As an avid bike commuter, I’ve always been curious about what a bike law practice entails. In this article, we talk with attorneys Jessica Cutler and Bob Anderton of Washington Bike Law to get the spin on all things bike law. Please join Jessica and Bob at KCLL for a free CLE on bike law: more information at the end of this article.
Q: Can you give a bit of your backstory as both an attorney and a cyclist, and how you came to be involved with bike law?
Jessica:
I graduated from law school in 2009 and spent my first year out of school in a grant-funded position working on a truancy diversion program in the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. In late 2010, I began practicing family law as a solo practitioner.
Around that same time, I was excelling as a local bicycle racer. In 2012, I got my big break, landing on the podium in a four-day professional stage race in Northern California. By the time I returned to Seattle, after the race, a professional team had reached out, asking if I would like to race for them as a “guest rider” for a five-day race in the Gila Desert in New Mexico just a week and a half later. After that race, I was offered my first professional racing contract, and I spent the next five and a half years racing all over North America and even a little bit in Europe and Central America.
At the end of my 2016 road racing season, I retired from professional racing and transitioned into my position as an attorney at Washington Bike Law. Although I interned for Bob in law school, I had little other experience in this area of law. I was so grateful that Bob took a chance on me, knowing of my passion for bicycles, safe streets, and the law.
Some of what I bring to our office is my firsthand knowledge of many of the bike routes around Puget Sound, as well as an understanding of bicycle mechanics, handling, and GPS data. I also bring a connection to the competitive cycling community as I continue to coach and mentor both new and experienced racers.
Bob:
I moved to Seattle in 1992 with hopes to work as a pure public interest lawyer. Although I considered moving to Aberdeen for a job with Evergreen Legal Services, I ended up working at several plaintiffs’ personal injury firms, including that of acclaimed trial lawyer Tom Chambers, before starting my own office in 2000.
I did not set out to be a bike lawyer. I don’t think that phrase even existed at the time. But I was a regular bike commuter, and there were a lot more bike messengers back then. So this niche practice area really found me more than I found it.
Today Washington Bike Law has four attorneys and a support staff. We all share a passion for people, bikes, and safe streets.
Q: What falls under the umbrella of bike law?
Of course, our bread and butter as a firm is plaintiffs’ personal injury work, with the majority of our cases involving collisions between bicyclists and drivers. That said, our work has increasingly involved dangerous infrastructure — usually streets that are not reasonably safe for ordinary travel by bike.
We have been successful in obtaining settlements and judgments for individual clients injured on poorly designed or poorly maintained infrastructure, as well as in cajoling those responsible to fix these dangerous conditions before others are seriously injured or killed on them. Usually, we do this by pointing out easy fixes and explaining that subsequent remedial measures are inadmissible to prove negligence, and action soon follows. Formal settlements requiring action are less typical but have happened with our clients’ consent. Although private party litigation can rarely remedy dangerous conditions, we have pleaded nuisance, which could result in a court requiring action.
Washington Bike Law also advocates for safer streets through our work with community organizations such as Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and by advocating for statewide legislation, such as presumed liability for drivers involved in collisions with people walking or rolling.
Although advocating for safer infrastructure and better laws to protect people walking and rolling is not consistent with maximizing attorney fees, we know that it is far better to prevent serious injuries and deaths than to try and use the law to make up for the harm later.
Q: What types of cases do you see coming through your door most often?
As noted above, the majority of our cases are bike versus car. The fact patterns vary, but one too common thread is the regular driver’s refrain that the bicyclist “came out of nowhere.” We hear this regardless of the weather, how many lights a cyclist had on their body or bike, or how much reflective or fluorescent clothing they wear.
We regularly have cases involving failure to yield when executing a turn. The most common may be the “left hook,” where a left turning driver fails to yield to an oncoming bicyclist. We also have many “right hook” cases where a driver passes a bicyclist traveling in the same direction before turning right and cutting off the bicyclist.
Q: How has the mass adoption of e-bikes and other forms of electronic transit such as electric scooters impacted your practice?
The adoption of e-bikes has certainly impacted our practice, in particular how we determine whether there are certain types of insurance coverage available for our clients. In the past few years more and more of our clients ride e-bikes. E-bike riders are extremely diverse, ranging from folks who are new to cycling, to experienced cyclists who are looking to soften their commute, to family bikers who forego cars in favor of cargo bikes.
The two issues that we most commonly run into when representing clients who were injured on e-bikes are (1) whether they qualify for PIP or UIM coverage, and (2) liability, given “came out of nowhere refrain” combined with a common misperception that people riding e-bikes are often riding too fast for conditions. Some car insurance policies may exclude e-bikes, similar to owning two cars but insuring only one. We strongly recommend that e-bike owners get stand-alone insurance with UIM to protect themselves if they are injured by an uninsured or under-insured driver. This insurance would also cover the e-bike, and a rider’s own liability to others. In the rare situation that a cyclist causes damage to another, the rider’s homeowner’s or renter’s policy should defend them. However, these policies are also increasingly adding exclusions for e-bikes.
