Most explanations of Minnesota’s motorcycle insurance gap stop at the definition: the No-Fault Act’s definition of “motor vehicle” leaves out motorcycles, so no personal injury protection. That’s true, and it’s not the interesting part.
The interesting part is a separate sentence the Legislature wrote in 1974 and has never touched:
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.
Minn. Stat. § 65B.46, subd. 3.
Read that slowly. It isn’t a definitional exclusion. It’s a legal fiction. A car runs a red light and hits a motorcycle, and the statute says the rider’s injuries didn’t arise out of the use of a motor vehicle. The Minnesota Supreme Court has said as much in so many words: “But for subdivision 3, it is apparent that a motorcyclist struck by an automobile would be entitled to basic economic loss benefits.” Feick ex rel. Feick v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 307 N.W.2d 772, 775 (Minn. 1981).
Everything downstream comes out of that one deeming sentence: no PIP from anyone, an open question about the tort threshold, a UIM exclusion that surprises riders, and an assigned-claims dead end. I’ll take each in turn, and close with two things that changed recently and haven’t made it into most Minnesota motorcycle materials: the helmet-evidence statute was repealed in 1999, and lane filtering became legal on July 1, 2025.
Why doesn’t my auto policy’s PIP cover me on my motorcycle?
Two provisions, working together.
First, the definition. “Motor vehicle” means “every vehicle, other than a motorcycle or other vehicle with fewer than four wheels,” which is required to be registered under chapter 168 and is designed to be self-propelled for use primarily on public roads. Minn. Stat. § 65B.43, subd. 2. “Motorcycle,” in turn, means “a self-propelled vehicle designed to travel on fewer than four wheels which has an engine rated at greater than five horsepower,” and it expressly includes a motorized bicycle as defined in § 169.011, subd. 45, but not an electric-assisted bicycle as defined in § 169.011, subd. 27. § 65B.43, subd. 13.
Basic economic loss benefits — Minnesota’s PIP — are payable only for “injury arising out of maintenance or use of a motor vehicle.” § 65B.46, subd. 1. The Supreme Court has treated that as unambiguous: “The Legislature precisely defined ‘motor vehicle’ in section 65B.43, subd. 2 and expressly excluded motorcycle from that definition.” Feick, 307 N.W.2d at 774.
Second, the deeming clause. Without subdivision 3, a rider hit by a car would still qualify, because the car’s use would supply the “motor vehicle” element. Subdivision 3 shuts that door, and Feick described its reach broadly: “Subdivision 3 of section 65B.46 is a special exclusion which applies to all provisions of the No-Fault Act.” 307 N.W.2d at 775.
Here’s what riders are giving up: a Minnesota auto policy must provide a minimum of $40,000 in basic economic loss benefits per person — $20,000 for medical expense loss and a separate $20,000 for income loss, replacement services loss, funeral expense loss, and survivors’ losses. Minn. Stat. § 65B.44, subd. 1(a). A motorcyclist gets none of it. See our overview of how Minnesota no-fault benefits work for cars.
If a car hits me, doesn’t the car’s no-fault coverage pay?
No, and the Legislature made insurers say so in writing.
The priority statute, Minn. Stat. § 65B.47, routes PIP claims among available policies. Its residual clause, subdivision 4(c), covers “a person not otherwise covered who is not the driver or other occupant of an involved motor vehicle” and assigns “the security covering any involved motor vehicle.” At first glance a motorcyclist looks like a fit — a motorcycle isn’t a “motor vehicle,” so the rider isn’t an occupant of one. But the priority statute only sorts out obligations that exist, and § 65B.46, subd. 3 has already extinguished the rider’s entitlement.
If that sounds like a lawyer’s inference, the Legislature took away the doubt. When an application is submitted for motorcycle insurance without PIP, the insurer must attach a separate form, “in at least 10-point bold type, if printed, or in capital letters, if typewritten,” stating:
“Under Minnesota law, a policy of motorcycle coverage issued in the State of Minnesota must provide liability coverage only, and there is no requirement that the policy provide personal injury protection (PIP) coverage in the case of injury sustained by the insured. No PIP coverage provided by an automobile insurance policy you may have in force will extend to provide coverage in the event of a motorcycle accident.”
