Los Angeles Pedestrian Accident Claims

Why this matters

Los Angeles Pedestrian Accident Claims

Los Angeles pedestrian claims are shaped by three local realities that rarely apply the same way elsewhere. The first is where these collisions happen. LA’s traffic deaths are heavily concentrated on a small set of wide, fast arterials — the streets the city’s Vision Zero program calls its High Injury Network, corridors like Vermont, Figueroa, Western and Sepulveda — where multiple lanes, long distances between signals and high speeds make a pedestrian struck there far more likely to be seriously hurt. That concentration matters because liability on those roads turns on physical facts: signal phase, crossing distance, lighting and the driver’s sight lines, rather than on either party’s account. The second reality is hit-and-run. Los Angeles has a hit-and-run problem well above the national norm, and a large share of pedestrian collisions here involve a driver who flees. When that happens, the practical question is no longer the driver’s liability but your own coverage: an uninsured-motorist claim on your own auto policy, or a resident relative’s, generally becomes the primary route to recovery, and it carries its own notice requirements and deadlines that are easy to miss while police work the hit-and-run. Preserving any detail about the vehicle, and reporting promptly, is time-sensitive for that reason. The third reality is who you may actually be claiming against. LA Metro buses and rail, the City of Los Angeles and LADOT are public entities, so a collision involving one of their vehicles, or caused by a dangerous condition of a city street, is governed by the Government Claims Act. Under the Government Claims Act a written claim must be presented to the public entity within six months of the collision, not the two years that applies to a private driver. The entity then has 45 days to respond; if it rejects the claim in writing you generally have six months from that notice to sue, and if it never answers, generally two years from the collision. Missing the six-month step usually bars the claim, though a late-claim application may be possible within a year. Two points of California law cut through the blame pedestrians routinely face. A crosswalk exists at most intersections even when it is unmarked (Vehicle Code section 275), and drivers must yield to pedestrians within one (section 21950), so being in an unmarked crossing is not the fault an insurer will suggest it is. And since 2023 the Freedom to Walk Act has meant that crossing outside a crosswalk, when done safely, is no longer an infraction, which undercuts the standard “jaywalking” argument. California’s pure comparative negligence still applies, so any fault assigned to the pedestrian reduces rather than bars recovery. Civil cases are filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, with personal-injury matters historically centralized at the Spring Street Courthouse, though assignments change and are worth confirming.