Is Jaywalking Legal in California, and Can You Recover?

“Jaywalking” is the everyday word for crossing outside a crosswalk or against the signal. After a collision, the question that matters is a different one.

Crossing outside a crosswalk is still regulated in California. The crossing rules stand; what changed on January 1, 2023 is when a peace officer may stop a pedestrian for crossing outside a crosswalk. Being hit outside a crosswalk does not by itself bar a claim: the driver still owes due care, and a pedestrian’s own share of fault, if the defense proves it, reduces the damages rather than ending the case.

Is jaywalking legal in California, and can you recover if you are hit?

Not everywhere, and the 2023 change did not make it legal. Between adjacent intersections controlled by signals or by police officers, § 21955(a) says pedestrians “shall not cross the roadway at any place except in a crosswalk.” Anywhere on the roadway outside a crosswalk, § 21954(a) requires a pedestrian to yield to vehicles “so near as to constitute an immediate hazard.” Since January 1, 2023, each of those sections says a peace officer may not stop a pedestrian for a violation “unless a reasonably careful person would realize there is an immediate danger of a collision with a moving vehicle or other device moving exclusively by human power.”

Recovery can still be possible. Being outside a crosswalk does not by itself bar a claim: the driver still owes due care (§ 21954(b)), and under California’s comparative fault rule a pedestrian’s own negligence, if the defense proves it and proves it was a substantial factor in causing the harm, reduces the damages by the pedestrian’s share of responsibility instead of barring recovery. The firm’s page on California pedestrian accident claims covers the duties at a crosswalk; this article is about crossings elsewhere.

What changed about jaywalking in California in 2023?

When an officer may stop a pedestrian, not the crossing rules. Assembly Bill 2147 (Statutes of 2022, Chapter 957), effective January 1, 2023, added the same limit to several sections of the Vehicle Code, including the crosswalk section (§ 21950(e)), the rule for crossing outside a crosswalk (§ 21954(c)), the rule between adjacent signal-controlled intersections (§ 21955(b)) and the section on local ordinances (§ 21961(b)). The same law also rewrote the rule for pedestrian signals, § 21456, which in its current form carries the same limit.

Each of those subdivisions also adds two provisos: the subdivision “does not relieve a pedestrian from the duty of using due care for their safety,” and it “does not relieve a driver of a vehicle from the duty of exercising due care for the safety of any pedestrian within the roadway.”

The rules themselves remain. The Legislative Counsel’s Digest of AB 2147 notes that a violation of the pedestrian provisions is an infraction (see also Vehicle Code § 40000.1). The change is about stops: it does not make a crossing lawful, and it says nothing about fault in a civil claim.

What are the rules for crossing outside a crosswalk in California?

It depends on where the crossing happens. Four rules do most of the work:

• Between adjacent intersections controlled by traffic signals or by police officers, pedestrians may not cross the roadway at any place except in a crosswalk (§ 21955(a)).
• Anywhere outside a crosswalk, a pedestrian on the roadway must yield the right-of-way to all vehicles so near as to constitute an immediate hazard (§ 21954(a)).
• At the curb, no pedestrian may suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle so close as to constitute an immediate hazard (§ 21950(b)).
• Locally, the Vehicle Code’s pedestrian chapter does not prevent cities and counties from adopting ordinances “prohibiting pedestrians from crossing roadways at other than crosswalks” (§ 21961(a)).

Pedestrian signals have a rule of their own. Under § 21456(a)(3), a steady “DON’T WALK”, “WAIT” or upraised-hand symbol, or a flashing one without a countdown, means a pedestrian facing it shall not start to cross the roadway in the direction of the signal. So whether a crossing broke a rule can turn on the block, the signal and the city.

Is a street corner without painted lines a crosswalk?

It can be. Vehicle Code § 275 defines a crosswalk in two ways: the extension of the sidewalk boundary lines across an intersection where the roadways meet at approximately right angles (but not from an alley across a street), and any part of a roadway distinctly marked for pedestrian crossing by lines or other surface markings. The first kind needs no paint. The section adds that “there shall not be a crosswalk where local authorities have placed signs indicating no crossing.”

The definition matters because the driver’s duty to yield turns on it. Under § 21950(a), a driver “shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, except as otherwise provided in this chapter.” Someone who crossed at a corner without lines can have been in a crosswalk the whole time. Whether a particular corner fits depends on its layout.

