York General Municipal Law § 50-e, any injury claim against a public corporation—including the City of New York, the MTA, or the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT)—requires a formal Notice of Claim to be filed within 90 days of the accident.
When Does This Strict 90-Day Rule Apply?
- Collisions with Municipal Vehicles: Crashes involving NYPD cruisers, FDNY engines, sanitation trucks, and NYC Transit (MTA) buses.
- Dangerous Road Infrastructure: Crashes caused by massive potholes on the BQE, unpaved utility trenches in Manhattan, or missing “Steel Plate” warning signs at construction sites.
- Bridge & Highway Maintenance: Claims involving hazardous expansion joints or debris on the Verrazzano-Narrows, Queensboro, or George Washington Bridges.
The “Prior Written Notice” Hurdle
For road defect cases, filing the Notice of Claim on time is only half the battle. To hold the City liable for a pothole or unsafe street, we must overcome the “Pothole Law” (NYC Administrative Code § 7-201). The City generally cannot be held liable unless we prove they received a written complaint about that exact location at least 15 days before your crash.
Our Strategy: We immediately perform FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) requests, pulling 311 complaint logs and reviewing “Big Apple” maps to find existing records of the defect. If the City ignored a known hazard, we hold them fully accountable.
Do not leave your recovery to chance. Missing the 90-day window is almost always fatal to your case. We handle every aspect of the municipal filing personally, ensuring your Notice of Claim is sworn, served, and filed correctly at the NYC Comptroller’s Office before the clock runs out.
2026 NYC Motorcycle Safety Outlook
The landscape for NYC riders is constantly shifting. As we navigate 2026, distracted driving—particularly involving rideshare drivers abruptly pulling over for fares—continues to be the leading cause of intersection crashes in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Furthermore, deteriorating road infrastructure in the Bronx and Queens continues to pose high-velocity risks. You need an attorney who is actively litigating cases in today’s environment and understands current court trends.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Do I need a specialized motorcycle accident attorney, or can I use a car accident lawyer? Choosing an attorney who specializes in motorcycle crashes is vital. Because motorcyclists are excluded from New York’s “No-Fault” (PIP) insurance benefits, the strategy for getting your hospital bills paid and recovering lost wages is entirely different than a standard car crash. You need a lawyer who understands Med-Pay, medical liens, and how to defeat “biker bias” in court.
Can I recover financial damages if I was not wearing a helmet? Yes. However, under New York’s comparative negligence laws, your final financial award may be reduced if the defense can medically prove that your lack of a DOT-approved helmet directly worsened your specific injuries (such as a traumatic brain injury). If you suffered a broken leg, the lack of a helmet is irrelevant to that specific injury.
How long do I have to file a motorcycle accident lawsuit in New York? Generally, you have three years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit against a private driver. However, if your accident involves a municipal vehicle (like a city bus or police car) or a dangerous road defect, you only have 90 days to file a formal Notice of Claim.
Ready to protect your rights and secure your future? If you’ve been injured anywhere in NYC, you deserve an advocate who knows the streets and the courts. Michael J. Redenburg is standing by to evaluate your case.