What to Do After an E-Bike Crash in Florida

What to Do First

1. Get medical care, and be examined even if you feel able to ride away. Head, neck, and internal injuries frequently present late, and a gap between the crash and the first medical record is the single most common argument an insurer makes against causation.
2. Call law enforcement and stay until a report is started. Get the crash report number before you leave. Under Fla. Stat. § 316.066(2)(a) the report is confidential for 60 days, but § 316.066(2)(b) lets you obtain it as a party in that window.
3. Photograph the scene before anything moves. The vehicle's final position, your bicycle's position, the lane markings, the debris field, sightlines, and any traffic control. Photograph the road surface itself if you went down without contact.
4. Photograph the classification label on your bicycle. Fla. Stat. § 316.20655(3) requires a permanent label showing classification number, top assisted speed, and motor wattage. It establishes what the machine was, and that becomes contested later. See e-bike classification.
5. Get names and numbers for every witness. Independent witnesses disappear within hours and are rarely recoverable afterwards.
6. Preserve the bicycle exactly as it is. Do not repair it, do not discard the battery, do not let a shop “check it over.” If a component failed, the machine is the evidence.
7. Report the crash to your own insurer, and say nothing more than the facts. Notice obligations under a policy run independently of any statutory deadline.
8. Speak to a lawyer before giving a recorded statement to anyone else's insurer.

What the Crash Report Is, and What It Is Not

The crash report matters, but not in the way most people assume. Fla. Stat. § 316.066(2)(a) makes crash reports confidential and exempt from § 119.07(1) for 60 days after the report is filed. During that window, § 316.066(2)(b) makes the report available to the parties involved in the crash, their legal representatives, their licensed insurance agents and insurers, law enforcement agencies, victim services programs, and federal, state, and local government agencies.

What the report will not do is decide the case. Fla. Stat. § 316.066(4) provides that such a report or statement “may not be used as evidence in any trial, civil or criminal.” So an officer's narrative assigning fault to a rider is not evidence against that rider, and the absence of a citation against a driver does not defeat a civil claim. The report’s real value is that it fixes the date, the parties, the vehicles, and the witness list while memories are fresh.

Where the crash involved no other vehicle — a pavement defect, a trail surface, or a component failure — a report is still worth having, because it establishes that the event happened when and where you say it did.

Legally Reviewed By

David I. Shiner, Esq.

Founder, Shiner Law Group · AV Preeminent® rated · Florida Bar member since 2002

David I. Shiner founded Shiner Law Group and has been a member of The Florida Bar since 2002. He is a graduate of Nova Southeastern University’s law school and holds an AV Preeminent® rating from Martindale-Hubbell. The firm represents injured people across Florida from offices in Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Pierce, Orlando, Wellington, and Belle Glade, and handles these cases on a contingency basis with free consultations and no attorney’s fee unless there is a recovery.

Content on this page legally reviewed by David I. Shiner, Esq. · Fla. Bar No. 572721 About this site →

The Evidence That Disappears Fastest

An e-bike case is unusual in how quickly its evidence degrades, and in how much of it sits on the rider’s side of the ledger rather than the insurer’s.

If a public body may be responsible for the surface, records requests should start early. Prior complaints, work orders, and inspection logs are what establish that a body knew of a defect, and those take time to obtain — while the presentment period in Fla. Stat. § 768.28(6)(a) is already running.

Before You Talk to an Insurer

Assume the first call from an adjuster is an evidence-gathering exercise, because it is. You are obliged to give notice to your own insurer under the terms of your policy. You are not obliged to give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurer, and there is rarely a reason to do it early.

Two things riders commonly get wrong. The first is accepting a characterization of the coverage position. Whether personal injury protection reaches an injured e-bike rider is an unresolved question in Florida, and an adjuster stating flatly that it does not apply is stating a position, not a settled rule.

The second is conceding fault in conversation. Florida bars recovery entirely above 50 percent fault under Fla. Stat. § 768.81(6), so an offhand remark about speed, lane position, or lighting has real consequences. Note that one common line of attack has no legs at all: Fla. Stat. § 316.2065(18) provides that failure to wear a bicycle helmet “may not be considered evidence of negligence or contributory negligence.”

The Clocks That Started at the Crash

Several periods begin running immediately, and they are not the same length.

• Two years for a negligence cause of action accruing on or after March 24, 2023, under Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(a). The period runs from accrual, which is a legal question and not automatically the crash date.
• Two years for wrongful death under Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(e).
• Three years to present a written claim to a government body under Fla. Stat. § 768.28(6)(a), which is a condition precedent under § 768.28(6)(b).
• Four years to file suit against a government body under Fla. Stat. § 768.28(14).
• Policy notice periods, which are contractual, often much shorter, and independent of every statutory deadline above.

Anything published telling you the negligence deadline is four years under § 95.11(3)(a) is describing law that changed in 2023. See the statute of limitations guide.

Frequently Asked Questions