Getting hit by a car while you're on foot is different from a fender bender. The injuries tend to be worse, and the money available to pay for them often depends less on your medical bills than on what insurance the driver happened to carry. In 2023, drivers killed 73 pedestrians on Arkansas roads, and the Governors Highway Safety Association projects 66 more in 2024.1 Many more people survive with fractures, brain injuries, and months of recovery.
Arkansas doesn't publish an "average" pedestrian settlement, and any site that quotes you one is guessing. What a claim is actually worth comes down to three Arkansas-specific things: how the law splits fault, what the state lets you recover, and how much coverage you can reach. Here's how each one works.
Arkansas puts no cap on what you can recover
Some states limit non-economic damages like pain and suffering. Arkansas does the opposite. Article 5, Section 32 of the state constitution forbids the legislature from limiting the amount of money recoverable for an injury or death.2 Your medical costs, lost income, future care, pain, and permanent disfigurement are all recoverable without a statutory ceiling.
Even punitive damages are uncapped. Lawmakers passed a cap (the greater of $250,000 or three times compensatory damages, maxing out at $1 million), but the Arkansas Supreme Court struck it down in Bayer CropScience LP v. Schafer as a violation of that same constitutional provision.2 For a pedestrian hit by a drunk or reckless driver, that matters, because punitive damages are on the table and nothing artificially limits them.
Fault is the number that moves your case the most
Arkansas uses modified comparative fault with a 50% bar. Under Ark. Code Ann. § 16-64-122, if your share of the blame is equal to or greater than the driver's, you recover nothing. If it's less, your award drops by your percentage.3 Say your damages are $200,000 and you're found 20% at fault: you collect $160,000. At 50%, you collect zero. That single percentage can swing a case by six figures, which is why insurers fight so hard to pin fault on the pedestrian.
Where the fight gets decided is Arkansas's right-of-way rules. At a crosswalk with no traffic signal, whether it's a marked crosswalk or an unmarked one at an intersection, the driver has to yield to you, and a car behind that driver cannot pass a vehicle that has stopped to let you cross.4 Cross mid-block, away from a crosswalk, and the rule flips: you have to yield to traffic.5 But crossing outside a crosswalk does not hand the driver a free pass. The same statute says every driver still has to use due care to avoid hitting a pedestrian, sound the horn when needed, and take extra caution around children or anyone who is confused or incapacitated.5 A distracted or speeding driver who mows down a jaywalker can still end up mostly at fault.
The insurance available is usually the real ceiling
Arkansas requires drivers to carry only 25/50/25: $25,000 per person for bodily injury, $50,000 per crash, and $25,000 for property damage.6 Plenty of drivers carry exactly that. If the person who hit you has a minimum policy, $25,000 is the cap on that policy no matter how catastrophic your injuries are, which is where the other coverages become the whole ballgame.
One of those coverages is built into the car that hit you. Every Arkansas auto policy has to offer at least $5,000 per person in medical and hospital benefits for expenses within 24 months of the crash, and that coverage reaches a person struck by the insured vehicle, paid without regard to fault.7 A separate statute, § 23-89-204, spells out that coverage for people struck by the insured car.8 In plain terms, the driver's own medical-payments coverage can start paying for your treatment even while everyone is still arguing about who caused the crash.
Your own auto policy matters too, even though you were walking, not driving. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage follows you as a pedestrian. That's important here, because roughly a quarter of pedestrian deaths nationally over the past five years happened in hit-and-run crashes.1 If the driver flees, has no insurance, or carries a $25,000 policy that can't cover your injuries, your own UM/UIM steps in. Insurers must offer it, but Arkansas lets you reject it in writing, and that rejection carries forward through every renewal until you undo it in writing.9 Dig out your policy and check whether you ever signed it away.
The deadlines that can quietly kill a claim
You have three years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit in Arkansas under § 16-56-105.10 Damaged personal property, like the phone or clothing destroyed when you were hit, carries its own three-year limit.11 Miss the deadline and the claim is gone, no matter how strong it was. Get the official Arkansas crash report early, since it anchors the facts and the driver's insurance information.