As for e-scooters, we do increasingly receive inquiries from riders who have crashed on them, but so far we have not represented many, mostly due to specific fact patterns where it appeared that the riders were primarily or even exclusively at fault.
While we support alternative forms of transportation including e-scooters, we believe that most existing infrastructure is not reasonably safe for them. Consider the difference between hitting a pothole or curb with a 20-29” bike tire compared to an 8-14” scooter tire.
Q: What responsibilities do bike/scooter-share companies have for accidents and injuries caused by their riders?
This question is such a can of worms. Beginning with the word accident. These crashes are not unexpected — many are inherent to the design of a scooter. It’s not just their tiny tires; riders are standing, often straight-legged, and are more vulnerable to falls than someone on a bike seat with their feet planted on their pedals.
The City of Seattle is collecting revenue by licensing multiple e-scooter- and bike-share companies to operate here without, in our opinion, improving our infrastructure to be reasonably safe for e-scooters. Nor does Seattle require these companies to provide insurance to protect riders or even people who are injured by riders. Although many European countries require this coverage, to our knowledge in the US, only the State of California and the City of Cincinnati require these companies to provide liability insurance.
Additionally, a report from the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center found that since 2020, when SDOT launched its e-scooter rental program, injuries related to scooter use have skyrocketed. We believe that both the City of Seattle and the e-scooter rental companies share in the responsibility for this trend.
Q: Are there any warnings you would give to users of rideshare bikes regarding the terms they agree to when renting a bike/scooter?
As noted above, we would caution riders that they may not have insurance if they injure or cause damage to someone else, so they could be exposing themselves to personal liability.
We would also strongly recommend wearing a helmet. Although requiring helmets has been shown to be one of the least effective ways to reduce traffic-
related injuries, e-scooters users have a high incidence of head injuries, some of which could be prevented or at least mitigated by helmet use.
Q: What are some of the key bike laws in Seattle and statewide that attorneys should be aware of?
Seattle laws provide slightly more protection for cyclists than the statewide rules of the road do. Most notably, there is a clear prohibition against parking (SMC 11.72.415) or driving (SMC 11.53.190) a motor vehicle in a bicycle lane except to execute a turn, and to turn only after yielding to any bicyclists riding in the bike lane. Although “right hook” crashes are still common in Seattle, the increased clarity in the rules of the road here means that cases involving crashes in Seattle are more apt to be settled without litigation than those in cities and towns where drivers’ duties are more ambiguous.
Additionally, Seattle law explicitly authorizes cyclists to pass on the right (SMC 11.44.080). However, this law adds the caveat that passing on the right is only permissible “under conditions permitting such movement in safety,” so the standard (and inherently flawed1) argument we get when a driver collides with a passing cyclist is that the crash proves it was not safe to pass.
Statewide, as of 2020, Washington recognized what is often called the “Idaho stop” (RCW 46.61.190). This law allows bicyclists to treat most stop signs as yield signs and was first passed in Idaho. Washington passed a similar law in 2015 regarding stop lights. Under RCW 46.61.184, if a vehicle detection device “fails to operate after one cycle,” people riding bikes or motorcycles, after stopping, may proceed with due care against a red light.
Additionally, there is some caselaw in Washington that practitioners should be aware of. In Schwartz v. King County, 200 Wn.2d 231, 516 P.3d 360 (2022), the Washington State Supreme Court expanded the definition of “latency” under the Recreational Use Immunity statute (RCW 4.24.210(4)(a)). The RUI statute generally protects landowners who open their land to the public from liability for unintentional injuries. The exception to this rule is if a person is injured by a “known dangerous artificial latent condition for which warning signs have not been conspicuously posted.” Previous caselaw had created the “standing near” test to determine whether a condition was latent, meaning if you could see the dangerous condition when standing near it, then it was not latent. The Schwartz court recognized that this test was not practical or reasonable for recreational users, such as cyclists or runners who were in motion when they encountered a dangerous condition and expanded the latency test, holding that, “[a] condition is latent if recreational users are not reasonably able to discover or protect themselves from that condition while engaged in recreational use of the land.” 200 Wn.2d at 242.
In 2016, Division II of the Court of Appeals held, in O’Neill v. City of Port Orchard, 194 Wn. App. 759, 375 P.3d 709 (2016), that a city owes a duty to maintain its roadways in a condition that is reasonably safe for ordinary travel which includes travel by bicycle. O’Neill, 194 Wn. App. at 770. This means that when a cyclist is injured due to poorly maintained or designed roadways or infrastructure that may be reasonably safe for ordinary travel by car but is not safe for ordinary travel by bicycle they can still recover for their loss.
