New York Cyclist Injuries: 1,750 in 2023

That number, 1,750 cyclists injured in collisions with buses in NYC last year alone, is just staggering. And when one of these accidents happens, the case is never simple. You’ve got multiple parties, thorny liability questions, and a whole lot of legal complexity for an injured cyclist to get through.

1,750 Cyclist Injuries in Bus Collisions: The Scale of the Problem

Let’s be clear about that 1,750 in a single year figure. It’s a number from the NYC DOT’s 2023 Mobility Report, and behind every one of those incidents is a person whose life got turned upside down. Buses are huge, with massive blind spots and constant stops, making them uniquely dangerous. A collision between a bike and a 40-foot, 30,000-pound bus almost invariably ends with the cyclist getting seriously hurt, and we see everything from broken bones and head trauma to spinal cord injuries that demand years of rehab.

When I look at these files, the physics of it is just brutal. A cyclist in a helmet has zero chance against the sheer momentum of a bus. That massive difference in force is what leads to such devastating injuries, and the severity of those injuries directly drives the complexity and value of the legal claim. The real job is about making sure the person gets compensated for what is, without a doubt, a life-changing event.

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New York Vehicle and Traffic Law Section 1146: A Cyclist’s Legal Foundation

The law itself gives cyclists a huge piece of use. It’s New York Vehicle and Traffic Law Section 1146, and it says every driver has to “exercise due care to avoid colliding with any bicyclist.” This is the bedrock of a cyclist’s case against a bus. The bus driver’s tight schedule or the congested street doesn’t give them a pass. The law knows cyclists are harder to see, so it puts the responsibility on the professional driver to be actively looking.

What this means, practically speaking, is that a bus driver has to do something to avoid you, even if you made a small mistake yourself. They have to slow down, give you space, maybe honk. It’s on them. Proving they failed to do that is where the work comes in, we’ll be digging through dashcam video, bus surveillance footage, witness accounts, and expert accident reports. People often think if they were even a tiny bit at fault, they have no case. That’s just wrong in New York.

90-Day Notice of Claim for Municipal Buses: A Critical Deadline Missed by Many

Here’s the trap that gets so many people. If a city bus (MTA or another municipal line) hits you, you don’t have three years to sue. You have 90 days to file a Notice of Claim under New York General Municipal Law Section 50-e. It’s an incredibly short deadline compared to the usual three-year window for personal injury (that’s from New York Civil Practice Law and Rules Section 214). If you miss that 90-day filing, your case is almost certainly dead on arrival, no matter how good it is.

I see it happen all the time: an injured cyclist is focused on surgery and recovery, and they think they have plenty of time. They don’t. This isn’t just some technicality. It’s a jurisdictional requirement for suing the government, designed to let them investigate quickly. You can’t just ignore it. If you don’t file that Notice of Claim correctly and on time, a judge will toss your case out. This is exactly why calling a lawyer right away is often the only shot you have at protecting your ability to sue at all.

30% of New York Bus Accidents Involve Right-Turn Collisions: A Predictable Hazard

There’s a shockingly common scenario we see over and over: the right-hook. About 30% of bicycle-bus collisions happen when the bus is making a right turn. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a direct result of how our streets are designed, especially on busy routes like 3rd Avenue or Flatbush Avenue. You have a bus with huge blind spots turning right across a bike lane where a cyclist is going straight. It’s a conflict baked right into the system.

People’s first instinct is often to blame the cyclist for being in the blind spot, but that’s a cop-out. Yes, cyclists need to be careful. But the professional driver of the 30,000-pound vehicle has a much higher duty to check their mirrors, signal their intentions, and take that turn wide and slow precisely because they know cyclists (who have the right of way) might be there. With so many bike lanes running along the right side of traffic, the bus operator has to be extra cautious. Better training and smarter intersection design are the only real fixes.

New York’s Pure Comparative Negligence: Even Partially At-Fault Cyclists Can Recover

Here’s something a lot of people don’t know about New York law. We have what’s called pure comparative negligence (you can find it in New York Civil Practice Law and Rules Section 1411). All it means is that you can still get money even if you were partially to blame for the accident. The court just reduces your total award by whatever percentage of fault they assign to you. So if you had $100,000 in damages but were found 20% at fault, you could still walk away with $80,000.

So many clients come to me thinking their case is toast because they did something wrong, maybe they drifted out of the bike lane for a second, or something similar. It’s a misconception. While it might affect the final number, it doesn’t kill your claim. The whole question changes from “Who is completely at fault?” to “Okay, let’s figure out everyone’s percentage of responsibility.” It’s a much fairer system, but it requires a good lawyer to fight to keep your percentage of fault as low as humanly possible.

When you’re dealing with a bike-and-bus accident in New York, you have to move fast, know the strange deadlines, and understand the traffic laws. That means getting evidence at the scene and getting legal advice immediately to have a shot at the compensation you’ll need. The principles are similar even for cases in other places, like Savannah bike accidents. But the stakes get even higher when injuries are catastrophic, like those leading to Atlanta amputation claims, and the case gets another layer of complexity if you were working as a Georgia gig worker at the time.