San Francisco Pedestrian Accident Claims

Why this matters

San Francisco Pedestrian Accident Claims

San Francisco pedestrian claims are unusual in how often a public entity is involved, and that single feature reshapes the deadline for a large share of them. San Francisco is a consolidated City and County, and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (Muni) operates buses, light rail, streetcars and cable cars across a dense, heavily walked city. A collision involving a Muni vehicle, a City vehicle, or a dangerous condition of a City street is governed by the Government Claims Act, so the presentation deadline is six months rather than two years. Because so much of the transportation network here is public, that shortened clock is in play far more often than in a city built around private cars and freeways. 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. The second local feature is the collision pattern. San Francisco’s pedestrian injuries cluster on its Vision Zero High Injury Network — Market Street, the Tenderloin, Sixth Street and the South of Market corridors — and the single most common serious pattern is a driver turning left across a crosswalk at a signalized intersection while a pedestrian crosses with the walk signal. Liability in those collisions turns on signal timing and right of way, which are documentable facts rather than matters of recollection, and a pedestrian crossing lawfully with the signal usually has the right of way over a turning driver. Two points of California law matter here as everywhere: a crosswalk exists at intersections even when unmarked (Vehicle Code section 275), and drivers must yield to pedestrians in it (section 21950), while the 2023 Freedom to Walk Act removed the infraction for safe mid-block crossing. Pure comparative negligence means any pedestrian fault reduces rather than defeats a claim. A practical San Francisco wrinkle is cost: medical care here is among the most expensive in the country, which raises both the damages and any health-plan reimbursement lien that will come out of a recovery, so the net figure deserves attention from the start. Civil cases are filed in San Francisco County Superior Court at the Civic Center Courthouse on McAllister Street.