California Pedestrian Accident Lawyer

The short answer

California puts a specific duty on drivers at crosswalks (Vehicle Code § 21950): yield to a pedestrian crossing in a marked crosswalk, or in an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection (except as that chapter of the Vehicle Code otherwise provides), and use all due care while approaching. A pedestrian has duties too, but a share of the fault reduces what a person recovers rather than barring the claim. What a pedestrian claim turns on is the record: the collision report, the medical records, any video, and what witnesses saw.

SoCo Law Firm represents people hurt while walking, in Los Angeles, Orange County and throughout California. The other personal injury matters the firm handles, including auto accidents and bicycle accidents, are on the personal injury page.

The rules at a crosswalk

The duty to yield: § 21950(a)

A driver must 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 that chapter of the Vehicle Code otherwise provides. The duty covers unmarked crosswalks at intersections as well as painted ones, so the absence of lines on the street does not by itself settle who had the right-of-way.

Due care and speed: § 21950(c) and (d)

A driver approaching a pedestrian in a marked or unmarked crosswalk must exercise all due care and reduce speed, or take any other action needed, to safeguard the pedestrian. Under subdivision (d), the pedestrian’s own duty of care does not relieve the driver of that duty.

Drivers who are turning

Some collisions happen while a driver is turning at an intersection and someone is in the crosswalk. The questions are practical: where the vehicle was, what the driver could see, its speed, the lighting, and what other people saw.

Crossing outside a crosswalk

Vehicle Code § 21954(a) requires a pedestrian on the roadway outside a marked crosswalk, or an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, to yield to vehicles so near as to be an immediate hazard. Subdivision (b) keeps the other half of the picture: the driver still has to exercise due care for the safety of any pedestrian on the roadway.

So crossing mid-block does not mean the driver owed nothing; the right-of-way question is simply different.

When the pedestrian shares some of the fault

Section 21950(b) says the crosswalk rules do not relieve a pedestrian of the duty to use due care for their own safety, and that no pedestrian may suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety into the path of a vehicle so close as to be an immediate hazard. A defense may rely on it.

What that defense can do is limited. California replaced the all-or-nothing rule of contributory negligence with comparative negligence (Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, as quoted in CACI No. 405’s Sources and Authority). As a later decision quoted there puts it, a person’s own negligence is not a bar to recovery but a factor in measuring the amount. Under CACI No. 405, the defendant has to 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.

Where more than one party is responsible, Civil Code § 1431.2(a) makes each defendant’s liability for non-economic damages several only, in proportion to its own share of fault.

Parking lots

The crosswalk sections are written for the roadway. In a parking lot, the starting point is Civil Code § 1714(a): everyone is responsible for an injury caused to another by a lack of ordinary care or skill in managing their property or their person. That reaches a driver backing out of a space, and it can reach the owner of the lot, where the way it was laid out, lit or kept played a part.

Hit-and-run and uninsured drivers

When the driver leaves, or has no insurance, a claim may still be possible through uninsured motorist coverage. Insurance Code § 11580.2(a)(1) requires an auto bodily injury liability policy issued or delivered in California, other than one giving only excess or umbrella coverage, to include it, unless the insurer and the named insured agree in writing to delete or reduce it. Under § 11580.2(b), an “uninsured motor vehicle” includes a vehicle with no applicable insurance, one whose insurer denies coverage, an underinsured vehicle, and a hit-and-run vehicle whose owner or operator is unknown. The hit-and-run case comes with conditions set by the statute, which we go over in the first conversation.

Walking does not necessarily put a person outside that coverage. For a policy whose named insured is an individual, § 11580.2(b) counts the named insured, the spouse and relatives of either living in the same household as insured “while occupants of a motor vehicle or otherwise.” So coverage on a person’s own policy, or on a spouse’s policy or that of a relative they live with, can apply to someone hurt while walking. Whether it does depends on the policy’s terms and the statute’s exclusions.

Underinsured motorist coverage is offered as a single coverage with uninsured motorist coverage. It applies when the at-fault vehicle is insured for less than the uninsured motorist limits on the injured person’s own policy, only after the at-fault liability limits have been exhausted by payment, and it pays at most the underinsured limit less what was paid (§ 11580.2(n), (p)).

What a claim has to show

Civil Code § 1714(a) frames the claim. It has to show that the driver, or another party, did not use ordinary care (the duties described above are part of that picture), and that this caused the injury. Then come the losses. Civil Code § 1431.2(b), in its rule on shared fault, defines the two kinds of damages this way:

• Economic damages are objectively verifiable monetary losses, such as medical expenses and loss of earnings.
• Non-economic damages are subjective, non-monetary losses, such as pain, suffering, inconvenience and emotional distress.

When the injury is permanent, the claim has more to account for; the catastrophic injury page explains what. When a family has lost someone in a pedestrian accident, the claim is a different one, explained on the wrongful death page.

How SoCo Law Firm builds the record

The record is gathered early, because parts of it do not wait.

• The collision report, obtained under Vehicle Code § 20012 and read for what it says and what it leaves out.
• Video from cameras on nearby businesses, homes or vehicles. Many systems record over older footage automatically, so it is one of the first things we look for.
• Photographs of the crossing, its markings and signs, the lighting and the vehicle, before anything is repaired or changed.
• Witnesses, both those named in the report and people who were there but are not in it.
• Medical records from the first visit on, which connect the injury to the collision and document the losses.
• Insurance: the at-fault driver’s liability policy, and the uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on the injured person’s own policy and on the policies of a spouse or relatives in the same household, read against their terms.

When public property played a part

Sometimes a street, a crosswalk or a signal is part of what happened. Except where a statute provides otherwise, Government Code § 835 makes a public entity liable for an injury caused by a dangerous condition of its property when the condition created a reasonably foreseeable risk of that kind of injury and either an employee’s negligent or wrongful act or omission, within the scope of employment, created it, 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.

Talking to SoCo Law Firm

A first conversation covers what happened, what the record shows so far, and what a claim would need. To arrange one, contact SoCo Law Firm.