Austin Bicycle Accident Lawyer: Help for Injured Cyclists and E-Bike Riders
Getting hit on a bike is not like getting rear-ended in a car. There is no crumple zone, the injuries run worse, and the driver's insurer starts building a story about what you did wrong before you are out of the emergency room. Most of that story falls apart against the actual text of the Texas Transportation Code, but only if somebody reads it to them.
Our Austin bicycle accident attorneys represent injured cyclists and e-bike riders across Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties, from a law firm two blocks from the Travis County courthouse. We take these cases on contingency, so you owe nothing unless we recover. Call (512) 561-5003 for a free consultation.
What Our Clients Say
Key Takeaways
- You are traffic, not a guest. Transportation Code Section 551.101 gives a cyclist the same rights and duties as a driver. Texas has no law requiring you to use a bike lane, and no helmet law for adults anywhere in the state.
- Your own auto policy may be the real source of recovery. Texas requires drivers to carry just $30,000 per person. Uninsured motorist coverage on your own policy covers you while riding, because the standard Texas policy covers "you or any family member" without regard to what you were riding.
- The case is usually decided in week one. Texas repealed its driver self-report form in 2017, so if no officer comes, no report will ever exist. Doorbell video overwrites in as little as a week, and the damaged bike is physical proof of impact geometry. Do not let anyone repair it.
Your Rights on the Road Under Texas Law
Start with the sentence the defense would rather you never read. Texas Transportation Code Section 551.101 says a person operating a bicycle has the rights and duties applicable to a driver operating a vehicle. You are not a guest on the road. You are traffic.
One limit worth knowing: under Section 551.001, Chapter 551 applies only when you are riding on a highway or on a path set aside for bicycles. On a sidewalk, in a parking lot, or on a private drive, those specific rules do not attach, though ordinary negligence law still does. Austin, like other cities, has separate authority to regulate sidewalk riding.
The Ride-Right Rule and Its Four Exceptions
The most common thing an adjuster says about an Austin cyclist is that they were too far out in the lane. Section 551.103 is narrower than they want it to be.
The duty applies only to a cyclist moving slower than the other traffic. Descending at the speed of traffic, or sitting at a light on Guadalupe, it does not apply at all. When it does, the standard is riding as near as practicable to the right curb, not as far right as possible. And it carries four exceptions: you are passing another vehicle; you are preparing to turn left; a roadway condition prevents safe riding to the right, expressly including a parked or moving vehicle, a pedestrian, an animal, or a surface hazard; or you are in an outside lane under 14 feet with no bike lane beside it, or a lane simply too narrow for a bicycle and a car side by side.
Read that third exception again. Riding outside the door zone of parked cars is not you being difficult. It is you inside a statutory exception. Riding two abreast is also expressly lawful in Texas.
Austin's Safe Passing Ordinance
Texas has no statewide safe passing law. A bill passed the Legislature in 2009 and was vetoed; the most recent attempt, House Bill 421, died in the House in 2023. Statewide, a driver owes only a "safe distance" with no number attached.
Austin filled that gap the same month as the veto. Austin City Code Section 12-1-35 makes a cyclist a "vulnerable road user" and requires a passing driver to change lanes entirely where the road has two or more lanes in the same direction, or otherwise to pass at least three feet away in a car or light truck and six feet in a commercial vehicle.
Two more subsections describe the exact geometry of most Austin bike crashes. A driver turning left must yield to a cyclist approaching from the opposite direction. A driver who overtakes a cyclist may not then turn right in front of them. Those are the left cross and the right hook, and a local ordinance naming them is worth a great deal when liability is disputed.
Do You Have to Wear a Helmet in Texas?
No. Texas has no statewide bicycle helmet law, for adults or children. Austin has an ordinance, and it reaches only riders under 18. An adult riding through Austin without a helmet breaks no law at all.
That does not mean it never comes up. Since the Texas Supreme Court decided Nabors Well Services v. Romero in 2015, a jury may consider a plaintiff's own pre-crash conduct when apportioning responsibility, and defense lawyers have read that opinion too.