Minn. Stat. § 65B.48, subd. 5(b).
That’s the whole gap in one sentence, printed on a form most riders sign without reading.
What does a Minnesota motorcycle policy actually have to include?
Less than most riders think.
Liability, yes. “Every owner of a motorcycle registered or required to be registered in this state or operated in this state by the owner or with the owner’s permission shall provide and maintain security for the payment of tort liabilities arising out of the maintenance or use of the motorcycle in this state.” Minn. Stat. § 65B.48, subd. 5(a). That security must be a liability contract complying with § 65B.49, subd. 3, or qualified self-insurance. Subdivision 3(1) sets the floor: not less than $30,000 for bodily injury to one person, $60,000 for two or more persons, and $10,000 for property damage, per accident.
PIP, no. Subdivision 5(a) requires security for tort liabilities only. There’s no PIP mandate. But look at what subdivision 5(b) implies: it requires the warning form only when the application is for motorcycle insurance “without personal injury protection coverage,” which assumes motorcycle PIP exists as something you can buy. It does. Almost nobody buys it, partly because nothing in the statute requires an agent to make a documented offer the way the mandatory-offer provision does for auto policies. Compare § 65B.49, subd. 1, whose mandatory-benefit requirement is written “with respect to any motor vehicle registered or principally garaged in this state” — language that, by § 65B.43, subd. 2, doesn’t reach a motorcycle.
UM and UIM, not by force of the statute. Section 65B.49, subd. 3a(1) requires separate uninsured and underinsured motorist coverages with minimum limits of $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident — but again only for a plan “issued for delivery, or executed in this state with respect to any motor vehicle registered or principally garaged in this state.” A motorcycle isn’t a motor vehicle. The Court of Appeals put it directly: “while every owner of a motorcycle is obligated to provide liability insurance, motorcycle owners need not provide basic-economic-loss, UM, or underinsured-motorist benefits.” Braginsky v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 624 N.W.2d 789, 795 (Minn. Ct. App. 2001).
The upshot: on a motorcycle policy, medical payments coverage, PIP, UM, and UIM are all things you have to ask for and pay for. The default policy protects the people you hit. It doesn’t protect you.
Can I use my car policy’s UM/UIM after a motorcycle crash?
This is where riders are most often wrong, and where the older cases are traps.
The starting principle used to run the rider’s way. In the 1970s and early 1980s the Minnesota Supreme Court repeatedly held that first-party coverages follow the person, not the vehicle, and voided policy exclusions that tried to break that link — including for a rider hurt on her own motorcycle who sought UIM from her separate auto policy. American Motorist Ins. Co. v. Sarvela, 327 N.W.2d 77, 78–79 (Minn. 1982) (“It is well-established that first party coverages for which an insured pays a premium follow the person, not the vehicle.”).
Then the Legislature changed the rule. The 1985 amendments added Minn. Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3a(7):
The uninsured and underinsured motorist coverages required by this subdivision do not apply to bodily injury of the insured while occupying a motor vehicle owned by the insured, unless the occupied vehicle is an insured motor vehicle.
In 1987 the Supreme Court answered a certified question from the federal district court about exactly the motorcycle scenario and held that clause (7) “precludes uninsured motorist coverage when the claimant at the time of the injury is riding an uninsured motorcycle he or she owns.” Hanson v. Am. Family Mut. Ins. Co., 417 N.W.2d 94, 96 (Minn. 1987). The court reasoned that the 1985 package “reflect[ed] a broad policy decision to tie uninsured motorist and other coverage to the particular vehicle involved in an accident,” id., and it declined to read the motorcycle exclusion in § 65B.43, subd. 2 as saving the old rule for bikes alone.
Three years later the Legislature put the point beyond argument, adding clause (8):
The uninsured and underinsured motorist coverages required by this subdivision do not apply to bodily injury of the insured while occupying a motorcycle owned by the insured.
