If you deliver food on a bike, an e-bike or a moped and a car hit you, the first thing you were probably told is that you are an independent contractor and you are on your own. That is what the app agreement says. It is not the whole picture, and in most cases it is not even the important part.

There are usually three separate places your money can come from after a delivery accident, and they do not depend on each other. Most riders never find out about the first one.

The car that hit you has to pay your medical bills

This surprises almost everyone. You do not own a car. You have no car insurance. You may have no health insurance either. It does not matter.

An electric bicycle is not a motor vehicle under New York’s no-fault law — and that is exactly why it helps you. Because you were not in a motor vehicle, you count as an injured person under the policy of the car that struck you. The no-fault rules require that policy to cover anyone hurt by that car who was not in another motor vehicle at the time. That is the same rule that protects a pedestrian crossing the street, and it protects you on a bike or an e-bike in the same way.

So the insurance company for the driver who hit you pays for your treatment and part of your lost earnings, without you having to prove the driver did anything wrong. You do not need a lawyer to be eligible and you do not need papers to be eligible.

There is a deadline and it is short. The application has to go to that insurance company within thirty days of the accident. Miss it and the company will try to deny the whole claim. This is the single most common way a delivery rider ends up with hospital bills he should never have had to pay.

What you were riding changes the rules

New York treats these machines very differently, and most people do not know which one they are on.

A bicycle, an e-bike or a stand-up scooter

No registration, no insurance required. You get no-fault benefits from the car that hit you, as above. To sue that driver for your pain and suffering on top of that, your injury has to clear a legal bar called the serious injury threshold — the same bar that applies to any driver or pedestrian.

You may read online that because an e-bike is not a motor vehicle, the threshold does not apply to you. That is wrong, and acting on it would cost you the case. The law sweeps you back in precisely because you are entitled to those no-fault benefits.

A moped

Here it flips, and in a way that can work in your favor. A faster moped — the kind that has to be registered and insured — is treated as a motorcycle. Motorcycles are outside the no-fault system. That means no no-fault benefits to pay your medical bills, which is bad. But it also means the serious injury threshold does not apply to your claim against the driver. You can sue for your injuries from the first dollar without having to clear any bar at all.

Slower mopeds are a genuinely unsettled area, and anyone who tells you confidently how a Class C is treated is guessing. It is worth sorting out early, because the answer changes where your medical bills get sent.

The car drove off, or had no insurance

There is a fund for this, called MVAIC, and it can stand in for the missing insurance. But it comes with conditions that are enforced strictly, and one of them ends cases: in a hit and run, the accident has to be reported to the police within twenty-four hours.

Riders often do not call the police. Some are undocumented. Some have no license. Some are riding a bike that would not pass inspection, or are simply frightened and want to go home. A court in Brooklyn threw out a claim earlier this year on exactly this point. If the driver left the scene, the first day matters more than anything else that happens afterward.

One thing worth saying plainly: if the driver who hit you had no insurance and never gets identified, the serious injury threshold does not apply to you either.

Workers’ compensation: the label in the app is not the answer

If you were an employee, you have a workers’ compensation claim — medical treatment and wage replacement, with no need to prove anyone was careless. If you were genuinely an independent contractor, you do not.

Which one you are is not decided by what the agreement you clicked through calls you. It is decided by how much control the company actually had over your work. And on the specific question of app delivery riders, New York has not settled it. The Court of Appeals held in 2020 that Postmates couriers were employees for unemployment insurance purposes. The Workers’ Compensation Board, looking at the same company a year earlier, decided a courier was an independent contractor. Nobody has reconciled those.

What that means for you is that it is an argument worth having rather than a door that is closed. Some things that help:

  • You worked for a restaurant or a delivery company directly, rather than through an app. Riders in that position are often plainly employees and are told otherwise.
  • The app supplied your e-bike. Since early 2026 New York City requires delivery services to provide a compliant powered device at their own expense. A company that supplies the machine you work on has a harder time arguing it did not control your work.
  • The company set your route, penalized you for declining jobs, or tracked and scored you.

And the deadline is longer than people assume. A compensation claim can be filed within two years. If you were hurt last year, told you were a contractor, and never filed anything, that is often still fixable. The separate rule about telling your employer within thirty days is forgiving, and the objection is lost entirely if the insurance company does not raise it at the first hearing.

One thing that is not a route to benefits, whatever you may have been told: the Black Car Fund. It covers for-hire vehicle drivers who carry passengers. It does not cover food delivery riders on bicycles. Drivers who carry passengers can read how the Fund covers them.

Suing the driver, and what changed in 2026

Beyond no-fault benefits, you can sue the driver who hit you for your pain and suffering — if your injury clears the threshold described above. Two things about that changed in May 2026, and both matter to riders.

A category of serious injury was removed. For years, an injury that kept you from your usual activities for ninety of the first one hundred eighty days after the accident qualified on its own. It is gone. For a rider with a soft tissue injury and months off the bike, that was usually the way in. What is left carries more weight now — a fracture, or a significant or permanent limitation of use, shown in the medical records.