Here is what protects you. The judge decides whether that evidence is admissible before the jury hears it, outside their presence, and only if the defense proves the missing helmet actually caused the injuries claimed. That usually takes a biomechanical expert: a heavy lift for a head injury, no lift at all for a broken collarbone. And because an adult violates no helmet law, the defense cannot argue you broke a rule. No Texas appellate court has yet decided whether bicycle helmet evidence comes in. For a rider under 18 in Austin the analysis differs, and that is a conversation to have early.
What to Do After a Bicycle Crash in Austin
Texas cyclists lose winnable cases in the first week, usually by being polite. The driver apologizes at the scene, you feel shaken but walk away, nobody calls police, and three days later your shoulder is not working and the driver's story has changed.
The two-year deadline in Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 16.003 is the one everyone knows about. It is rarely what sinks a case. What sinks cases is evidence that stopped existing in week one.
Insist on a Police Report. You Cannot File One Yourself.
Under Section 550.026, a driver in a crash causing injury must immediately notify police, with no dollar threshold on that duty. When an officer investigates, Section 550.062 requires a written report, the CR-3, filed within 10 days.
Now the part almost nobody knows. Texas no longer has a driver self-report form. The old CR-2 was repealed in September 2017. If no officer comes to your crash, no report will ever exist and you cannot create one later. Standing on the shoulder of Shoal Creek Boulevard deciding whether this is worth a 911 call, understand it is the only chance you get.
One more thing while you wait. If the driver leaves, that is not a ticket. Under Section 550.021, leaving the scene of a crash causing serious bodily injury is a third-degree felony.
Get Medical Care, and Understand What It Is Worth
Get examined the same day, even if you think you are fine. Adrenaline hides a great deal, and a gap between the crash and the first medical record is the cheapest argument an insurer will ever get.
Understand what those records will be worth, though, because clients are regularly shocked. Under Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 41.0105, recovery of medical expenses is limited to the amount actually paid or incurred, not the amount billed. A $180,000 trauma bill that your health insurer settles for $40,000 is a $40,000 damages item. Knowing that early keeps expectations honest and settlement decisions rational.
The Evidence That Disappears in Days
The pieces that decide these cases have short lives.
The bicycle itself. Do not let anyone take it, repair it, or throw it away. The damage pattern shows impact geometry, and impact geometry separates a left cross from a right hook from an overtaking crash. It maps directly onto the Austin ordinance.
Video. Business and doorbell cameras typically overwrite within 7 to 30 days. Somebody has to ask inside that window. We send letters the week we are hired.
Your ride data. Strava, Garmin, and Wahoo files establish your speed and your line second by second. In a case turning on Section 551.103, that file can outweigh any witness.
Insurance: Where the Money Actually Comes From
Texas requires a driver to carry only $30,000 per person and $60,000 per crash in liability coverage. Against a broken pelvis and a surgical repair, that is not a policy. It is a down payment.
Which is why the most valuable half hour of a bicycle case is often spent reading your own auto insurance declarations page, not the driver's.
Your Own Auto Policy Covers You on a Bicycle
This surprises nearly every cyclist we meet: your own car insurance can cover you when you are hit riding a bicycle, even though your car was parked in the garage.
The standard Texas auto policy defines who is covered under uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage as "you or any family member." That phrase is not limited by occupancy. A named insured or resident family member struck by an uninsured driver is covered, on a bicycle, an e-bike, or on foot.
Texas Insurance Code Section 1952.101 requires insurers to offer UM and UIM coverage and lets you reject it only in writing. Here is the sting: once rejected, that rejection carries forward automatically through every renewal and to affiliated insurers unless you ask for it back in writing. A rejection signed years ago may still be quietly running.
The Hit-and-Run Trap: Texas Requires Physical Contact
There is one gap in that coverage, it is statutory, and it hits cyclists harder than anyone.
Texas Insurance Code Section 1952.104 requires that where the at-fault driver is never identified, actual physical contact must have occurred between that vehicle and you for a UM claim to exist.
Consider the most common frightening thing that happens to Austin cyclists. A driver buzzes you, you swerve, you go down hard, and the car never stops. If it never touched you and is never identified, Texas law gives you no uninsured motorist claim at all.
So if you are run off the road: get any fragment of a plate, get a witness name before they drive off, and look for a camera. Those five minutes can be the entire case.