Minn. Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3a(8), added by 1990 Minn. Laws ch. 504, § 1, effective August 1, 1990 for contracts issued or renewed on or after that date and injuries occurring on or after that date.
What that means in practice.
| Scenario | Your auto policy’s UM/UIM |
|---|---|
| You are riding a motorcycle you own | Excluded by § 65B.49, subd. 3a(8) — no coverage, insured or not |
| You are riding or a passenger on a motorcycle someone else owns | Not reached by clause (8) by its terms; Hanson expressly declined to decide the non-owner case, 417 N.W.2d at 96 n.2 |
| You are in your car and an uninsured or underinsured motorcycle hits you | Covered — “uninsured motor vehicle” and “underinsured motor vehicle” are each defined as “a motor vehicle or motorcycle,” § 65B.43, subds. 16, 17 |
| You are a pedestrian and any vehicle hits you | § 65B.49, subd. 3a(5) lets a person “not occupying a motor vehicle or motorcycle” select any one limit for any one vehicle on a policy under which they are insured |
Two related timing points. First, no UM/UIM recovery is permitted for basic economic loss benefits paid or payable, § 65B.49, subd. 3a(4) — a provision that mostly doesn’t matter to a rider, precisely because no PIP was paid or payable. Second, the limitations period is shorter than the six years most people assume: “The time limitation for commencing a cause of action relating to underinsured motorist coverage under subdivision 3a is four years from the date of accrual.” § 65B.49, subd. 10(b). See our fuller treatment of uninsured and underinsured motorist claims in Minnesota.
Does the no-fault tort threshold apply to an injured motorcyclist?
Minnesota’s threshold bars recovery of noneconomic damages — pain, suffering, disability, loss of consortium, inconvenience — unless the claimant clears one of five gates: more than $4,000 in qualifying medical expense, permanent disfigurement, permanent injury, death, or “disability for 60 days or more,” with disability defined as “the inability to engage in substantially all of the injured person’s usual and customary daily activities.” Minn. Stat. § 65B.51, subd. 3.
When a motorcyclist is the defendant, the answer is settled: the threshold doesn’t apply. A plaintiff suing a negligent motorcyclist doesn’t have to clear it. The Supreme Court flagged this in Feick: a pedestrian struck by a motorcycle is “not subject to the No-Fault threshold requirements of section 65B.51, subd. 3 in a negligence action against the driver of the motorcycle.” 307 N.W.2d at 775 n.8. The Court of Appeals held it squarely in Braginsky, where a car driver hurt by an uninsured motorcyclist had been denied his $5,000 pain-and-suffering verdict for failing the threshold: “a negligent motorcycle driver, whether insured or not, is not entitled to the limited protection afforded by the no-fault act tort thresholds.” 624 N.W.2d at 795. The reasoning is that “the quid pro quo for procuring the insurance required by the no-fault act is the limited tort immunity provided by the thresholds,” id., and by excluding motorcycles the Legislature “retained the fault based character of liability for damages caused by motorcycle use,” Pavel v. Norseman Motorcycle Club, Inc., 362 N.W.2d 5, 7 (Minn. Ct. App. 1985), quoted in Braginsky, 624 N.W.2d at 795.
When the motorcyclist is the plaintiff suing an insured car driver, the statute doesn’t answer cleanly, and I couldn’t find a Minnesota appellate decision that resolves it. You’ll want both readings in hand before you brief it.
The rider’s reading. Section 65B.51, subd. 1 attaches the threshold to “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.” Section 65B.46, subd. 3 declares that a rider’s injuries do not arise out of the maintenance or use of a motor vehicle, “[f]or the purposes of sections 65B.41 to 65B.71” — a range that plainly includes § 65B.51. And Feick called subdivision 3 “a special exclusion which applies to all provisions of the No-Fault Act.” 307 N.W.2d at 775.
