Hit while walking or on a bicycle: the coverage question starts with a definition

A pedestrian or a cyclist struck by a car in Minnesota usually has no-fault benefits, and the reason is a definition rather than a policy. What a bicycle is, what a motorcycle is, and what happens when there is no policy anywhere are each answered in a different section of the No-Fault Act.

The first question after a car hits a person who is walking or riding a bicycle is not who was at fault. It is who pays for the ambulance, and Minnesota answers that question with a set of definitions rather than with a policy. The definitions sit in three different sections of two different chapters, and every one of them produces a result that surprises people.

The entitlement does not come from your vehicle

Minn. Stat. § 65B.46, subd. 1 is one sentence, and it is the sentence the whole coverage question runs through:

If the accident causing injury occurs in this state, every person suffering loss from injury arising out of maintenance or use of a motor vehicle or as a result of being struck as a pedestrian by a motorcycle has a right to basic economic loss benefits.

The grammatical subject is “every person.” The condition is that the loss arise out of the maintenance or use of a motor vehicle. Nothing in the sentence asks what the injured person was doing, what the injured person was riding, or whether the injured person insured anything. A person struck while crossing a street is suffering loss from injury arising out of the use of a motor vehicle in exactly the same sense as the driver who hit them.

Which company writes the check is a different question, governed by the priority rules in Minn. Stat. § 65B.47. Those rules are set out in the no-fault benefits guide, and the short version is that subdivision 4(a) sends a person who is an insured under some auto policy to that policy first, and subdivision 4(c) reaches “the security covering any involved motor vehicle” only for “a person not otherwise covered who is not the driver or other occupant of an involved motor vehicle.”

What a bicycle is, and what it is not

Minn. Stat. § 65B.43, subd. 2 defines the term the whole chapter turns on:

"Motor vehicle" means every vehicle, other than a motorcycle or other vehicle with fewer than four wheels, which (a) is required to be registered pursuant to chapter 168, and (b) is designed to be self-propelled by an engine or motor for use primarily upon public roads, highways or streets in the transportation of persons or property, and includes a trailer with one or more wheels, when the trailer is connected to or being towed by a motor vehicle.

Three exclusions are stacked into that one sentence. A motorcycle is out by name. Anything “with fewer than four wheels” is out by count. And whatever survives both has to be registered under chapter 168 and designed to be self-propelled by an engine or motor. A bicycle fails every test that matters: Minn. Stat. § 169.011, subd. 4 defines it as “every device capable of being propelled solely by human power upon which any person may ride, having two tandem wheels, and including any device generally recognized as a bicycle though equipped with two front or rear wheels.”

The traffic code’s definition of the other party to this kind of collision is equally short. Under Minn. Stat. § 169.011, subd. 53, “‘Pedestrian’ means any person afoot or in a wheelchair.” Chapter 65B does not define the word at all, which matters only for the one place the No-Fault Act uses it — the “struck as a pedestrian by a motorcycle” clause in § 65B.46, subd. 1.

The line between a moped and an electric bike is drawn twice

This is the definition most likely to change the answer, and it is drawn by cross-reference in two directions at once.

Minn. Stat. § 65B.43, subd. 13 defines “motorcycle” as “a self-propelled vehicle designed to travel on fewer than four wheels which has an engine rated at greater than five horsepower,” and then extends and limits the term in the same sentence:

and includes (1) a trailer with one or more wheels, when the trailer is connected to or being towed by a motorcycle; and (2) a motorized bicycle as defined in section 169.011, subdivision 45, but does not include an electric-assisted bicycle as defined in section 169.011, subdivision 27.

Minn. Stat. § 169.011, subd. 45 then draws the same line from the other side. A “motorized bicycle” is “a bicycle that is propelled by an electric or a liquid fuel motor of a piston displacement capacity of 50 cubic centimeters or less, and a maximum of two brake horsepower, which is capable of a maximum speed of not more than 30 miles per hour on a flat surface with not more than one percent grade in any direction when the motor is engaged,” and the subdivision closes by stating that “Motorized bicycle does not include an electric-assisted bicycle as defined in subdivision 27.”

The classification is not academic. Minn. Stat. § 65B.46, subd. 3 provides that “For the purposes of sections 65B.41 to 65B.71, injuries suffered by a person while on, mounting or alighting from a motorcycle do not arise out of the maintenance or use of a motor vehicle although a motor vehicle is involved in the accident causing the injury.” A machine that is a motorized bicycle is a motorcycle for chapter 65B purposes and its rider is inside that provision. A machine that meets the electric-assisted bicycle definition is not.

The consequences of being outside a car, on the tort side

Two of them run in opposite directions, and they are frequently confused with each other.

