Motorcycle injury claims

Florida PIP no-fault coverage does not apply to motorcycles. A rider's available medical and liability coverage should be identified immediately.

Motorcycle cases present 2 immediate issues: limited no-fault coverage and unfair assumptions about riders. Both need to be addressed from the beginning.

A damaged black motorcycle at the curb on a wet South Florida boulevard after dusk — No-fault coverage does not follow you onto a motorcycle. Most riders find out after the crash.

What Florida law actually says

PIP does not apply to motorcycles, so the medical safety net is whatever health coverage, medical payments coverage and bodily injury claims can be assembled.
Riding without a helmet is legal for adults over 21 carrying the required medical coverage. Expect the defense to raise it anyway, and expect it to matter only for injuries a helmet would have prevented.
The same comparative fault rules apply, and the bias runs one way. Independent proof of what happened is worth more here than in any other crash claim.

What gets secured first

Scene photographs before the roadway is repainted or repaired, and the bike itself preserved unrepaired
Every camera with an angle: traffic, business, doorbell, dashcam, canvassed in the first days
Your uninsured motorist coverage, which does follow you onto the bike if it was written to
The helmet and gear, kept, because they are evidence of the forces involved

Asked in the first phone call

I was not wearing a helmet. Do I still have a case?

Usually yes. For adults with the required coverage it is legal in Florida, and it only becomes an argument about the injuries a helmet would have prevented. It has no bearing on a broken leg or a crushed hand.

The driver says he never saw me.

That sentence is in almost every one of these files. It is not a defense. It is an admission about attention, and the case gets built around it.

Nothing on this site is legal advice. The deadlines and standards described here are general, they have exceptions, and they change. Florida rewrote several of them in 2023. Do not use this site to calculate your own deadline.