What pushes a pedestrian settlement higher
Alcohol and darkness change the math. Nationally in 2023, pedestrians were 18% of all traffic deaths, 77% of pedestrian deaths with known lighting conditions happened after dark, 65% occurred where there was no sidewalk, and 29% of the pedestrians killed had a blood alcohol level over the legal limit.1 When the driver is the impaired one, Arkansas allows punitive damages, and as noted above, they're uncapped.
Arkansas's dram shop law is narrow, though. A bar or store is liable only if it knowingly sold alcohol to a minor or to someone already clearly intoxicated, and there's no social host liability for serving adult guests.12 Distraction is easier to reach: Arkansas bans handheld texting for all drivers as a primary offense under Paul's Law, and the fine doubles when the driver causes a crash.13 Evidence that the driver was on a phone strengthens both liability and the size of any punitive claim.
Getting to the right number
Because so much of a pedestrian case turns on fault percentages and on stacking every available coverage, the first number an insurer offers is rarely the number the claim is worth. An attorney who handles these cases can find medical-payments, UM/UIM, and liability coverage you may not know exists and push back on a lowball fault split. You can start with the thatcarhitme.com legal directory.
This is general information about Arkansas law, not legal advice for your specific situation.
Sources
-
Governors Highway Safety Association, "Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State: 2024 Data" (July 2025), Table 2 (Arkansas: 73 in 2023, 66 projected 2024) and By the Numbers. https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2025-07/Pedestrian%20Traffic%20Fatalities%20by%20State%20-%202024%20Data%20-%207.10.25.pdf
-
Bayer CropScience LP v. Schafer, 2011 Ark. 518 (striking the Ark. Code Ann. § 16-55-208 punitive-damages cap as a violation of Ark. Const. art. 5, § 32). https://law.justia.com/cases/arkansas/supreme-court/2011/10-1246-0.html
-
Ark. Code Ann. § 16-64-122 (comparative fault; 50% bar). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-16/subtitle-5/chapter-64/section-16-64-122/
-
Ark. Code Ann. § 27-51-1202 (pedestrians' right-of-way in crosswalks). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-27/subtitle-4/chapter-51/subchapter-12/section-27-51-1202/
-
Ark. Code Ann. § 27-51-1204 (pedestrians crossing at other than crosswalks; driver's continuing duty of due care). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-27/subtitle-4/chapter-51/subchapter-12/section-27-51-1204/
-
Ark. Code Ann. § 27-22-104 (minimum liability limits, 25/50/25). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-27/subtitle-2/chapter-22/subchapter-1/section-27-22-104/
-
Ark. Code Ann. § 23-89-202 (required first-party medical/hospital benefits; $5,000 minimum offer, 24-month window, extends to persons struck by the insured vehicle). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-2/section-23-89-202/
-
Ark. Code Ann. § 23-89-204 (coverage for passengers and persons struck by insured vehicle). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-2/section-23-89-204/
-
Ark. Code Ann. §§ 23-89-403, 23-89-404, 23-89-209 (uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage; written rejection). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-4/section-23-89-403/
-
Ark. Code Ann. § 16-56-105 (three-year limitation for personal injury). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-16/subtitle-5/chapter-56/subchapter-1/section-16-56-105/
-
Ark. Code Ann. § 16-56-105(6) (three-year limitation for taking or injuring goods or chattels). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-16/subtitle-5/chapter-56/subchapter-1/section-16-56-105/
-
Ark. Code Ann. §§ 16-126-103, 16-126-104 (dram shop liability). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-16/subtitle-7/chapter-126/section-16-126-104/
-
Ark. Code Ann. § 27-51-1504 (Paul's Law; handheld texting ban, primary enforcement). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-27/subtitle-4/chapter-51/subchapter-15/section-27-51-1504/