Hit by an E-Bike or E-Scooter on Long Island? Suffolk's New Rules, NYC's Bills, and Who Pays

Take a woman crossing Main Street in Patchogue at the signal when a delivery e-bike with an insulated bag comes through the crosswalk and puts her on the pavement. The rider is working for an app. The bike carries no plate. There is no car in her household.

Suffolk County has four new local laws on e-bikes and e-scooters this year, and the New York City Council has bills pending on the same devices. None of them answers the question her family asks in the emergency room, which is who pays. That answer comes from one definition in the Vehicle and Traffic Law. I handle pedestrian cases like hers on Long Island, and the first thing I ask for is a photograph of the bike.

Is an e-bike a motor vehicle in New York?

Not when it is lawful, and everything else follows from that. Vehicle and Traffic Law § 125 defines “motor vehicle” as every vehicle “propelled by any power other than muscular power” and then lists exceptions; a compliant bicycle with electric assist is exception (e) and a compliant electric scooter is exception (f). The card below sets out that text and the three statutes that borrow it.

Read together, those texts leave the woman in the Patchogue crosswalk with no first-party benefits, no MVAIC claim, and no claim against the bike’s owner if the rider borrowed it. Consequently, her claim is negligence against the rider, and the label on the motor decides whether that is the whole answer.

Who pays, in the order I check it

Which payer is yours depends on what hit you and what you were on. The flow below is the order I run in a new file.

On the statute’s text, the pedestrian hit by a lawful device is outside article 51 of the Insurance Law altogether: no first-party benefits, but no serious-injury threshold either. Where the rider was working, the general rule is that an employer answers for an employee’s negligence within the scope of the employment. Whether an app rider is an employee is contested, and our guide to the 2026 crackdown covers that fight.

In my judgment the first question in every e-bike file is the device: wattage, throttle, plate, class sticker. Fault comes second. The photograph of the motor label decides which insurer, if any, is in the case.

The second question is the rider’s employment. A delivery rider working at the time of the crash brings the app into the case; on Long Island no rule requires the app to carry insurance for that. In practice the rider’s own homeowner’s or renter’s liability policy, where one exists, is the source I look for first, and whether it responds turns on its motor-vehicle exclusion, which I demand in discovery. That is practice, not statute. The woman in the crosswalk therefore has a defendant on day one; whether he has an insurer behind him is the first month’s work.

An illegal device flips every answer

The bike in the Patchogue crosswalk carried no plate and no policy. If it falls outside the two definitions on the card above, it has no exception in § 125 and is a motor vehicle. With a seat and two or three wheels it is usually a “limited use motorcycle” under Vehicle and Traffic Law § 121-b.

The owner is then liable under Vehicle and Traffic Law § 388 for negligent operation “by any person using or operating the same with the permission, express or implied, of such owner.” The pedestrian may claim against MVAIC as the victim of an “uninsured motor vehicle,” on the report and affidavit clocks in the flow above; the hit-and-run settlement guide covers the filing. The rider who owns the device is excluded, since a “qualified person” does not include “the owner of an uninsured motor vehicle.”

In Suffolk the same device is an “ATV” under Chapter 822 as amended through Local Law 8 of 2026, and operating it on a public highway is a criminal violation. Indeed, for the woman in the Patchogue crosswalk the over-spec bike is the better case, because it opens the owner and MVAIC. The wattage on the label is the first fact to establish.

The rider hit by a car

When a car strikes a lawful e-bike rider, the car’s insurer pays first. Insurance Law § 5103(a)(1) makes the policy on a motor vehicle pay first-party benefits to “persons, other than occupants of another motor vehicle or a motorcycle, for loss arising out of the use or operation in this state of such motor vehicle.” An e-bike rider is neither; therefore, the car’s insurer owes basic economic loss, up to $50,000, without regard to fault.

That entitlement makes the rider a “covered person,” and article 51 then governs the lawsuit. Pain and suffering requires a “serious injury” under Insurance Law § 5102(d), eight categories since the 90/180-day category was deleted for actions commenced on or after May 26, 2026; the serious injury threshold guide covers the proof. Under Insurance Law § 5104(a) the trier of fact “shall not determine the question of whether an injury is a serious injury until the trier of fact has determined the party or parties at fault,” and CPLR 1411(b) bars recovery where the claimant’s culpable conduct “is greater than the culpable conduct of the person against whom recovery is sought.”

Here, Suffolk’s rules work against the rider: a helmet left at home, a sidewalk, a road posted at 40 miles per hour, a rider under 16, each conduct the county code forbids and each argued as fault. A rider whose share of the fault exceeds the driver’s recovers nothing; the settlement guide covers what these claims have resolved for.

Suffolk’s rules, and how a violation feeds fault

Suffolk wrote the standard of care into the county code this year. The state lets a Nassau or Suffolk town or village regulate these devices “only after adoption of a local law or ordinance by the governing body of the county,” and Suffolk supplied that step in Suffolk County Code § 319-44. The card below carries the operative text.

