Transcript:
Why hello there, I’m David Harriman, home and auto insurance broker extraordinaire, insuring people from Whitefish, MT, to Lone Tree, CO! Oh how I wish I were a normal person. Then, during summer, when I watch everyone riding around on their cool new e-bikes (electric bikes) or those little e-scooters (electric scooters) that you stand up on – they have the little electric motor – I could just see it, and go “Oh, that looks fun! I want to do that someday!” But, instead, I see it and I go, “oh my gosh! Do these people have any idea what their exposure is here!?” I’m not talking about them hurting themselves. I am talking about the fact that when you ride a bicycle around – let’s say you’re riding it down a walking path and somebody walks out in front of your bike and you were going faster than you’re supposed to, because you’re supposed to yield to pedestrians. You hit them, and they have to go to the hospital. Now they sue you for their injuries their time out of work, etc. – you can actually file a claim with your home insurance or renters insurance, and the liability coverage on your home insurance or renters insurance would protect you in that scenario.
However, liability coverage on your home insurance and renters insurance specifically excludes liability claims if they are stemming from a motorized vehicle!
It doesn’t matter if it’s a cute little electric motor that just assists you in pedaling, or if it’s a great big gas motor that you strap onto your kid’s go-kart. As soon as you motorize a vehicle – electric… gas… doesn’t matter – you no longer have liability protection under your home insurance policy.
This is a big deal. The only way you can have coverage for that is on a motorcycle policy. Also, side note: as soon as it’s a motorized vehicle you don’t even have property coverage for it. So if those e-bikes get stolen, you don’t have coverage under most home insurance policies because personal property coverage, on almost every home insurance policy out there, also has an exclusion for motorized vehicles, even if it’s an e-bike, which is a really common thing nowadays.
So what you do? You have to have a motorcycle insurance policy. If you’re an existing client of mine and you have an e-bike or an e-scooter, we can look into getting a motorcycle policy in place. If you’re not a client and you just want scooter insurance or e-bike insurance, I’m not the guy for that. I will do them as a favor for existing clients, but if you just stumbled across this online, please don’t call me just to insure a bicycle. I will gladly refer you somewhere if you do call me though. If you have any other questions, please feel free to give me a call. Thank you so much and have a great day.