Pedestrian accident settlement amounts in Arizona

If you were hit while walking in Arizona, the first thing to know is that no honest source can quote you an "average" settlement. What a case is worth depends on how badly you were hurt, how much insurance stands behind the claim, and how fault gets split. Arizona law sets the rules that decide those three things, and several of them differ from what a national page describes.

Start with how dangerous walking is here. In 2024, 263 pedestrians were killed on Arizona roads and 1,912 were injured across 2,079 pedestrian crashes.¹ Roughly one in eight of those crashes was fatal, a rate of 12.55%.¹ Pedestrians accounted for about a fifth of the 1,228 people killed in all Arizona traffic crashes that year, though pedestrian collisions were under 2% of the total.¹² The state's pedestrian death rate has sat near the top of the country for years. In 2022 it was 4.05 deaths per 100,000 residents, second only to New Mexico, and Arizona's 2023 preliminary rate of 2.96 still ran well above the national 2.19.³ Cases here tend to involve severe injuries, and severe injuries are what push a claim's value up.

The deadline that can end a case before it starts

You generally have two years from the date of the crash to file a pedestrian injury lawsuit in Arizona.⁴ Miss it and the claim is barred, no matter how strong the facts are.

There's a shorter deadline most people never hear about. If a government could be responsible, say a city bus, a state or county vehicle, or a badly designed intersection, you have to serve a formal notice of claim within 180 days of the crash under A.R.S. § 12-821.01.⁵ Lawsuits against a public entity or employee also carry a one-year statute of limitations rather than two.⁶ Pedestrians get caught by this often, because so many of these crashes happen at intersections and on roads a government agency built and maintains.

Pure comparative negligence: the biggest lever on value

Arizona uses pure comparative negligence. A jury assigns each party a share of fault, and your damages are "reduced in proportion to the relative degree of the claimant's fault."⁷ There is no cutoff. A pedestrian found 80% at fault still recovers 20% of their damages, which is not the case in the many states that bar recovery once you cross 50%.⁷ The narrow exception is for someone who intentionally, willfully, or wantonly caused their own injury.⁷

This rule matters because fault is contested in nearly every pedestrian case. Arizona gives pedestrians the right of way in a crosswalk when no signal is present, and it bars a second car from passing a vehicle that has stopped to let someone cross.⁸ But a pedestrian who crosses somewhere other than a crosswalk has to yield to traffic,⁹ and a driver who had the right of way still must "exercise due care to avoid colliding with any pedestrian," with added caution around children or anyone confused or incapacitated.¹⁰ Insurers lean on the crossing-outside-a-crosswalk rule to shift blame onto the person who was hit. Under pure comparative negligence that argument lowers a settlement instead of defeating it, which is why the same injury can settle for very different amounts depending on where and how the crossing happened.

No caps on what you can recover

Arizona is one of the few states whose constitution forbids capping damages for a personal injury or a death. Article 2, Section 31 blocks any law that limits the amount recovered, and Article 18, Section 6 protects the right to bring the claim at all.¹¹ Nothing caps compensation for medical bills, lost earnings, or pain and suffering, and nothing caps punitive damages.

Punitive damages are hard to win but can lift a case's value when a driver's conduct was egregious. Arizona requires clear and convincing evidence that the driver acted with an "evil mind," the standard set in Linthicum v. Nationwide Life Insurance Co., and a driver who strikes a pedestrian while drunk is the classic example.¹¹

The insurance that actually pays

A settlement is only as large as the money behind it. Arizona's minimum liability insurance is 25/50/15: $25,000 per person and $50,000 per crash for injuries, plus $15,000 for property damage, on policies issued or renewed on or after July 1, 2020.¹² Many drivers carry exactly that. A $25,000 policy is a hard ceiling on what an injured pedestrian can collect from the driver, whatever the injuries are actually worth.

Your own auto insurance can fill part of that gap even though you were on foot. Arizona insurers must offer uninsured (UM) and underinsured (UIM) motorist coverage in writing, at limits equal to your liability limits, and you can reject either only in writing.¹³ UM and UIM follow the person, so a pedestrian can usually claim under their own policy, or that of a relative they live with, when the driver had no coverage or too little. When a driver flees the scene or turns out to be uninsured, which happens often in these cases, UM coverage is frequently the only real source of recovery. If you have it, check the limits early.

Arizona runs a pure at-fault system with no personal injury protection (PIP) or no-fault benefits, so there is no automatic medical coverage after a crash.¹³ Medical payments (med-pay) coverage is an optional add-on. If you carry it, an insurer can assert a lien only for med-pay amounts it paid above $5,000, which shields part of your recovery from reimbursement.¹³

Other places the money can come from

The driver is not always the only defendant. Under Arizona's dram-shop law, a bar or store that served alcohol to an obviously intoxicated patron or to a minor can be liable when that drinking was a proximate cause of the crash.¹⁴ In Torres v. JAI Dining Services (2023), the Arizona Supreme Court held that this statute is now the only dram-shop route, and it carries its own one-year deadline under A.R.S. § 4-312.¹⁴ Where a road design or a missing signal contributed, a claim against the responsible government entity may exist, subject to the 180-day notice rule above.⁵ Driver distraction is another fault factor: holding or manually using a phone while driving has been banned statewide since January 1, 2021 under the Hands-Free Arizona law, and a citation for it helps prove negligence.¹⁵

Before you settle

Get the crash report, because it anchors the fault analysis every insurer will run. You can order an Arizona crash report here. Since pure comparative negligence, low policy limits, and your own UM or UIM coverage each move the number so much, it's worth having someone who handles these cases look at the file before you accept anything. You can find an Arizona attorney through the legal directory.

This article is general information about Arizona law, not legal advice.

Sources

Arizona Department of Transportation, 2024 Motor Vehicle Crash Facts Summary, Section 7 (Pedestrian and Bicycle Crashes). https://azdot.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/2024-Crash-Facts.pdf
Arizona Department of Transportation, "Traffic fatalities in Arizona dip for second year in a row" (2025). https://azdot.gov/news/traffic-fatalities-arizona-dip-second-year-row
Governors Highway Safety Association, Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State: 2023 Preliminary Data, Tables 3 and 4. https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2024-11/2023%20Pedestrian%20Traffic%20Fatalities%20by%20State.pdf
Arizona Revised Statutes § 12-542. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/00542.htm
Arizona Revised Statutes § 12-821.01. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/00821-01.htm
Arizona Revised Statutes § 12-821. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/00821.htm
Arizona Revised Statutes § 12-2505. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/12/02505.htm
Arizona Revised Statutes § 28-792. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/00792.htm
Arizona Revised Statutes § 28-793. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/00793.htm
Arizona Revised Statutes § 28-794. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/00794.htm
Arizona Constitution, Article 2, Section 31. https://www.azleg.gov/const/2/31.htm
Arizona Revised Statutes § 28-4009. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/04009.htm
Arizona Revised Statutes § 20-259.01. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/20/00259-01.htm
Arizona Revised Statutes §§ 4-311 and 4-312. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/4/00311.htm
Arizona Revised Statutes § 28-914. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/28/00914.htm

Pedestrian Accident Settlement Amounts in Arizona