Does a driver still owe care to a pedestrian outside a crosswalk?

Yes. Section 21954(b) says the pedestrian’s duty to yield “shall not relieve the driver of a vehicle from the duty to exercise due care for the safety of any pedestrian upon a roadway,” and the 2023 amendment to § 21955, the rule for crossings between adjacent signal-controlled intersections, adds that its limit on stops “does not relieve a driver of a vehicle from the duty of exercising due care for the safety of any pedestrian within the roadway.” The general rule of negligence is in Civil Code § 1714(a): everyone is responsible for an injury caused to another by a lack of ordinary care or skill in the management of their property or person.

So a claim asks what the driver did and could have seen, not only where the pedestrian was. The record usually needs:

• Where the crossing happened: a corner, lines, a no-crossing sign, a signal and what it showed.
• Visibility: the lighting, the weather, anything that blocked the view.
• The collision report. Reports are confidential, but under Vehicle Code § 20012 the agency the collision was reported to must disclose the entire report to people with a proper interest in it, including any person named in it as injured.
• Video from cameras on nearby businesses, homes or vehicles.
• Witnesses, including people not named in the report.

How does California divide fault between a pedestrian and a driver?

By shares, not all or nothing. Under CACI No. 405, the jury instruction on a plaintiff’s own fault, the defense must prove both that the injured person was negligent and that this negligence was a substantial factor in causing the harm. If it does, the person’s damages are reduced by their share of responsibility.

The rule comes from Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, quoted in CACI No. 405’s sources: “The doctrine of comparative negligence is preferable to the ‘all-or-nothing’ doctrine of contributory negligence . . . .” In the words of a later decision quoted in the same notes, a claimant’s negligence contributing causally to their own injury “may be considered now not as a bar to his recovery, but merely as a factor to be considered in measuring the amount thereof.”

Can your own auto insurance apply if you were walking?

It can. Uninsured motorist coverage on a policy issued to the injured person, their spouse, or a relative living in the same household can apply to someone hurt while walking, depending on the policy’s terms and the exclusions in Insurance Code § 11580.2(c). For a policy whose named insured is an individual, the statute defines “insured” as the named insured, the spouse and, while residents of the same household, relatives of either “while occupants of a motor vehicle or otherwise.”

Under § 11580.2(a)(1), with exceptions such as policies giving auto coverage only on an excess or umbrella basis, a motor vehicle bodily injury liability policy issued or delivered in California must contain the coverage unless the insurer and the named insured agree in writing to delete or reduce it. An “uninsured motor vehicle” under § 11580.2(b) includes one with no applicable bodily injury liability insurance or bond, one whose insurer denies coverage, an underinsured vehicle, and one whose owner or operator is unknown, as in a hit-and-run. The hit-and-run case comes with conditions, beginning with physical contact between the vehicle and the insured person, which we go over in the first conversation.

Underinsured motorist coverage is offered with it as a single coverage (§ 11580.2(n)). An underinsured motor vehicle is one insured for less than the uninsured motorist limits carried on the injured person’s vehicle, and the coverage does not apply until the liability limits of all the insured vehicles that caused the injury have been exhausted by payment of judgments or settlements and proof of the payment is submitted to the insurer (§ 11580.2(p)). The firm’s page on auto accident claims covers the same questions between two vehicles.

What if the street itself played a part?

Then a public entity may be part of the claim. Except as a statute provides otherwise, Government Code § 835 makes a public entity liable for an injury caused by a dangerous condition of its property if the injured person establishes that the property was in a dangerous condition at the time of the injury, that the condition proximately caused the injury, that it created a reasonably foreseeable risk of that kind of injury, and that either an employee’s negligent or wrongful act or omission within the scope of employment created the condition or the entity had actual or constructive notice of it in time to protect against it. Claims against a city, county or other public entity have their own requirements (Government Code § 945.4), which we go over in the first conversation.

How does SoCo Law Firm look at a pedestrian case?

By starting with the record, not with the word “jaywalking”. Personal injury is a regular part of the firm’s practice, alongside employment law. A first conversation is free and confidential, and it covers where the crossing happened, the signals and markings, what the driver could see, what the report says and leaves out, and the insurance on every side. The page on how SoCo Law Firm handles pedestrian accident claims sets out the record a claim is built on, and the personal injury page lists the other matters the firm handles.

To talk through a crossing that ended in a collision, contact SoCo Law Firm.