The defendant driver’s reading. The threshold’s third condition is about the tortfeasor’s insurance — the injury must arise from a vehicle “with respect to which security has been provided.” That’s the quid pro quo Braginsky identified: the driver who bought the required no-fault coverage gets limited tort immunity in exchange. An insured car driver bought it. On that logic the immunity attaches no matter what the plaintiff was riding.
For most seriously hurt riders the fight is academic — a motorcycle crash that produces a claim worth litigating usually produces permanent injury or 60-plus days of disability. It matters in the soft-tissue case, and it’s worth raising early instead of discovering it at a motion in limine. Our separate discussion of how the Minnesota tort threshold works covers the five gates in detail.
The gap does give one thing back. Section 65B.51, subd. 1 requires the court to “deduct from any recovery the value of basic or optional economic loss benefits paid or payable, or which would be payable but for any applicable deductible.” A rider who had no PIP has nothing to deduct. The rule that quietly shrinks car-crash verdicts doesn’t shrink this one. See comparative fault and collateral sources in Minnesota.
What if a motorcycle hits a pedestrian or a bicyclist?
The Legislature fixed half of this problem in 1987 and left the other half alone.
Feick was a bicyclist case: a minor riding a bicycle was struck by an insured motorcycle, and the Supreme Court held he couldn’t recover basic economic loss benefits under his father’s four auto policies, because no “motor vehicle” was involved. 307 N.W.2d at 775. The court closed by asking for a fix — “It is not for us to rewrite a statute that has no ambiguities; that is for the legislature, and we call its attention to that fact, should this opinion not reflect its intent.” Id. (quoting Kealy v. St. Paul Hous. & Redevelopment Auth., 303 N.W.2d 468, 474 (Minn. 1981)).
The Legislature took the hint, but narrowly. In 1987 it amended § 65B.46, subds. 1 and 2 to add the italicized words: 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. 1987 Minn. Laws ch. 337, § 104. That section carried no special effective date in the act, so the default in Minn. Stat. § 645.02 applied — August 1 following final enactment.
It says pedestrian. It doesn’t say bicyclist. A person struck by a motorcycle while riding a bicycle appears to be right where Feick left them. That’s a real gap in a state with this many recreational cyclists, and it’s worth checking against the specific policy language, since a policy may be written more broadly than the statute requires — nothing in the Act “shall be construed as preventing the insurer from offering other benefits or coverages in addition to those required to be offered.” § 65B.49, subd. 7. See our discussion of bicycle and pedestrian crash claims.
Who pays the pedestrian? If the pedestrian is an insured under a household auto policy, that policy is the source. § 65B.47, subd. 4(a). If not, the motorcycle’s policy will usually have no PIP to tap, and the pedestrian’s route is the assigned claims plan under Minn. Stat. § 65B.64, subd. 1 — available to “[a] person entitled to basic economic loss benefits because of injury covered by sections 65B.41 to 65B.71” where, among other grounds, “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,” or where “the plan of reparation security applicable to the injury cannot be identified.” Watch subdivision 3, which disqualifies a person who owned a private passenger motor vehicle for which security was required and failed to keep it in force — and, notably, also disqualifies persons “who dwell and function together with the owner as a family.”
The helmet question: the statute you’ve heard about was repealed in 1999
Minnesota’s helmet requirement is narrow. “No person under the age of 18 shall operate or ride a motorcycle on the streets and highways of this state without wearing protective headgear that complies with standards established by the commissioner of public safety; and no person shall operate a motorcycle without wearing an eye-protective device.” Minn. Stat. § 169.974, subd. 4(a). Adults may ride bare-headed. Every operator, at any age, must wear eye protection. The requirements don’t apply to permitted parades or to persons riding within an enclosed-cab autocycle. § 169.974, subd. 4(b).
The evidence question is the one that decides cases, and the answer most Minnesota materials give is out of date.
From 1977 until 1999, Minnesota had an express helmet-damages statute. As quoted by the Court of Appeals, former § 169.974, subd. 6 provided:
In an action to recover damages for negligence resulting in any head injury to an operator or passenger of a motorcycle, evidence of whether or not the injured person was wearing protective headgear that complied with standards established by the commissioner of public safety shall be admissible only with respect to the question of damages for head injuries. Damages for head injuries of any person who was not wearing protective headgear shall be reduced to the extent that those injuries could have been avoided by wearing protective headgear that complied with standards established by the commissioner of public safety.