What a Bicycle Accident Claim Is Worth
What a claim is worth comes down to the injuries, the medical record, the available coverage, and how clean the liability picture is. Anyone who quotes you a number before reading the records is guessing.
Texas splits recoverable damages into two categories, and they are proved very differently.
Economic Damages
Economic damages are the documented ones: medical bills at the paid-or-incurred amount, lost wages, diminished earning capacity if you cannot go back to the work you did, future medical care, and the replacement value of the bicycle and gear. A serious cycling injury often means months off work, and for self-employed Austin riders that lost income takes more proving than a pay stub. Bring tax returns and invoices.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages cover physical pain, mental anguish, physical impairment, and disfigurement. For cyclists these are frequently the larger number, because the injuries are orthopedic and permanent in a way that shows up every day. A rider who cannot ride again has lost something a spreadsheet does not capture, and that loss is compensable.
The Defenses Insurers Run, and the Statutes That Answer Them
Insurance adjusters handling Austin bicycle claims run a fairly predictable script. It is worth seeing it written down, because every line of it has a statutory answer, and because knowing the answers is most of what a bicycle accident lawyer actually brings to the file.
Five Arguments You Will Hear
"He was riding too far out in the lane." Section 551.103 requires riding as near as practicable to the right, not as far right as possible, and lists four exceptions including a roadway condition, a parked vehicle, and a lane too narrow to share.
"He wasn't in the bike lane." No Texas law requires a cyclist to use a bike lane. None exists in Chapter 551.
"He had no lights." Section 551.104 requires a front lamp and a rear reflector or lamp only at nighttime, which begins one half hour after sunset. A reflector satisfies the rear requirement.
"He wasn't wearing a helmet." No Texas law requires an adult to.
"They were riding two abreast." Expressly permitted by Section 551.103(c).
Comparative Fault: Fifty-Fifty Still Recovers
Texas uses modified comparative fault. Your recovery is reduced by your share of responsibility, and Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 33.001 bars recovery only if your percentage is greater than 50 percent.
That wording matters more than most pages admit. At exactly fifty-fifty, you still recover, cut in half. Found 20 percent responsible on a $200,000 case, you recover $160,000. The insurer's entire incentive is to move that percentage, which is why the statutory answers above are worth so much.
E-Bikes, Scooters, and Micromobility
Austin runs on e-bikes now, and the law caught up more cleanly than most people assume. For our purposes the headline is simple: Texas treats an electric bicycle as a bicycle. Section 551.002 applies the bicycle provisions of the Transportation Code to e-bikes, which means everything above about lane position, safe passing, helmets, and comparative fault applies to you the same way.
How Texas Classifies Electric Bicycles
Chapter 664 sets three classes. Class 1 assists only while you pedal, up to 20 mph. Class 2 has a throttle and can propel without pedaling, up to 20 mph. Class 3 assists only while pedaling, above 20 and below 28 mph. To qualify as an electric bicycle at all, the machine needs working pedals and a motor under 750 watts.
Two practical points. A Class 3 rider must be at least 15 years old, though a younger passenger may ride along. And under Section 551.107, e-bikes are excluded from the title, registration, driver licensing, and financial responsibility subtitles, which means no license, no registration, and no required insurance. That is exactly why the uninsured motorist section above matters so much to e-bike riders.
Rented Scooters Are a Different Animal
A rented scooter is not an e-bike under Texas law. Shared scooters are "motor-assisted scooters" under a separate part of Chapter 551. They may be operated only on streets posted at 35 mph or less, and unlike bicycles they may lawfully use sidewalks and bike paths as a matter of state law.
Two things follow. Whether a particular device even meets the statutory definition is genuinely arguable, and that argument can decide which rules of the road applied. And Austin licenses the shared operators, so the company may be a second defendant alongside the driver. If you were hurt on a rented scooter, bring us the app.
When a Government Vehicle or City Road Is Involved
Some cycling injuries are not about a driver at all: a trench left open across a bike lane, a signal that never gave you a phase, a city truck, a transit bus.
Those claims run under the Texas Tort Claims Act with a deadline that ends cases before they start. A governmental unit must receive notice within six months, and a city charter may require notice sooner. Damages against a municipality are capped at $250,000 per person.