The first is the no-fault tort threshold. Minn. Stat. § 65B.51, subd. 1 speaks of “a cause of action in negligence accruing as a result of injury arising out of the operation, ownership, maintenance or use of a motor vehicle with respect to which security has been provided as required by sections 65B.41 to 65B.71,” and subdivision 3 limits damages for noneconomic detriment “In an action described in subdivision 1.” A pedestrian’s or a cyclist’s negligence claim against the driver who hit them is an action of that description, because it arises out of the driver’s operation of an insured motor vehicle. The threshold reaches it. The tort threshold guide works through the five gates and the subtraction inside the dollar gate.

The second runs the other way. Minn. Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3a(5) closes with a rule for people who were not in anything: “If at the time of the accident the injured person is not occupying a motor vehicle or motorcycle, the injured person is entitled to select any one limit of liability for any one vehicle afforded by a policy under which the injured person is insured.” That sentence, and the notice a claimant has to give before settling with the at-fault driver, are covered in the uninsured and underinsured motorist guide. It is the one place where being on foot produces a better answer than being in a car.

When there is no policy anywhere

Minnesota does not leave this to chance, and the mechanism is almost never mentioned outside the statute.

Minn. Stat. § 65B.63, subd. 1 requires the industry to build one:

Reparation obligors providing basic economic loss insurance in this state shall organize and maintain, subject to approval and regulation by the commissioner, an assigned claims bureau and an assigned claims plan, and adopt rules for their operation and for the assessment of costs on a fair and equitable basis consistent with sections 65B.41 to 65B.71.

Subdivision 2 then describes what happens to a claim inside it. The bureau “shall promptly assign each claim and notify the claimant of the identity and address of the assignee-obligor of the claim,” claims “shall be assigned so as to minimize inconvenience to claimants,” and the assignee “thereafter has rights and obligations as if the assignee had issued a policy of basic economic loss insurance complying with sections 65B.41 to 65B.71 applicable to the injury.”

Minn. Stat. § 65B.64, subd. 1 sets out who qualifies. Four routes in:

(a) the person is 14 years old or younger and basic economic loss benefits are not applicable to the injury because of section 65B.58;

(b) basic economic loss benefits are not applicable to the injury for some reason other than those specified in section 65B.58, 65B.59, or 65B.60;

(c) the plan of reparation security applicable to the injury cannot be identified; or

(d) a claim for basic economic loss benefits is rejected by a reparation obligor on some ground other than the person is not entitled to basic economic loss benefits under sections 65B.41 to 65B.71.

Clause (c) is the hit-and-run case and the case where nobody can work out whose policy was in force. Clause (d) is the case where an insurer has said no for a reason other than ineligibility, and Minn. Stat. § 65B.54, subd. 5 makes the insurer say so: where a claim is rejected for a reason other than that the person is not entitled to the benefits claimed, “the written notice shall inform the claimant that the claimant may file the claim with the assigned claims bureau and shall give the name and address of the bureau.”

The clocks are borrowed rather than separately stated. Minn. Stat. § 65B.65, subd. 1 requires a person to “notify the bureau of the claim within the time that would have been allowed for commencing an action for those benefits if there had been identifiable coverage in effect and applicable to the claim.” Subdivision 2 adds a separate six-month period, running from discovery, where an insurer turns out to be financially unable to pay.

The disqualification that removes an entire household

Minn. Stat. § 65B.64, subd. 3 is the provision to read before assuming the assigned claims plan is a safety net:

A person shall not be entitled to basic economic loss benefits through the assigned claims plan with respect to injury which was sustained if at the time of such injury the injured person was the owner of a private passenger motor vehicle for which security is required under sections 65B.41 to 65B.71 and that person failed to have such security in effect.

For purposes of determining whether security is required under section 65B.48, an owner of any vehicle is deemed to have contemplated the operation or use of the vehicle at all times unless the owner demonstrates to the contrary by clear and convincing objective evidence.

Persons, whether or not related by blood or marriage, who dwell and function together with the owner as a family, other than adults who have been adjudicated as incompetent and minor children, shall also be disqualified from benefits through the assigned claims plan.

Three things are worth noticing about how that is built. The disqualification attaches to owning an uninsured private passenger vehicle, not to driving one — a person hurt on foot, blocks from a car that was sitting uninsured at home, is inside it. The second paragraph reverses the ordinary burden: an owner is presumed to have contemplated operation or use “at all times,” and the only way out is “clear and convincing objective evidence.” And the third paragraph extends the consequence past the owner to everyone who dwells and functions with the owner as a family, with two carve-outs.

What this page is not

It describes how the No-Fault Act’s definitions of “motor vehicle,” “motorcycle,” and “motorized bicycle” allocate a pedestrian’s or a cyclist’s claim, what the assigned claims plan is, and who the statute excludes from it. It does not tell any reader which policy applies to their collision, whether a particular machine is an electric-assisted bicycle, whether a household is inside the § 65B.64, subd. 3 disqualification, or whether a tort claim clears the threshold. Each of those depends on facts and on policy language this page has not seen.