In a civil case either side can use that card. A county-ordinance violation is evidence a jury may weigh in deciding negligence, and where no motor vehicle was involved CPLR 1411(a) governs, so the claimant’s culpable conduct “shall not bar recovery” and the damages are “diminished in the proportion” of that conduct.

One rule the county cannot touch runs the other way. Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1242(2) bars anyone under 16 from operating an e-bike and then provides that the failure to comply “shall not constitute contributory negligence or assumption of risk, and shall not in any way bar, preclude or foreclose an action for personal injury or wrongful death by or on behalf of such person, nor in any way diminish or reduce the damages recoverable in any such action.” Consequently, a rider under 16 hit by a car in Suffolk is not charged with the age violation in the rider’s own case, and the claim against the driver is unaffected.

NYC’s bills are introductions, not law

Every New York City item here is an introduction: none has had a committee hearing or been enacted, and none would apply on Long Island if it were.

Int 0994-2026, by Council Members Brewer, Abreu, Epstein, Hudson, Restler and Morano, was introduced August 13, 2026 and referred that day to the Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection. It would require a licensed third-party food delivery service to “maintain an insurance policy providing liability coverage for injury or death of any person” arising from a worker’s use of a delivery device on a trip or on call, at a minimum of $100,000 per person, $300,000 per accident and $50,000 for property damage. It is an introduction, and it is the insurer the woman in the crosswalk does not have.

Three more are pre-filed for the Council’s October 8, 2026 stated meeting before the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, all introductions: T2026-2361 (Hudson, Abreu, Wong), a class 3 e-bike ban with warnings only until April 1, 2029; T2026-2587 (Restler, Maloney), delivery-app tracking of speeding, wrong-way and sidewalk riding; and T2026-2590 (Abreu), sidewalk-riding detection on shared fleets. A Long Island pedestrian hit by a delivery rider therefore has no app policy to claim against today.

The clocks

Three clocks run alongside the MVAIC deadlines above. The negligence action must be commenced within three years under CPLR 214(5). If a county, town or village is a defendant, a notice of claim must be served “within ninety days after the claim arises” under General Municipal Law § 50-e(1)(a), and only a court can extend that time. Where a car was involved, the no-fault regulation, 11 NYCRR 65-1.1, gives 30 days for the first-party application. File the MVAIC affidavit as if the rider will never be found, and serve the notice of claim as if the road will be blamed.

What to save this week

The file is built in the first week, and most of it is a photograph. Every e-bike and e-scooter sold in New York since June 1, 2022 must carry a manufacturer’s label with its top motor-assisted speed and its wattage, and on an e-bike its class.

Do not wait for the police report to tell you what the bike was. Photograph it before it is picked up: the motor, the label on the frame, the throttle, the spot where a plate should be. If nobody could do that at the scene, go back the next morning anyway; the bike will be gone, and you will be proving what it was from the report and the witnesses.

Bring what you have of these to the first call:

• The photograph of the device, its motor label, and its plate or the place where a plate should be.
• The police report number.
• The name of the app or employer the rider was working for, if any.
• The emergency room discharge papers.
• The declarations page of any auto policy in your household.

Ask for the intersection footage before the week is out; nothing else on the list expires as fast.

Before you call

By the end of her first week the woman in the Patchogue crosswalk has a photograph of the bike on its side, a close-up of the motor label, the name of the app on the rider’s phone mount, a police report number and an emergency room record that says “e-bike.” If the label reads 500 watts and class two, her case is negligence against the rider and a demand for the rider’s renter’s policy. If it reads 1,500 watts, or there is no label and the bike kept pulling past 20 miles per hour under throttle, the owner is in the case, MVAIC is open, and the 90-day affidavit is the first filing. Our bicycle accident and electric scooter accident pages cover the rider’s side.

If an e-bike or e-scooter hit you on Long Island, or a car hit you while you were riding one, call (516) 750-0595 or request a free case review with the photograph of the device in hand; the 90-day clocks do not wait for the rider to be found.

Sources

• Vehicle and Traffic Law § 125, § 102-c, § 114-e, § 121-b, § 311, § 388, § 1242, § 1281, § 1282
• Insurance Law § 5102, § 5103, § 5104, § 5202, § 5208, § 5210
• CPLR § 214, § 1411; General Municipal Law § 50-e
• Suffolk County Legislature, Local Laws index, and the certified copies as filed with the Secretary of State: Local Law 6 of 2026 (IR 1835-2025), Local Law 7 of 2026 (IR 1836-2025), Local Law 8 of 2026 (IR 1787-2025), Local Law 14 of 2026 (IR 1044-2026)
• Suffolk County Code Chapter 319, Bicycles, Skates, Skateboards and Scooters and Chapter 822, All-Terrain Vehicles
• New York City Council, Legistar: Int 0994-2026, T2026-2361, T2026-2587, T2026-2590