In most states an e-bike rider hit by a car is, legally, a cyclist hit by a car, and the claim runs through the driver’s insurance like any other. That is the easy case. The hard ones are everything else: the rider who crashed because a battery failed, the pedestrian knocked down by an e-bike whose owner has no insurance, the teenager on a machine that is really a small electric motorcycle, the rental scooter whose app terms send you to private arbitration. Those cases turn on facts most people never think to preserve.
This guide uses the federal government’s own numbers where they exist: the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s April 2026 report on e-bike, e-scooter and hoverboard deaths and injuries from 2017 through 2024. Settlement figures come from published verdicts and the injury ranges we track for bicycle crashes, because no agency publishes e-bike settlement data. Where a figure comes from a law firm or an independent analysis, we say so.
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The Short Answer: What E-Bike Accident Claims Pay
There is no official e-bike settlement average, and anyone quoting one is guessing. What drives the number is the same thing that drives every injury claim: how badly you were hurt, how clear the other side’s fault is, and how much insurance is actually available. An e-bike rider hit by a car usually has injuries closer to a motorcyclist’s than a driver’s, because there is nothing between the rider and the road, and the claim is valued the same way as a bicycle crash.
| Injury | Typical settlement | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Road rash, minor soft tissue | $5,000 to $25,000 | Scarring, time off work |
| Concussion without loss of consciousness | $15,000 to $75,000 | Symptoms that last past a few weeks |
| Broken collarbone or wrist | $25,000 to $100,000 | Surgery, dominant hand, manual work |
| Fractures that need surgery | $75,000 to $250,000 | Plates, screws, future hardware removal |
| Facial and dental injuries | $50,000 to $200,000 | Permanent visible scarring |
| Traumatic brain injury | $250,000 to $1,000,000 or more | Cognitive loss, lost earning capacity |
| Spinal cord injury | $500,000 to $1,500,000 or more | Lifetime care costs |
Ranges are the ones we use for bicycle crashes, compiled from published settlement and verdict data, and they assume someone with insurance is at fault. They are a ceiling on what a well documented claim looks like, not a promise. See our bicycle accident settlement guide for the full breakdown.
Two real results show the range. In September 2024 a Portland jury awarded an e-bike rider more than $1.5 million after a TriMet driver pulled forward from a stop sign and ran him over; the jury also found the rider 10 percent at fault for riding on the sidewalk, and under Oregon’s fault rule his damages are reduced by that share. In October 2025 a St. Louis County jury awarded $3 million, plus $10,000 in punitive damages, to an e-scooter rider who hit a pile of gravel a pool contractor had left in a bike lane without a permit or cones; he broke his arm and was diagnosed with a herniated disc about a year later. The second case had no car in it at all, which is the point: in e-bike cases the person who pays is often not a driver.
E-Bike and E-Scooter Injuries by the Numbers
The CPSC tracks these injuries through its national sample of hospital emergency rooms. Its April 2026 report covers 2017 through 2024. Figures for 2025 come from an independent analysis of the same federal data, noted below.
A few details from the CPSC report matter for claims. E-bike ER visits averaged about 6,300 a year from 2017 through 2021 and reached 59,200 in 2024, so 2024 alone accounts for 38 percent of all e-bike ER visits in the eight years. Across all e-bikes, e-scooters and hoverboards, ER visits rose from 37,300 in 2017 to 149,100 in 2024, and e-scooters alone reached 79,300 in 2024. In the CPSC’s interviews with riders hurt in 2024, 15 percent were going 20 mph or faster, 38 percent were carrying something, a quarter crashed going up or down a slope, and 11 percent were on a rental e-bike. For e-scooters the rental share was 35 percent and only 18 percent of riders wore helmets.
The 2025 figures come from an August 2026 analysis of the CPSC’s NEISS emergency room data by the review site ERideHero, whose 2024 estimate landed within about 1.3 percent of the CPSC’s published number. It puts 2025 e-bike ER visits at 102,777, with 17.6 percent of injured riders admitted to the hospital, more than for e-scooters (15.1 percent) or ordinary bicycles (14.1 percent). Hospitals see the same trend. Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego recorded 3 e-bike trauma activations in 2021 and 262 in 2025, according to KPBS, with more than 1,000 e-bike patients in all that year.
E-Bike and E-Scooter Deaths by Year and Cause
| Year | E-bike deaths | E-scooter deaths |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | 6 | 5 |
| 2019 | 6 | 25 |
| 2020 | 18 | 16 |
| 2021 | 35 | 40 |
| 2022 | 57 | 35 |
| 2023 | 91 | 46 |
| 2024 | 97 | 38 |
| Total | 310 | 206 |
Source: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Micromobility Products Related Deaths, Injuries, and Hazard Patterns: 2017 to 2024 (April 2026), Table 1.1. Death reports lag by up to two years, so the CPSC expects the 2023 and 2024 counts to rise.