Q: Your firm, WBL, does a lot of pro bono work with the goal of making safer streets for everyone. Can you talk about some of the firm’s recent work in that arena?
Yes, thank you! One ongoing example of our pro bono work is our effort over the past two decades to legislate a rebuttable civil presumption of liability for drivers involved in crashes with people walking, using wheelchairs, or riding bicycles.
In the 2025 legislative session, WBL helped draft a Presumed Liability Bill, HB 1518 and provided testimony at its first hearing. Although the bill did not pass out of the Civil Rights & Judiciary Committee, it remains an active bill.2 In its current form, HB 1518 would create the same rebuttable presumption of civil liability against bicyclists involved in crashes with people walking or using wheelchairs. Although people riding bicycles are significantly less likely to injure others than people driving, making the presumption against both drivers and bicyclists should at least prevent the use of the well-worn “War on Cars” rhetorical device.
WBL helped clarify our state’s Recreational Use Immunity statute (RUI) with pro bono Amicus briefing to the Washington Supreme Court on behalf of the Cascade Bicycle Club. Washington passed RUI legislation in 1967 now codified as RCW 4.24.210 that generally prevents landowners (including governments) from being liable for unintentional injuries when they allow the public to access properties for recreation without charge. The idea was that the RUI law would encourage landowners to open areas for recreational activities — including bicycling — that the public would otherwise not be able to access.
Although the RUI law generally says that landowners “shall not be liable for unintentional injuries,” there is an exception if a person is injured by a “known, dangerous, artificial, latent condition for which warning signs have not been conspicuously posted.” Numerous court decisions have interpreted Washington’s RUI law over the past five decades, but a 2015 Washington Supreme Court interpretation in Jewels v. City of Bellingham resulted in injured people increasingly being unable to prove that a condition was “latent.”
Latency, in the context of the RUI law, generally means something is not readily apparent to the recreational user. However, Jewels ruled that “if an ordinary recreational user standing near the injury-causing condition could see it by observation, without the need to uncover or manipulate the surrounding area, the condition is obvious (not latent) as a matter of law.”
WBL argued on behalf of Cascade in the Schwartz v. King County that the “standing near” test conflicted with prior law. More importantly from our perspective, the test was harmful in that it set an unworkable and unrealistic standard for bicyclists and other recreational users who encounter dangerous conditions known to landowners while engaged in foreseeable movement.
Jewels was harmful because landowners could avoid responsibility for known hazards if a person could see it while standing next to it, as opposed to considering what a recreational user could actually perceive while moving toward it. As Cascade said in Schwartz:
The standard for latency should not always be stationary visibility. The general class of recreational users on a mixed-use trail do not stand and observe; they are moving as intended—riding bikes, walking, running, or rolling in wheelchairs. This unworkable universal “standing” standard removes the incentive to remove or repair known hazards in areas that are open to the public. While Recreational Use Immunity may increase access to areas that would otherwise not be made available to the public, Mr. Schwartz’s crash shows that the expanding Jewels latency test would go too far in insulating landowners from responsibility.
WBL argued, “Given the importance of bicycling in Washington, the Court may choose to go further and set out a clearer test for latency. Cascade respectfully suggests that such a test would be whether a reasonable recreational user would observe the condition when using the area in a reasonably foreseeable manner.” The court ruled:
... a “standing near” test does not account for how “recreational users” generally encounter conditions on the land. Bicyclists do not stand in one place, they ride; skateboarders do not stand in one place, they skateboard; skiers ski; runners run; swimmers swim; and so on. A condition is latent if recreational users are not reasonably able to discover or protect themselves from that condition while engaged in recreational use of the land.
After Schwartz, landowners who make areas available for recreational use still have immunity for unintentional injuries if they prove: (1) they do not know of a condition that causes an injury; (2) a person is injured by a natural land condition (not “artificial”); or (3) where they conspicuously post signs warning of a condition they know to be dangerous.
Now however, if someone is injured on land that is subject to the RUI law, they no longer need to meet what was increasingly becoming an impossible “invisibility” standard to prove that a condition was latent.
Want to Learn More? Join Jessica and Bob at KCLL for a Free Bike Law CLE!
If you are enjoying this article, please join Jessica and Bob for an upcoming CLE on bike law in Washington. The CLE webcast is on Sept. 24. Registration details can be found at https://kcll.org/events.
1 “Every person using a public street or highway has the right to assume that other persons thereon will use ordinary care and will obey the rules of the road and has a right to proceed on such assumption until he or she knows, or in the exercise of ordinary care should know, to the contrary.” WPI 70.06.
2 If you are interested enough to be reading this footnote, we hope you will go even further and ask your state legislators to support HB 1518. The easiest way to do this is to call the state legislative hotline at 800-562-6000 and follow the prompts to leave a brief message. Your message will then be forwarded to the correct legislators based on your address.