Quoted in Leonard v. Parrish, 420 N.W.2d 629, 632–33 (Minn. Ct. App. 1988). Leonard upheld the provision against an equal-protection challenge by a passenger whose damages the jury had reduced for helmet nonuse, id. at 633–34, and Cressy v. Grassmann, 536 N.W.2d 39, 42 (Minn. Ct. App. 1995), rejected a later challenge built on the disparity between helmet evidence and seat-belt evidence, reasoning that “the distinction between defendants sued by an unhelmeted motorcyclist and those sued by an unbelted motorist is genuine and substantial.”
That statute is gone. Section 169.974, subdivision 6 was repealed by 1999 Minn. Laws ch. 230, § 46. The act’s own title describes the change as “abolishing provision that restricted evidence of use of headgear by motorcyclist to only the question of damages for head injuries.” The repealer wasn’t among the sections given a special effective date in § 47 of the act, so the Minn. Stat. § 645.02 default applied.
Read the title closely, because it cuts both ways. The repeal killed the statutory command that head-injury damages “shall be reduced.” It also killed the statutory limit confining helmet evidence to the damages question. Leonard and Cressy are still real decisions, but the statute they construed is gone, and citing them for the current rule is a mistake.
What governs now is the general law. Under Minn. Stat. § 604.01, subd. 1a, “fault” includes “unreasonable failure to avoid an injury or to mitigate damages,” and:
Evidence of unreasonable failure to avoid aggravating an injury or to mitigate damages may be considered only in determining the damages to which the claimant is entitled. It may not be considered in determining the cause of an accident.
Compare seat belts, where the Legislature enacted an affirmative evidence bar that has no motorcycle counterpart: proof of the use or failure to use seat belts or a child passenger restraint system “is not admissible in evidence in any litigation involving personal injuries or property damage resulting from the use or operation of any motor vehicle,” subject only to a products-liability carve-out. Minn. Stat. § 169.685, subd. 4(a)–(b). See Minnesota’s seat belt evidence rule.
So here’s where Minnesota law actually stands: there’s no statute requiring a helmet-nonuse reduction, no statute barring helmet-nonuse evidence, and no Minnesota appellate decision I could retrieve applying the post-repeal framework to a helmet. Expect the defense to offer it under § 604.01, subd. 1a as failure to mitigate, expect a fight about whether the causation showing can be made without the repealed statute’s machinery, and don’t let anyone tell you Leonard settles it.
Lane filtering became legal on July 1, 2025 — and it created a duty for drivers
This is new enough that it hasn’t worked its way into crash investigations yet, and it’ll matter in liability disputes for years.
Until 2025, Minnesota flatly prohibited operating a motorcycle between lanes or passing within the same lane. The 2024 Legislature rewrote § 169.974, subd. 5. The general prohibition survives in paragraph (f) — no operating between lanes of moving or stationary vehicles headed the same direction, no riding abreast within the same lane, no passing within the same lane — but it’s now expressly subject to a new exception:
(g) A person may operate a motorcycle and overtake and pass another vehicle in the same direction of travel and within the same traffic lane if the motorcycle is operated:
(1) at not more than 25 miles per hour; and
(2) no more than 15 miles per hour over the speed of traffic in the relevant traffic lanes.
2024 Minn. Laws ch. 127, art. 3, § 61, effective July 1, 2025.
The 2025 special session added a set of places where the exception doesn’t apply. For purposes of paragraph (g), “traffic lane” does not include the approach, drive-through, or exit of a roundabout; a school zone established under § 169.14, subd. 5a; a work zone where only a single travel lane is available for use; or an on-ramp to a freeway or expressway, with or without an active control device, where vehicles are queued in one or more lanes. Minn. Stat. § 169.974, subd. 5(h), added by 2025 Minn. Laws 1st Spec. Sess. ch. 8, art. 2, § 36, effective July 1, 2025.