Fault now has a cliff in it. In motor vehicle cases, an injured person whose share of the blame is greater than the driver’s recovers nothing at all. At fifty percent you still recover half. At fifty-one percent you recover nothing.

Riders should take that seriously, because fault gets assigned to delivery riders casually and often unfairly — riding against traffic, going through a light, being on the wrong kind of bike. Some of that is real and some of it is the driver’s version of events going unchallenged because nobody wrote anything down. It is also not yet settled whether that new rule applies at all to a rider who is outside the no-fault system, such as a moped rider or someone hit by an uninsured car.

What the apps now owe you under New York City law

Separate from any injury claim, the City has built a set of rules for app delivery work over the last few years. They apply whatever your employment classification is, and there is a private right of action behind them.

  • Minimum pay. As of April 2026 the rate is $22.13 an hour before tips, and it rises each April.
  • The device. Since early 2026, a delivery service has to provide a compliant powered mobility device at its own expense, and cannot make you fund it.
  • Trip information before you accept. Estimated time, distance and route, with the right to refuse bridge and tunnel crossings and to set a maximum distance.
  • Weekly pay within seven days, at least one method with no fee, and written pay statements.
  • Insulated bags free after six deliveries, bathroom access at restaurants you collect from, and fire safety information about lithium battery risks.

Retaliating against a worker for asserting these rights is itself unlawful. These rules also matter to an injury claim for a different reason: they require the companies to keep detailed trip records. Those records show where you were, what you were doing and who sent you there, which is often the evidence that decides whether you were working at the time.

How these cases get lost

  • Nobody called the police. In a hit and run this is usually fatal to the claim, because of the twenty-four hour rule.
  • The thirty day no-fault application was never sent, so the medical bills went to the rider instead of the insurer.
  • The rider accepted the contractor label and never filed a compensation claim, not knowing there were two years to do it.
  • The app’s records were never demanded and the retention window closed on the data showing the trip.
  • The rider stayed quiet because of immigration status. New York’s highest court has held that lost wages are recoverable regardless of immigration status. Fear of that is understandable and it is also the thing insurers rely on most.

Frequently asked questions

I do not own a car and have no insurance. Who pays for my treatment?

The insurance company for the car that hit you. Because a bicycle or e-bike is not a motor vehicle under the no-fault law, you are treated like a pedestrian, and that policy has to cover your medical care and part of your lost earnings without anyone proving fault. The application has to be submitted within thirty days of the accident.

The app says I am an independent contractor. Is that the end of it?

No. What the agreement calls you is one factor among many, and it is not decisive. New York has genuinely not settled whether app delivery riders are employees for workers’ compensation — the Court of Appeals found Postmates couriers were employees for unemployment insurance, while the Workers’ Compensation Board found the opposite on the compensation question. It is worth having someone look at how the company actually ran your work.

I was hurt months ago and never filed anything. Is it too late?

Possibly not. A workers’ compensation claim can be filed within two years of the accident. A lawsuit against the driver generally has three years. The no-fault application is the one with the short fuse at thirty days, and even a late one is sometimes worth pursuing. It costs nothing to find out which deadlines are still open.

Does my immigration status affect my claim?

New York’s highest court has held that an award for lost wages is not barred by a person’s immigration status. Workers’ compensation in New York covers workers without regard to status as well. This is a real fear and it is also the single thing that most often stops a rider from claiming what he is owed.

I was riding against traffic. Have I lost?

Not necessarily, but it matters more than it used to. Since May 2026, in a motor vehicle case, someone whose share of the fault is greater than the driver’s recovers nothing. That makes how fault gets apportioned the whole case rather than a discount on it. It is a reason to get the facts documented early rather than leaving the driver’s account as the only version on record.

Does the Black Car Fund cover me?

Not if you deliver food by bicycle or e-bike. That fund covers drivers of registered for-hire vehicles carrying passengers. You may see it mentioned on other websites in connection with delivery work; it does not apply.

Can I bring a compensation claim and sue the driver at the same time?

Yes, and where both are available you generally should. Workers’ compensation is against your employer’s insurer and does not require fault. The lawsuit is against the driver who hit you. The compensation carrier will have a lien on what the lawsuit recovers and must consent before it settles, which is why the two need to be run together.

Delivery work is one of the places the independent contractor label is used most freely. It does not settle whether you are covered — see being handed a 1099 instead of a W-2.

Talk to a New York workers’ compensation attorney

These cases have more moving parts than most, and the pieces run on different clocks — twenty-four hours for a police report in a hit and run, thirty days for the no-fault application, two years for a compensation claim, three years for the lawsuit. The early ones are the ones people miss.

This office handles both sides of a work injury, the compensation claim and the case against whoever caused it, which is the reason the two stay coordinated.

The Law Offices of Frank J. Dito, Jr. represents injured workers in Staten Island and Brooklyn. Call 718.701.2776 (toll-free: 800.310.5520) or contact us for a free consultation. Consultations are free. If we don’t recover money for you, we don’t get paid.

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Attorney Advertising. This page is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is formed by reading this page or submitting an inquiry. This page states New York law as of September 2026.