We Settled at the Scene, Then the E-Bike Rider Filed on My Insurance

Attorney Answer

An agreement at the scene does not close an insurance claim, and the way to protect yourself now is to hand the claim to your own insurer rather than to negotiate it yourself. Only a written release settles a claim, and what two people say to each other at a roadside is not one. The rider was free to report the collision afterward, and your carrier is now the party that decides what it will pay and whether it will defend you.

Your policy almost certainly requires you to give notice of a claim and to cooperate, and Insurance Law § 3420 supplies the framework around that. It sets out provisions every liability policy issued or delivered in New York must contain; it requires an insurer that disclaims liability or denies coverage for death or bodily injury arising out of a motor-vehicle accident or any other accident occurring in this state to give written notice of the disclaimer as soon as is reasonably possible to the insured and to the injured person; and it requires an insurer, on an injured claimant's written request, to confirm within sixty days whether the insured had a liability policy of the specified type in force and to state its limits. That is the machinery that will now run whether or not you engage with it.

The standard the rider's claim will be measured against is in Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1146(a): "Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law to the contrary, every driver of a vehicle shall exercise due care to avoid colliding with any bicyclist, pedestrian, or domestic animal upon any roadway and shall give warning by sounding the horn when necessary." That is worth reading twice before you describe the turn to anyone. The same section carries consequences beyond insurance: subdivision (b) makes it a traffic infraction for a driver who causes physical injury to a pedestrian or bicyclist while failing to exercise that due care, and creates a rebuttable presumption on causation, and subdivision (c) does the same at a higher level for serious physical injury. That exposure is separate from the insurance claim, it is not something a liability policy resolves, and what you say to an adjuster or an investigator about how the turn was made can matter in it. Talk to a New York attorney before you give any statement about the collision, including a recorded one to your own insurer; if a summons or charge has already issued, that belongs with a criminal defense attorney and not with this page.

Your message does not say whether the rider is claiming a bodily injury or a damaged bike, and that decides which further New York rules govern. A personal injury action arising from the use or operation of a motor vehicle carries an additional layer under article 51 of the Insurance Law and a comparative-fault rule whose content depends on when any action is commenced. This page states neither, because the record does not fix which claim this is.

What you can do

1. Report the collision to your insurer in writing today, with the date, the place and the fact that a claim has been made.

2. Give your insurer everything you have — photographs, the location, the names of anyone who saw it.

3. Ask your insurer in writing to confirm whether it will defend and indemnify you, and keep its answer.

4. Keep a copy of anything you signed, wrote or texted at the scene; an informal note is evidence either way.

5. Do not discuss the collision with the rider or anyone acting for him.

6. Speak with a New York attorney before giving a statement, given the separate exposure § 1146 carries.

⏱ Time limits apply. A claim by the rider for personal injury runs on the three-year period in CPLR 214(5), and a claim for damage to the bicycle on the three-year period in CPLR 214(4), both keyed to the date of this collision rather than to the date he first contacted your insurer. Different and shorter periods apply to some claims and some defendants. Which periods bear on your situation depends on facts this page cannot see; have a New York attorney fix the dates rather than estimating them.