Pedestrian accidents: what to know after being hit by a car

Getting hit by a car on foot isn't like a typical two-vehicle crash. There's no bumper damage to compare, no two insurance adjusters splitting blame down the middle. There's one person on the ground and one driver whose insurance company starts building a defense before the ambulance leaves. Drivers struck and killed 7,148 people walking in the United States in 2024, and tens of thousands more were hurt badly enough to need emergency care¹². This guide covers what's true everywhere: how these crashes happen, who ends up liable, whose insurance actually pays, and why the specific state you were standing in when you got hit changes almost every answer to those questions.

How common these crashes are

Pedestrian deaths make up a growing share of the country's overall crash toll. In 2024, the 7,148 people killed while walking accounted for 18.0 percent of all traffic deaths nationwide, even though walking is a small fraction of the trips Americans take¹. The year before, drivers killed 7,314 pedestrians and injured an estimated 68,244 more seriously enough to be counted in national crash data². Early tracking from the Governors Highway Safety Association found pedestrian deaths fell another 11 percent in the first half of 2025 versus the same period in 2024, the steepest six-month drop since GHSA started keeping the count 15 years ago³.

That's real progress, but it follows a rough decade. Between 2013 and 2022, the U.S. pedestrian death rate rose 50 percent, from 1.55 to 2.33 per 100,000 people, even as death rates for people on foot fell in most peer countries over the same stretch, according to the CDC⁴.

Who gets hit, and when

The typical pedestrian fatality doesn't happen where you'd picture it. Most walking deaths cluster in cities, not the countryside: 84 percent of pedestrians killed in 2023 died in urban areas, versus 16 percent in rural ones². Men account for 70 percent of pedestrian fatalities. The highest death rate by age group belongs to people in their late 50s, followed closely by people in their early 40s and early 60s². Alcohol, the driver's or the pedestrian's, was a factor in 46 percent of fatal pedestrian crashes in 2023².

Children make up a much smaller share of this toll than they once did. Kids under 15 accounted for 18 percent of all pedestrian deaths in the late 1970s and just 2.4 percent by 2021, a shift credited to school-zone speed limits, crossing guards, and safer routes to school⁵.

Timing matters as much as anything else. Roughly three-quarters of pedestrian deaths happen in the dark, and the stretch from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. produces more pedestrian and bicyclist deaths than any other window of the day². Hit-and-run crashes are also disproportionately a pedestrian problem. Close to 1 in 4 pedestrians killed in traffic died in a hit-and-run, and 91 percent of those hit-and-run deaths involved a single vehicle, meaning there's often no other driver, no witness car, and no easy way to identify who did it².

Why the vehicle matters as much as the driver

Vehicle design has become its own safety story. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that pickups, SUVs, and vans with a hood height above 40 inches are about 45 percent more likely to kill a pedestrian in a crash than cars with a hood 30 inches or lower and a sloped front end⁶. Height compounds speed. IIHS modeling shows that as impact speed climbs from 15 to 35 mph, a pedestrian's risk of serious injury from a median-height car rises from 9 percent to 52 percent, but from a median-height pickup it rises from 11 percent to 91 percent⁷. Tall, blunt front ends strike adults higher on the torso, which tends to throw them down and under the vehicle rather than up onto the hood.

IIHS research found automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection cuts pedestrian crashes by 25 to 27 percent and pedestrian injury crashes by 29 to 30 percent, but the same research found no comparable benefit on unlit roads at night, which lines up with how much of the death toll happens after dark⁸.

Road design can close some of that gap. The pedestrian hybrid beacon, sometimes called a HAWK signal, stays dark until a pedestrian presses a button, then cycles through flashing and steady red to stop traffic for a crossing. The Federal Highway Administration lists it as a proven safety countermeasure for midblock crossings and uncontrolled intersections on higher-speed roads, the exact kind of location where a driver might not otherwise see someone stepping off a curb⁹.

Who has the right of way

Every state's traffic code draws roughly the same line, even where the wording differs: drivers owe pedestrians the right of way inside a crosswalk, and pedestrians owe drivers the right of way everywhere else. California's vehicle code requires a driver to yield to a pedestrian "within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection," while making clear a pedestrian still can't "suddenly leave a curb...and walk or run into the path of a vehicle that is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard"¹⁰. Step outside that crosswalk, and the duty flips: under Section 21954, a pedestrian crossing anywhere else must yield to traffic "so near as to constitute an immediate hazard"¹¹.

North Carolina reaches the same split through separate statutes. G.S. 20-173 puts the yield duty on drivers at marked and unmarked crosswalks near intersections, while G.S. 20-174 requires a pedestrian crossing anywhere else to yield to traffic and use due care, and adds that a driver pulling out of an alley, driveway, or private road must yield to anyone already on the adjoining sidewalk¹²¹³. What counts as an "unmarked crosswalk," how close a vehicle has to be to count as an "immediate hazard," and whether the rule shifts near a school or a marked bus stop can all vary further within a single state's code. The details carry more weight than the general shape of the rule.

Fault can erase your claim, depending on the state

Because pedestrians usually carry some statutory duty even inside a crosswalk, the driver's insurer will look for any way to shift blame onto the person who got hit. How much that shifted blame costs you depends entirely on which state the crash happened in. About a third of states use pure comparative negligence, where an injured pedestrian can recover damages even if found 99 percent at fault, just reduced by that share of blame. Most other states use a modified version with either a 50 percent or 51 percent bar: cross that threshold and the claim is wiped out entirely, not just reduced. Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia, along with the District of Columbia, still follow pure contributory negligence, under which a pedestrian found even 1 percent at fault can be barred from recovering anything¹⁴. That single difference in doctrine, more than the facts of the crash itself, can decide the entire outcome of a claim.