If a public entity may be involved, the two-year statute of limitations is not your real deadline, and treating it as one is how these claims die.
How Our Austin Bicycle Accident Lawyers Handle a Case
We do not run a volume practice. A bike crash case gets read, not processed, and the first read is whether the statutory picture supports the facts you are describing.
The Free Consultation
The first consultation is free and there is no obligation attached to it. We will want to know where the crash happened, which direction everyone was traveling, whether an officer came, what you were riding, and what your own auto policy says. Bring the declarations page if you have it.
If we do not think the case is worth pursuing, we will say so at that meeting instead of after a signed contract. Call (512) 561-5003.
Finding a Bicycle Accident Lawyer Near You
If you are searching for a bicycle accident lawyer near me, or a bike accident attorney near you, ask one specific question: which subsection of Section 551.103 applies to where I was riding, and why? An attorney who handles cycling cases will answer it.
We represent injured cyclists throughout Central Texas, with dedicated pages for Round Rock, Cedar Park, Georgetown, Leander, Pflugerville, Kyle, and San Marcos. Where you were riding matters, because the safe passing ordinance above is an Austin ordinance and the surrounding cities do not all have one.
Why Austin Cyclists Choose SMB Law, PC
Shane M. Boasberg has practiced Texas law for more than two decades, with a background running through private practice, the Texas Legislature, and the Office of the Texas Attorney General. He is recognized by Texas Monthly as a Rising Star and belongs to the State Bar of Texas, the Austin Bar Association, and the Capital Area Trial Lawyers Association.
We handle bicycle and e-bike cases on a contingency fee, so there is no cost to you unless we recover. Our client reviews are on Google, Yelp, and the BBB. In a fatal crash, we also represent the family.
Talk to an Austin Bicycle Accident Attorney
In 2024, three cyclists were killed in Austin and 27 suffered serious injuries. That serious injury number has sat in the low-to-mid twenties every year for five years, which tells you what the fatality count does not: this is not rare, and it is not improving.
Most of those riders were doing nothing wrong. The Transportation Code gives Texas cyclists the same rights as drivers, and the Austin ordinance goes further than state law. The gap is that almost nobody, including many adjusters, knows what those provisions say.
If you were hit on a bicycle or an e-bike in the Austin area, call SMB Law, PC at (512) 561-5003 or reach us through our contact page. The consultation is free, we work on contingency, and we handle the personal injury claim from the first call through settlement or trial.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to ride in the bike lane in Texas?
No. Nothing in Texas law requires a cyclist to use a bike lane, a shoulder, or a side path when one exists. Section 551.101 gives you the rights of a vehicle operator on the roadway. A bike lane matters in exactly one narrow way: it removes the under-14-foot version of one exception to the ride-right rule. The too-narrow-to-share exception still applies.
Can I still recover if the crash was partly my fault?
Usually yes. Texas uses modified comparative fault, and Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 33.001 bars recovery only when your responsibility is greater than 50 percent. At an even fifty-fifty split you still recover half. Below that, your recovery is simply reduced by your percentage, so a rider found 25 percent responsible on a $100,000 case recovers $75,000.
How long do I have to file a bicycle accident claim?
Generally two years from the date of the crash, under Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 16.003. A child injured on a bicycle usually has until two years after turning 18 for their own claim, though a parent's claim for the child's medical bills is not tolled. And if a city, county, or transit agency may be responsible, the real deadline is far shorter: notice to a governmental unit is generally due within six months.
Do I need lights on my bike in Austin?
Only at night, and less than people assume. Section 551.104 requires a working brake at all times, and at nighttime a white front lamp visible from 500 feet plus either a rear red reflector or a rear red lamp. Nighttime begins one half hour after sunset. A reflector is enough at the back. When an adjuster claims you were unlit, the first question is what time the sun set.
What does a bicycle accident lawyer cost?
Nothing up front. We handle bicycle and e-bike cases on a contingency fee, which means our fee comes out of the recovery and you owe no attorney fee if there is none. The free consultation carries no obligation, and if we think your case is not worth bringing we will tell you at that first meeting.
Bicycle Accident Lawyers Serving Nearby Communities
SMB Law, PC represents clients across Central Texas. Choose your city for local court, filing, and case details: