I came off on my own and nobody else was involved. Is any of this available to me?

You are still a person injured in a motor accident, and the scheme has a settled answer for riders who were at fault: treatment and care and weekly payments are payable, capped at 52 weeks under sections 3.11 and 3.28. Being wholly or mostly at fault removes the damages side of the scheme, not the treatment side. If you are unsure which insurer the claim sits with, SIRA runs a free helpline, CTP Assist, on 1300 656 919, and it will point you at the right one.

Was my pillion passenger covered as well?

Yes. A pillion passenger is a person injured in a motor accident in exactly the same sense you are, and their statutory benefits do not depend on how the crash happened or on their relationship to you. They lodge their own claim and they are treated on their own file. It is worth telling them not to wait on your claim before starting theirs, because the lodgement clocks run separately for each person.

Is a broken collarbone a threshold injury?

A fracture is not a soft tissue injury, so it does not sit inside the threshold definition in section 1.6, which covers only the connecting and supporting tissue of the body. This matters because a non-threshold injury in a person who was not mostly at fault carries weekly payments to 104 weeks and treatment for as long as it stays reasonable and necessary, rather than stopping at 52 weeks. The classification is made on your imaging and examination findings, so those need to be recorded early and precisely.

How much of my wage do weekly payments actually replace?

For the first 13 weeks after the accident, weekly payments are 95% of the difference between your pre-accident weekly earnings and what you can still earn. From week 14 to week 78 that steps down to 80% where you have no earning capacity at all, or 85% where you are back doing something. Those percentages are set by sections 3.6 and 3.7 of the Act, and they are calculated on your earnings, so the rate is personal to you rather than a flat figure.

How long does the insurer get to decide my claim?

For statutory benefits in the first 52 weeks, four weeks. Section 6.19(1) requires the insurer to notify you whether it accepts liability within that period, and if it fails to notify you in accordance with the section it is taken to have accepted liability. The decision about benefits beyond the first 52 weeks comes later, at nine months. That gap is the reason we document a motorcycle injury thoroughly from the first appointment rather than waiting to be asked.

I cannot make myself get back on the bike. Is that treatable?

It is, and it is a common part of a motorcycle injury rather than something separate from it. Intrusive replays of the moment, avoiding the road or the corner, broken sleep and a flat refusal to ride are ordinary responses to being thrown off a bike. Under clause 4.105 of the Motor Accident Guidelines an insurer is expected, wherever possible, to use providers with expertise in managing psychological injury where psychological impacts are likely to slow recovery. Our psychologists treat riders, and where one of them is your treating practitioner they can also write later Certificates of Fitness.

Came off the bike? Here’s how your treatment is paid for.

Riders and pillion passengers are covered by the NSW CTP scheme, and our doctors, physiotherapists and psychologists treat the injuries that come off a motorcycle.

Motorcycle injuries are rarely tidy. They involve bone, ligament and nerve more often than a car occupant's injuries do, they take longer, and the paperwork attached to them decides how long the funding lasts. This page sets out what the scheme covers, what changes when your injury is not a threshold injury, and how to start treatment.

(02) 7238 7379

Who is covered

Rider, pillion, and the rider who caused it

The most common reason a rider never rings anybody is a private conviction that the crash was their own doing and therefore their own problem. It is not how the scheme works.

Anyone injured in a motor accident in New South Wales can access statutory benefits, and a motorcycle is a motor vehicle for those purposes. That takes in the rider, the pillion passenger, and a rider brought down by a car that changed lanes without looking. It also takes in the rider who misjudged a corner, ran wide, grabbed a handful of front brake on a damp road, or simply got it wrong.

For a rider who was wholly or mostly at fault, the scheme still funds treatment and care and still pays weekly payments where you cannot earn. What being at fault removes is the damages side, not the medical side, and the treatment entitlement runs for 52 weeks. Mostly at fault has a defined meaning, contributory negligence greater than 61%, and it is a finding an insurer must make on evidence. Plenty of riders write themselves off as at fault on the day and turn out, once the sequence is reconstructed, not to have been mostly at fault at all.

Two practical consequences follow. First, a rider should be examined and should lodge on the same timetable as everyone else, not on a slower one born of embarrassment. Second, a pillion passenger has their own claim, on their own file, with their own clocks. Neither of you should be waiting for the other.

Source: Motor Accident Injuries Act 2017 ss 3.11 and 3.28. Checked September 2026.

Threshold and non-threshold

Why motorcycle injuries often fall outside the threshold

This is the single most valuable thing to understand about a bike crash, and it turns on the tissue that was damaged rather than on how much it hurts.

Section 1.6 of the Act divides motor accident injuries into threshold and non-threshold, and a rider is unusually likely to end up outside the threshold half. A fracture is not soft tissue at all. A complete or partial rupture of a tendon, ligament, meniscus or cartilage is excluded from the soft tissue definition outright. Nerve tissue is excluded too, with one qualification that matters after a heavy landing on the shoulder and neck: the Regulation returns an injury to a spinal nerve root to the threshold category where it manifests in neurological signs other than radiculopathy, so pins and needles down an arm is not on its own the answer. The full statutory list of tissues and exclusions sits in section 6 of our NSW car accident injury guide.

A motorcycle crash produces exactly those injuries with unusual frequency. Fractured clavicles, wrists, tibias and ribs. Ruptured cruciate and collateral ligaments in a knee that was trapped between bike and road. Rotator cuff and acromioclavicular injuries from landing on a shoulder. Brachial plexus and other nerve injuries from a heavy shoulder-and-neck impact. None of those is a soft tissue injury as the Act defines it, which is why a great many motorcycle injuries land on the non-threshold side. The catch is that saying so requires the finding to be in the record.

NSW CTP benefit periods by injury classification and fault
Where you land	Weekly payments	Treatment and care
Threshold injury, or wholly or mostly at fault	52 weeks	52 weeks
Non-threshold injury, not mostly at fault	104 weeks	As long as reasonable and necessary

The difference between those two rows is not academic. It is the difference between funded rehabilitation ending on a fixed date and funded rehabilitation continuing while it is still doing you good. The classification is decided on clinical evidence, and the insurer is not required to tell you whether it accepts liability for benefits beyond the first 52 weeks until nine months in. By then your week-two examination findings are fixed. A documented nerve deficit or a rupture confirmed on imaging in the first month is evidence. The same thing remembered in month nine is a recollection.

Source: Motor Accident Injuries Act 2017 ss 1.6, 3.11, 3.12, 3.28 and 6.19; SIRA, Providing allied health services in the NSW CTP schemes — FAQs. Checked September 2026.

Your income

What weekly payments look like, and what keeps them coming

A rider with a plated wrist is often off work for months. The rate steps down on a schedule, and the payments themselves hang on one recurring document.

Weekly payments are worked out from your pre-accident weekly earnings against whatever you can still earn. For the first 13 weeks the rate is 95% of that shortfall. From week 14 through week 78 it steps down to 80% where you have no capacity to earn, or 85% where you have some capacity and are back doing part of your job. Nothing about those percentages is negotiable, but the figure they are applied to depends on your earnings being properly established early.

The document that keeps the payments flowing is the Certificate of Fitness. You have to provide certificates covering the whole period you claim weekly payments for, together with a declaration as to your employment, and no single certificate can run for more than 28 days. The first one must be given by your treating medical practitioner. Every certificate after that may be given by a medical practitioner or by your treating physiotherapist or psychologist.

For a rider that rule is quietly useful. Once your wrist or knee is in the hands of a physiotherapist you see weekly anyway, that same physiotherapist can renew the certificate that protects your income, which removes a separate appointment made purely to have a form signed. Where a certificate does lapse, the insurer has to warn you in writing and give you at least seven days to fix it before suspending payments, so an appointment you missed is recoverable if you act on the letter rather than filing it.

Source: Motor Accident Injuries Act 2017 ss 3.6, 3.7 and 3.15; SIRA, Motor Accident Guidelines 4.61–4.63, 4.68 and 4.69. Checked September 2026.

The treatment

Three disciplines on one file

Motorcycle injuries rarely stay in one lane. Bone, soft tissue, nerve and the mental side of coming off usually need attention at the same time.

Medical assessment

Our doctors take the mechanism in detail, examine for nerve involvement and instability, order the imaging that settles whether a structure is ruptured, and write the first Certificate of Fitness. The findings recorded here are what the threshold decision is later made on.

How the certificate works

Physiotherapy and load

Graded rehabilitation for a shoulder, wrist or knee that has been immobilised, then a return to the loads riding and working actually demand. Your first assessment needs no approval in advance once a claim number exists; the block after it goes through a treatment request.

Read the approvals guide

Psychology

For the replays, the avoidance and the sleep that goes after a heavy off. Clause 4.105 points insurers towards clinicians who manage psychological injury properly where it is likely to slow recovery, and our psychologists can also carry the certificate chain.

See our car accident service

Source: SIRA, Motor Accident Guidelines 4.69, 4.105 and 4.106; SIRA, Providing allied health services in the NSW CTP schemes — FAQs. Checked September 2026.

Getting seen

Booking in after a motorcycle accident

The order that works: get examined, get the certificate, get the claim lodged. The dates below are the only ones you need to hold in your head.

Report the accident to police within 28 days. Lodge a statutory benefits claim within 28 days as well, because that is what allows weekly payments to be back-dated rather than starting on the day you get around to it. A claim must be made within three months in any case, and a later one needs a full and satisfactory explanation for the delay. The current form is the Application for personal injury benefits.

Ring (02) 7238 7379 or use the car accident booking page, and say on the call that it was a motorcycle accident so the right appointment is made. Have the date, the police event number, the registration of any other vehicle and any claim number you have already been given. If you have not lodged anything, say so: within the first 28 days the Guidelines allow one general practitioner consultation and two allied health treatment sessions to be funded before a claim exists, at the insurer’s discretion, and it is easier when somebody asks for it on your behalf.

Two more things worth knowing. You may express a preference for who treats you, and the insurer is required to facilitate that referral subject to suitability, giving written reasons if it declines. And if an insurer denies liability or declines a treatment request, SIRA is clear that the accounts fall to the patient, which is why we confirm approval before booking a block rather than afterwards. If you were riding for work when it happened, there may be a second claim running alongside this one, and our page on work-related car accidents explains how the two interact.

Source: SIRA, Guide for people injured in a motor vehicle accident; SIRA, Motor Accident Guidelines 4.78–4.79 and 4.104; Motor Accident Injuries Act 2017 s 6.13. Checked September 2026.

FAQs

Motorcycle injuries and CTP, answered plainly

Six questions riders put to our doctors and physiotherapists, with the section of the Act each answer comes from.

Car accident injury NSW

Off the bike and off work? Get the injury documented properly.

Our doctors examine for the findings that decide how long your benefits run, our physiotherapists carry the rehabilitation, and our psychologists treat the part that keeps you off the road. Approved treatment is billed to the CTP insurer.

Book a car accident appointment

Or call (02) 7238 7379

Tools

Guides

Learn

Workers Compensation