What killed people matters for who pays. Of the 310 e-bike deaths:
| Cause | E-bike deaths, 2017 to 2024 |
|---|---|
| Collision with a moving or parked motor vehicle | 170 |
| Loss of control, hitting a curb or fixed object | 61 |
| Falls with no details recorded | 35 |
| Lithium ion battery fires | 19 |
| Crashes with pedestrians or other riders (13 of the dead were pedestrians) | 19 |
| Intoxicated rider | 3 |
| Component failure (a chain, a front wheel coming loose) | 2 |
| Speed bump, rider thrown | 1 |
More than half of e-bike deaths involved a vehicle, which usually means an insured driver. The battery fires and component failures point at manufacturers. And the 13 pedestrians killed by e-bikes point at the hardest claims of all, covered below. Two more patterns stand out: 82 percent of the e-bike dead were men, and 75 of the 310 were 65 or older, a far higher share than for e-scooters.
Who Pays in Each Kind of E-Bike Crash
| What happened | Who pays first | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| A car or truck hit you | The driver’s bodily injury liability insurance | Your own uninsured motorist coverage and medical payments or PIP coverage often protect you as a cyclist too. Check how your policy treats an e-bike |
| A road hazard caused the crash | Whoever created or failed to fix it: a contractor, a property owner, or a city | Claims against a city need written notice fast, 90 days in New York and six months in California |
| The bike or battery failed | The manufacturer, importer or seller | Product liability. Keep the bike, the battery and the charger, and do not hand them to anyone |
| An e-bike or scooter rider hit you | The rider personally, if anyone | Home and car policies often exclude e-bikes, so there may be no insurance. See the next section |
| You were on a rental bike or scooter | Depends on the cause: a driver, a defect, a road hazard | The app’s terms usually require private arbitration for claims against the company |
| You fell with no one else involved | Your own health insurance | Unless something failed or the road was dangerous, there is usually no one to claim against |
If a car was involved, the claim works like any bicycle crash: fault, the driver’s policy limits, then your own coverage. Our guides to bicycle accident claims and uninsured motorist claims walk through it. If the rider who hit you was working a delivery run, our guide to delivery driver crashes covers what the apps do and do not insure.
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Get my free case reviewWhen an E-Bike or Scooter Hits You: The Insurance Gap
This is the claim people assume will be simple and is often the hardest. When a car hits a pedestrian, there is an auto policy. When an e-bike hits a pedestrian, there frequently is not.
- Car insurance rarely covers an e-bike. A personal auto policy covers the cars listed on it. An e-bike is not one of them.
- Homeowners and renters policies often exclude it. The standard homeowners forms written by the insurance industry’s rating bureau exclude liability for motor vehicles, defined broadly enough to include anything self propelled, and trade press analysis concludes that catches e-bikes. An optional endorsement for low power recreational vehicles can restore some coverage, but only if the owner bought it.
- Your own uninsured motorist coverage may not apply, because it is written for injuries caused by uninsured motor vehicles, and an e-bike often does not meet that definition.
So the realistic sources are the rider’s own assets, a rare stand alone e-bike policy, a delivery company if the rider was working, and your own health insurance and medical payments coverage. New Jersey has closed part of this gap: since its 2026 law, throttle e-bikes in New Jersey must carry insurance. Everywhere else, the first thing to find out after an e-bike hits you is whether the rider has any coverage at all, and the second is whether someone else, such as an employer, shares the blame.
Battery Fires and Defective E-Bikes
Lithium ion battery fires account for 19 e-bike deaths and 15 e-scooter deaths in the CPSC’s data, and they are the clearest product liability cases in this area. Two federal actions from the past year show how they unfold:
- Rad Power Bikes, November 2025. The CPSC told consumers to stop using and dispose of batteries with model numbers RP-1304, RAD-S1304Y and HL-RP-S1304, citing 31 fire reports, including 12 with property damage totaling about $734,500. The agency said Rad Power refused to agree to an acceptable recall; the company disputed the warning. In April 2026 an Alabama widow filed a wrongful death suit against the company over a January 2025 fire that killed her husband. The allegations are unproven.
- VIVI, July 2025. About 24,000 batteries sold with VIVI e-bikes from 2020 to 2023 were recalled after 14 overheating reports, including 3 fires.
