Reading Your Massachusetts Motorcycle Insurance Declarations Page: What Boston Riders Miss
The bike is parked for the Boston winter, salt is going down on Storrow, and you have a few months before the Cape Ann runs open back up. This is the best time of year to do the one thing almost no rider does: actually read your motorcycle insurance declarations page. That single sheet decides whether a bad crash next season leaves you whole or wiped out, and most riders have never looked past the price.
The line that is not there: no PIP for your motorcycle
The first thing Boston riders miss is what is missing rather than what is present. On a car policy in Massachusetts you have Personal Injury Protection, PIP, that pays your own medical bills and lost wages fast regardless of fault. Look for it on your motorcycle dec page. It is not there. Massachusetts law does not extend no-fault PIP to a rider's own injuries on a motorcycle, so the coverage that would pay your bills immediately after a car crash simply does not exist for you on two wheels. That absence is the single most important fact on the page.
Liability limits: 20/40/5 and what those numbers mean
Find your liability limits, usually written like 20/40/5 or 100/300/50. Those three numbers are the most the policy pays for bodily injury to one person, the most for all people in one crash, and the most for property damage. The Massachusetts minimum is 20/40/5. Here is the catch: liability pays other people when you are at fault. It does nothing for your own broken bones. A healthy liability number covers the harm you cause, not the harm you suffer.
The lines that actually protect you: UM and UIM
Now find uninsured motorist, UM, and underinsured motorist, UIM. UM pays you when the at-fault driver has no insurance or takes off, which is exactly what a hit-and-run in the tunnels becomes. UIM pays you when the driver has coverage but not enough, and against a rider's real hospital bills a 20/40/5 driver runs out of money almost instantly. Because you have no PIP, and because so many drivers around Boston carry only the minimum, these limits are the closest thing you have to a personal safety net.
- ✓ Confirm there is no PIP. The car rule does not carry over. On a motorcycle, no-fault does not pay your own injuries, so the rest of the page has to.
- ✓ Read liability as protection for others. The 20/40/5 style numbers pay people you injure, not your own medical bills.
- ✓ Treat UM and UIM as your lifeline. These pay you when the other driver is uninsured, underinsured, or gone.
- ✓ Match UM and UIM to your liability. If they are lower than your liability, raise them. You are the rider most likely to get badly hurt.
- ✓ Check every named bike and rider. Make sure the machine you ride and anyone who rides it are listed correctly, or a claim can be denied.
The gaps that cost you, and a five minute offseason check
The common trap is a policy that looks fine on price and fails on protection: state minimum liability, UM and UIM left at the floor, and no thought given to the missing PIP. Then a minimum-limits driver drifts into you on I-93, blows through their 20 thousand in one ambulance ride, and you find your own UM and UIM were never built to carry the rest. Fixing it is usually cheap, because insurers price UM and UIM low. So while the salt trucks own the roads, pull the dec page, confirm PIP is absent, read your liability, and ask whether your UM and UIM would really cover a serious injury. If they would not, raise them now.
Have questions after a wreck? Jeff Glassman and the motorcycle accident lawyers in Boston at Glassman Injury Lawyers (www.jeffreysglassman.com) review rider claims and explain your options.