Two other paragraphs of the same subdivision do real work in a crash case. Paragraph (i): “Motor vehicles including motorcycles are entitled to the full use of a traffic lane and no motor vehicle may be driven or operated in a manner so as to deprive a motorcycle of the full use of a traffic lane.” Paragraph (j): a motorcycle operator “must be granted the rights and is subject to the duties applicable to a motor vehicle as provided by law, except as to those provisions which by their nature can have no application.”
And the companion enactment is the one plaintiffs’ lawyers should have on the wall. The 2024 act added a new subdivision to the passing statute:
Subd. 13. Impeding motorcycle. An operator of a motor vehicle must not intentionally impede or attempt to prevent the operation of a motorcycle when the motorcycle is operated under the conditions specified in section 169.974, subdivision 5, paragraph (g).
Minn. Stat. § 169.18, subd. 13, added by 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 127, art. 3, § 53, effective July 1, 2025 for violations committed on or after that date.
For a filtering crash after July 1, 2025, the case turns on facts that have to be saved right away: the motorcycle’s speed, the speed of the traffic it was passing, whether the location was one of the four carve-outs in paragraph (h), and whether the driver moved to block. Speed differential is now an element, not a talking point. Data from the bike’s ECU, dashcam and helmet-cam footage, and nearby business video all go stale in days.
What a rider should actually do
Before a crash:
- Buy medical payments or PIP on the motorcycle policy. It’s the only first-party medical coverage that will exist. Your car’s PIP won’t follow you.
- Buy UM and UIM on the motorcycle policy, at real limits. They aren’t required on a motorcycle policy, and your auto UM/UIM is excluded while you occupy a motorcycle you own. § 65B.49, subd. 3a(8).
- Check whether the motorcycle is titled in your name. Clause (8) turns on ownership, and Hanson left the non-owner case undecided. 417 N.W.2d at 96 n.2.
- Raise your liability limits. The statutory floor of $30,000/$60,000/$10,000 isn’t a serious number for a motorcycle injury. § 65B.49, subd. 3, cl. (1).
After a crash:
- Don’t assume there’s no first-party coverage until someone reads the actual declarations page. Optional coverages are common enough that the assumption costs money.
- Calendar the four-year UIM limitation under § 65B.49, subd. 10(b), separately from the underlying tort limitations period.
- Preserve speed and location evidence in the first week if lane filtering is in the picture.
Madgett Law, LLC
Madgett Law, LLC represents injured people in Minnesota, including motorcycle riders, pedestrians, and cyclists. Motorcycle cases are built differently from car cases: there’s usually no first-party medical coverage paying the bills while the claim develops, the liability carrier knows it, and the pressure to settle early is higher for it. The work is reading every policy in the household for coverage nobody remembered buying, getting the crash scene documented before it changes, and refusing to accept an insurer’s version of a rule that changed in 1999 or in 2025. If you were hurt on a motorcycle in Minnesota, call 612-470-6529 or send us a message.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 65B.43, subd. 2 (definition of “motor vehicle” excluding motorcycles and vehicles with fewer than four wheels), subd. 13 (definition of “motorcycle”; inclusion of motorized bicycles, exclusion of electric-assisted bicycles), subds. 16–17 (“uninsured motor vehicle” and “underinsured motor vehicle” each defined as “a motor vehicle or motorcycle”), subds. 