Certification is what changed the numbers in New York City. After a 2023 city law required e-bikes and their batteries sold there to be certified to UL safety standards, the fire department recorded 18 lithium ion battery fire deaths in 2023, 6 in 2024 and 1 in 2025. California applied the same idea statewide on January 1, 2026: e-bikes and batteries sold there must now be tested by an accredited lab to UL 2849 or EN 15194.
If a battery or bike failed on you, the evidence is the product. Do not throw it away, do not return it for a refund, and do not let an insurance company’s salvage vendor take it. Photograph it, keep the charger and the receipt, and check the CPSC recall list. An uncertified battery, or a certified one that failed anyway, is the start of a claim against the maker, the importer and the seller.
Rental E-Bikes and Scooters: Read the App Terms
When you start a ride on a Lime, Bird or similar rental, you accept a user agreement. These agreements typically include a release of claims and an arbitration clause that sends disputes with the company to a private arbitrator instead of a jury, and courts have enforced them. In one early case a federal judge in Texas sent a wrongful death suit over a Lime scooter to arbitration because the rider had accepted the terms.
Two things the terms do not do. They do not protect anyone else: if a car hit you, the driver’s insurance pays exactly as it would if you owned the bike. And in many states a release does not excuse gross negligence, which is why a brake or throttle failure on a rental still deserves a lawyer’s look. Report the crash in the app, screenshot the ride record, and photograph the vehicle’s ID number before the company collects it.
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Children on E-Bikes
The fastest growth is among children. The independent 2025 analysis counts 17,206 children 14 and under treated for e-bike injuries, up 167 percent in a year, and children now make up about one in six e-bike ER visits. Many of these riders are on machines that are not legally e-bikes at all. A Rady Children’s physician told KPBS that some modified e-bikes reach 45 or even 50 mph, and in most states anything past the e-bike limits is a moped or motorcycle that requires a license, registration and insurance most children cannot get.
For a claim, three things follow. A child hit by a driver has the same claim as an adult. A child who hurts someone else can create a claim against the parents for negligent supervision or for handing over a vehicle the child could not safely ride, which the parents’ homeowners policy may or may not cover. And in most states the deadline for a child’s own injury claim does not start running until they turn 18, although claims against a city still need quick notice and a parent’s claim for the child’s medical bills can run on the normal clock.
The 2026 Rules That Change E-Bike Claims
Federal law defines a low speed electric bicycle as one with working pedals and a motor under 750 watts that cannot go faster than 20 mph on motor power alone. Most states then sort e-bikes into three classes: Class 1 is pedal assist to 20 mph, Class 2 adds a throttle to 20 mph, and Class 3 is pedal assist to 28 mph. Anything more powerful or faster is usually a moped or motorcycle. Several places changed the rules in the past year:
| Where | What changed | Since |
|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | The three classes were replaced. Pedal assist e-bikes up to 20 mph now need registration and a license; throttle e-bikes up to 28 mph also need insurance. Riders 15 and 16 need a motorized bicycle license, riders 17 and up a driver’s license. Bikeshare riders are exempt. More powerful machines follow motorcycle rules | Signed January 19, 2026; enforced from July 19, 2026 |
| New York City | 15 mph speed limit for e-bikes, e-scooters and pedal assist commercial bikes on city streets, bike lanes and park paths | October 24, 2025 |
| California | E-bikes and batteries sold must be certified by an accredited lab to UL 2849 or EN 15194. Selling or fitting kits that push an e-bike past its class is banned. Riders under 18 must wear a helmet, and Class 3 riders must be at least 16 | Battery rule January 1, 2026 |
Why these rules matter to a claim: breaking one can be used to argue you share the fault, and a machine that was never a legal e-bike can be treated as an unregistered, uninsured motor vehicle. In New Jersey the insurance requirement also means a rider who hits someone now has, at least on paper, a policy to claim against.
Speed, Sidewalks and Helmets: How Fault Is Argued
Expect the other side to look for anything that shifts blame onto the rider, because in most states your compensation shrinks by your share of fault and in a few it can disappear entirely. The usual arguments:
- Speed. A Class 3 e-bike at 28 mph arrives much sooner than a driver expects a bicycle to. Adjusters use that, and a helmet camera or ride app log that shows a legal speed is the best answer.
- Where you were riding. The Portland jury above found the rider 10 percent at fault because he was on a sidewalk.
- No helmet. Whether skipping a helmet can reduce a claim depends on the state. Some do not let the other side raise it, others let a jury weigh it, usually only against head injuries.
- The machine itself. A modified or overpowered e-bike invites the argument that you were effectively riding an unlicensed motorcycle.
The fault rule in your state decides how much any of this costs you. Our comparative negligence guide lists every state.