Jaywalking law is loosening, but not everywhere and not completely

A handful of states have started rolling back jaywalking enforcement. Virginia stopped police from citing pedestrians solely for jaywalking in 2021, Kansas City, Missouri followed a month later, and Nevada converted the offense from a misdemeanor to a $100 civil fine that same year. California's Freedom to Walk Act, effective January 1, 2023, bars officers from stopping a pedestrian for crossing outside a crosswalk or against a signal unless "a reasonably careful person would realize there is an immediate danger of a collision with a moving vehicle"¹⁵.

None of these laws erase the underlying civil duty to yield outside a crosswalk described above. Decriminalizing a jaywalking ticket and eliminating comparative-fault exposure in a lawsuit are two different things, and no state has done both yet.

Whose insurance actually pays

A pedestrian struck by a car usually has more than one possible source of payment, and the order matters. If you carry your own auto policy, its medical payments (MedPay) coverage or personal injury protection (PIP) coverage generally follows you as a person rather than just as a driver, and it pays out even when you were hit on foot. From there, a claim against the at-fault driver's bodily injury liability coverage handles the rest, up to that driver's policy limit. If the driver who hit you had no insurance, or not enough, your own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage can step in instead; insurers generally treat a pedestrian as a "covered person" under that part of the policy even though they weren't riding in a vehicle. Whether any of this coverage is mandatory rather than optional depends on the state, since only some states require insurers to build uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage into every policy¹⁶. Minimum liability limits are also low in a lot of states, sometimes as little as $25,000 per person, which often isn't enough to cover a pedestrian's hospital bill, let alone lost wages and long-term care¹⁶. What your own policy automatically includes is worth checking before you assume it does.

When a government agency is the one at fault

Not every pedestrian crash comes down to a careless driver. A missing crosswalk, a burned-out streetlight, a signal timed too short to cross before the light changes, or a road engineered for speeds well above the posted limit can shift part of the blame onto the agency that built or maintains it. These claims run into sovereign immunity, the doctrine that a government body can't be sued unless it has agreed to allow it, and every state carves out its own exceptions through a tort claims act.

The catch is procedural more than substantive. Most of those exceptions come with a notice-of-claim deadline far shorter than the ordinary statute of limitations. New York, for example, requires a notice of claim against a public corporation within 90 days of the incident, not the years that would otherwise apply to an injury claim¹⁷. Miss that window in a state that requires it, and the claim against the government is over, regardless of how strong the underlying case was.

Deadlines vary sharply by state

Ordinary personal injury deadlines vary too, just less dramatically. Most states give an injured pedestrian two years from the date of the crash to sue the driver. Kentucky is an outlier at one year, under KRS 413.140¹⁸. Louisiana used a one-year deadline for decades before its legislature extended it to two years for injuries occurring on or after July 1, 2024¹⁹. A few states run the other direction and allow considerably longer. None of this should be timed against a general rule of thumb rather than the actual law of the state where the crash happened.

Finding help

A pedestrian claim is rarely as simple as "the driver hit me, so the driver pays." Right-of-way statutes, comparative-fault rules, insurance stacking order, and government notice deadlines all shift the outcome, and they shift differently depending on where the crash happened. If you're looking for someone who handles these cases regularly, the legal directory lists attorneys who take pedestrian accident claims.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. NHTSA, "NHTSA Estimates 39,345 Traffic Fatalities in 2024," https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-estimates-39345-traffic-fatalities-2024

2. NHTSA, Traffic Safety Facts, 2023 Data: Pedestrians (DOT HS 813 727), https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813727

3. Governors Highway Safety Association, "U.S. Pedestrian Deaths Fall 11% in First Half of 2025," https://www.ghsa.org/news/us-pedestrian-deaths-fall-11-first-half-2025-according-new-ghsa-research

4. CDC, MMWR, "Pedestrian and Overall Road Traffic Crash Deaths," https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/74/wr/mm7408a2.htm

5. NHTSA, "Pedestrian Safety," Countermeasures That Work, https://www.nhtsa.gov/book/countermeasures-that-work/pedestrian-safety

6. IIHS, "Vehicles with higher, more vertical front ends pose greater risk to pedestrians," https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-vertical-front-ends-pose-greater-risk-to-pedestrians

7. IIHS, "Vehicle height compounds dangers of speed for pedestrians," https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicle-height-compounds-dangers-of-speed-for-pedestrians

8. IIHS, "Effects of automatic emergency braking systems on pedestrian crash risk," https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/bibliography/ref/2243

9. Federal Highway Administration, "Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons," https://highways.dot.gov/safety/proven-safety-countermeasures/pedestrian-hybrid-beacons

10. California Vehicle Code § 21950, https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&sectionNum=21950.

11. California Vehicle Code § 21954, https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&sectionNum=21954.

12. North Carolina General Statute § 20-173, https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_20/GS_20-173.html

13. North Carolina General Statute § 20-174, https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_20/GS_20-174.html

14. Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute, "Comparative negligence," https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/comparative_negligence

15. California Assembly Bill 2147 (Freedom to Walk Act), official bill text, https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2147

16. Insurance Information Institute, "Background on: Compulsory Auto/Uninsured Motorists," https://www.iii.org/article/background-on-compulsory-auto-uninsured-motorists

17. New York State Senate, General Municipal Law § 50-e, https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/GMU/50-E

18. Kentucky Revised Statutes § 413.140, https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=49037

19. Louisiana Legislature, Act 423 of 2024, https://www.legis.la.gov/Legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=1249082