18–19 (UM and UIM coverage definitions); § 65B.44, subd. 1(a) ($40,000 minimum basic economic loss benefits: $20,000 medical plus $20,000 income/replacement/funeral/survivors); § 65B.46, subd. 1 (right to benefits; “or as a result of being struck as a pedestrian by a motorcycle”), subd. 3 (motorcycle deeming provision); § 65B.47, subd. 4(a), (c) (PIP priority); § 65B.48, subd. 5(a) (motorcycle liability security required), subd. 5(b) (mandatory 10-point bold notice, quoted verbatim); § 65B.49, subd. 1 (mandatory offer, limited to motor vehicles), subd. 3, cl. (1) ($30,000/$60,000/$10,000 residual liability limits), subd. 3a(1) (UM/UIM mandate limited to motor vehicles; $25,000/$50,000 minimums), subd. 3a(4) (no UM/UIM recovery for basic economic loss benefits), subd. 3a(5) (limits; selection right for a person “not occupying a motor vehicle or motorcycle”), subd. 3a(7) (owned motor vehicle exclusion), subd. 3a(8) (owned motorcycle exclusion), subd. 7 (additional coverages not prohibited), subd. 10(b) (four-year UIM limitation); § 65B.51, subd. 1 (deduction of economic loss benefits; scope of the tort threshold), subd. 3 (five threshold gates; definition of disability); § 65B.64, subd. 1 (assigned claims plan qualifications), subd. 3 (disqualification of uninsured owners and household members); § 169.685, subd. 4(a)–(b) (seat-belt evidence bar and products carve-out); § 169.974, subd. 4(a)–(b) (helmets required under 18; eye protection for all operators; exceptions), subd. 5(f)–(j) (lane-use rules, filtering exception, carve-outs, full use of lane, rights and duties), subd. 6 [Repealed, 1999 c 230 s 46]; § 169.18, subd. 13 (impeding a filtering motorcycle); § 604.01, subd. 1a (definition of fault; mitigation evidence limited to damages); § 645.02 (default effective dates) — revisor.mn.gov. Session laws, revisor.mn.gov/laws: 1987 Minn. Laws ch. 337, § 104 (adding “struck as a pedestrian by a motorcycle” to § 65B.46, subds. 1–2); 1990 Minn. Laws ch. 504, § 1 (adding § 65B.49, subd. 3a(8)) and § 2 (effective August 1, 1990); 1999 Minn. Laws ch. 230, § 46 (repealing § 169.974, subd. 6) and act title; 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 127, art. 3, § 53 (new § 169.18, subd. 13) and § 61 (rewriting § 169.974, subd. 5), each effective July 1, 2025; 2025 Minn. Laws 1st Spec. Sess. ch. 8, art. 2, § 36 (adding § 169.974, subd. 5(h)), effective July 1, 2025. Cases, Caselaw Access Project (static.case.law): Feick ex rel. Feick v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., 307 N.W.2d 772, 774–75 & n.8 (Minn. 1981) (motorcycle excluded from “motor vehicle”; subd. 3 is a special exclusion applying to all provisions of the Act; “But for subdivision 3, it is apparent that a motorcyclist struck by an automobile would be entitled to basic economic loss benefits”; bicyclist struck by motorcycle denied benefits; threshold inapplicable to a claim against the motorcyclist); American Motorist Insurance Co. v. Sarvela, 327 N.W.2d 77, 78–79 (Minn. 1982) (pre-1985 rule that first-party coverages follow the person); Pavel v. Norseman Motorcycle Club, Inc., 362 N.W.2d 5, 7 (Minn. Ct. App. 1985) (legislature “retained the fault based character of liability for damages caused by motorcycle use”); Hanson v. American Family Mutual Insurance Co., 417 N.W.2d 94, 96 & n.2 (Minn. 1987) (§ 65B.49, subd. 3a(7) precludes UM coverage for a rider on an owned uninsured motorcycle; non-owner case left undecided); Leonard v. Parrish, 420 N.W.2d 629, 632–34 (Minn. Ct. App. 1988) (text of former § 169.974, subd. 6; equal-protection challenge rejected); Cressy v. Grassmann, 536 N.W.2d 39, 42 (Minn. Ct. App. 1995) (helmet/seat-belt disparity upheld under former subd. 6); Braginsky v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., 624 N.W.2d 789, 795 (Minn. Ct. App. 2001) (tort thresholds do not protect a negligent motorcycle driver, insured or not; motorcycle owners need not provide PIP, UM, or UIM). This article is general legal information about Minnesota law. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and no particular outcome is promised or implied.