What to Do After an E-Bike or Scooter Crash
- Get medical care the same day, even if you walked away. Head and wrist injuries are easy to miss in the moment. Our guide to delayed symptoms explains why the gap matters.
- Call the police if a vehicle or another person was involved, and get the report number.
- Save the ride data. Screenshots from a rental app, a fitness tracker or the bike’s own app show your speed and route.
- Keep the bike, battery and charger exactly as they are if anything failed.
- Photograph the scene: the road surface, potholes, gravel, missing signs, and the other vehicle.
- Find every policy. The driver’s, your own car policy, your homeowners or renters policy, and your health plan.
- Check the deadline. Notice to a city can be due in months. The statute of limitations by state table has the rest.
- Do not give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurer before you know what your injuries are.
When You Need a Lawyer
If a car hit you and your injuries are minor, you can often handle the claim yourself the way you would any bicycle claim. Talk to a lawyer if any of these apply: a battery fire or equipment failure, a crash on a rental, a child who was hurt or who hurt someone, a rider with no insurance, a road defect on public property, or any head, spine or surgical injury. Those cases turn on evidence that disappears quickly and on insurance questions most people never have to answer. Our analysis of attorney impact shows what representation typically changes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average settlement for an e-bike accident?
There is no official average because insurers do not publish e-bike settlement data. E-bike crashes with a car are valued like bicycle claims: roughly $5,000 to $25,000 for road rash and minor injuries, $25,000 to $100,000 for a broken collarbone or wrist, $75,000 to $250,000 for fractures that need surgery, and $250,000 to $1,000,000 or more for a traumatic brain injury. Published verdicts include more than $1.5 million for a Portland e-bike rider in 2024 and $3 million for a St. Louis County e-scooter rider in 2025.
Who pays if a car hits me while I am riding an e-bike?
The driver's bodily injury liability insurance pays first, the same as for a bicyclist. If the driver has no insurance or too little, your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage often protects you as a cyclist, and medical payments or PIP coverage can pay early medical bills. Check how your policy treats an e-bike. Your comparative fault, such as speed or where you were riding, can reduce the amount.
Who pays if an e-bike or scooter rider hits me?
The rider is responsible, but there is often no insurance behind them. Personal auto policies do not cover e-bikes, standard homeowners policies usually exclude motorized vehicles, and your own uninsured motorist coverage may not apply because an e-bike is often not a motor vehicle under the policy. Look for a delivery company if the rider was working, and use your own health insurance and medical payments coverage. New Jersey now requires insurance for throttle e-bikes.
Can I sue if my e-bike battery caught fire?
Yes. A battery fire is a product liability claim against the manufacturer, importer and seller. The CPSC counted 19 e-bike and 15 e-scooter deaths from battery fires from 2017 through 2024, warned consumers in November 2025 to stop using certain Rad Power Bikes batteries after 31 fire reports, and recalled about 24,000 VIVI batteries in July 2025. Keep the bike, battery, charger and receipt, and do not let anyone take them.
Can I sue Lime or Bird after a rental scooter or e-bike crash?
Claims against the rental company usually go to private arbitration because the user agreement you accepted requires it, and courts have enforced those terms. That does not affect claims against anyone else: if a car hit you, the driver's insurance pays as it would for any rider. A real defect such as a brake or throttle failure can still be pursued. Report the crash in the app and save the ride record right away.
Does not wearing a helmet reduce my e-bike settlement?
It depends on the state. Some states do not allow the other side to argue that you should have worn a helmet, while others let a jury consider it, usually only for head injuries. California requires riders under 18 to wear one, and in its 2024 study the CPSC found only 40 percent of injured e-bike riders were wearing helmets. Not wearing one never excuses a driver who caused the crash.
How many people are hurt on e-bikes each year?
The CPSC estimates 59,200 e-bike injuries were treated in US emergency rooms in 2024, up from an average of about 6,300 a year from 2017 through 2021, and it counts 310 e-bike deaths from 2017 through 2024. An independent analysis of the same federal emergency room data estimates 102,777 e-bike ER visits in 2025, up 71 percent, including 17,206 children 14 and under.
The Bottom Line
E-bike injuries rose by about 70 percent from 2024 to 2025 by the best available estimate, and the claims that follow them are unusually varied. When a car is involved, the claim is a bicycle claim and the driver’s insurance pays. When the cause is a battery, a road hazard, a rental or another rider, the question stops being how much the injury is worth and becomes who, if anyone, can pay it.
Answer that question early. Keep the bike and the battery, save the ride data, find every insurance policy in the picture, and watch the short deadlines for claims against cities. Those four things decide more e-bike cases than the injury itself.