If a car hit you while you were walking in New Hampshire, the honest answer to 'what is the average settlement' is that there is no average. A pedestrian claim is worth your actual losses, adjusted for how fault gets split and how much insurance stands behind it. New Hampshire law controls all three of those variables, and on several of them the state is an outlier. Here is what the statutes and the data actually say.
What New Hampshire lets you recover
Your claim starts with economic losses: the ambulance ride, the surgery, rehab, future care, and the wages you lost while you could not work. On top of that sit noneconomic losses like pain, permanent scarring, and the things you can no longer do. New Hampshire caps neither category in an ordinary injury case. When the legislature tried to limit noneconomic damages, the New Hampshire Supreme Court struck the cap down as a violation of state equal protection in Brannigan v. Usitalo, 134 N.H. 50 (1991), and it was never revived.1 The practical ceiling on a pedestrian claim is the harm you can prove.
What you cannot add is a punitive award. RSA 507:16 says 'no punitive damages shall be awarded in any action, unless otherwise provided by statute,' and no traffic law creates an exception.2 Even if the driver was drunk or staring at a phone, anger does not convert into a separate category of money.
How fault splits the money
New Hampshire is a fault state that runs modified comparative negligence. Under RSA 507:7-d, your own fault does not bar recovery as long as it 'was not greater than the fault of the defendant,' and any award is 'diminished in proportion to the amount of fault attributed to' you.3 Put plainly: at 50 percent fault or less you still collect, minus your share; at 51 percent you get nothing.
For someone on foot, that percentage usually decides the case, and it turns on where you were walking. RSA 265:35 tells a driver to 'yield the right of way, slowing down or stopping if need be' to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, while the same section says no pedestrian may 'suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle' that is too close to stop.4 Step into the road outside a crosswalk and RSA 265:36 flips the duty: the pedestrian 'shall yield the right of way to all vehicles upon the roadway.'5 The driver is still not free to hit you, because RSA 265:37 requires every driver to 'exercise due care to avoid colliding with any pedestrian.'6 Adjusters lean on these rules to push blame onto the injured walker, which is why a crash diagram placing you inside a marked crosswalk can move a settlement by thousands of dollars.
You have three years, rarely more
The filing window is three years. RSA 508:4, I lets a personal injury action 'be brought only within 3 years of the act or omission complained of,' and the same statute governs property damage, so a phone or bike wrecked in the crash runs on the identical clock.7 A narrow discovery rule exists for harm that could not reasonably have been found at the time, but a pedestrian struck by a car almost always starts the clock on the day of impact. Let it lapse and the claim is worth nothing, no matter how serious the injury.
The insurance that actually pays
Every settlement is capped by the money behind it, and here New Hampshire stands apart from the rest of the country: it does not require most drivers to carry auto liability insurance at all.8 The state uses a financial-responsibility system that generally bites only after a crash or a serious violation, so a real share of NH drivers are on the road with no policy. When a driver does carry one, RSA 264:20 sets the floor at $25,000 per person, $50,000 per accident, and $25,000 in property damage.9 A serious pedestrian injury can burn through $25,000 in a single hospital stay, so the coverage on your own policy often matters more than the driver's.
Two coverages carry pedestrian claims. New Hampshire makes every private passenger policy include at least $1,000 per person in medical payments coverage for costs 'incurred during 3 years following' the injury, paid no matter who was at fault, under RSA 264:16.10 That MedPay can follow you when a car strikes you on foot, and RSA 264:17 blocks your insurer from taking it back out of your recovery, since 'the right of subrogation against any third party shall not exist.'11 You keep it on top of whatever the driver pays.
The second is uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. With so many NH drivers carrying nothing, and with hit-and-run drivers leaving no one to bill, UM/UIM is often a pedestrian's main source of money. RSA 264:15 requires it for people 'legally entitled to recover damages from owners or drivers of uninsured motor vehicles, and hit-and-run vehicles,' and by default sets it equal to your own liability limits.12 You can waive it, but only in writing, and that waiver then binds every vehicle and driver on the policy. If you were hit while walking, your own UM coverage, or that of a relative in your household, may be the largest check on the table.
When someone else shares the blame
A second policy sometimes enters the picture. If the driver was holding a phone, RSA 265:79-c has banned using a hand-held device to talk, text, or browse since July 1, 2015, and drivers under 18 may not use one at all except to report an emergency.13 A ticket under that statute is direct evidence of the driver's fault in the comparative split.
If the driver was drunk, New Hampshire's dram shop law can reach the business that overserved. RSA 507-F:4 makes an alcohol licensee liable when it negligently serves 'a minor or to an intoxicated person,' judged by whether a reasonably prudent server would have known the customer was underage or already intoxicated, with a higher reckless standard in RSA 507-F:5.14 That adds a separate defendant with separate insurance, which counts for a lot when the driver's own limit is only $25,000.
What the numbers look like here
New Hampshire is one of the safer states to walk in, and that cuts both ways. The Governors Highway Safety Association recorded 15 pedestrian deaths in the state in 2023 and 12 in preliminary 2024 figures, a rate of 0.85 per 100,000 residents against a national rate of 2.10.15 Fewer catastrophic cases means local insurers and juries see them less often, so documenting the specifics of your own injury tends to carry more weight than any statewide average could.
Where to go from here
The value of a pedestrian claim comes down to three things: the medical record, the fault split under RSA 507:7-d, and how many layers of coverage you can reach. Start with the police crash report, which anchors the fault question; you can pull yours through our New Hampshire crash report guide. If your car was damaged too, that is a separate claim covered on our New Hampshire diminished value page. And because the comparative-fault and coverage-stacking questions get technical fast, it is worth talking to a lawyer, whom you can find through our legal directory.
This article is general information about New Hampshire law, not legal advice.
Sources
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Brannigan v. Usitalo, 134 N.H. 50, 587 A.2d 1232 (1991). https://www.courtlistener.com/c/nh/134/50/
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N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 507:16 (Punitive Damages). https://www.gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/LII/507/507-16.htm
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N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 507:7-d (Comparative Fault). https://www.gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/LII/507/507-7-d.htm
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N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 265:35 (Pedestrian's Right of Way in Crosswalks). https://www.gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXI/265/265-35.htm
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N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 265:36 (Crossing at Other Than Crosswalks). https://www.gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXI/265/265-36.htm
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N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 265:37 (Drivers to Exercise Due Care). https://www.gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXI/265/265-37.htm
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N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 508:4, I (Personal Actions). https://www.gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/LII/508/508-4.htm
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N.H. Division of Motor Vehicles, Insurance Requirements / SR-22. https://www.dmv.nh.gov/tickets-accidents-or-restorations/insurance-requirements-sr-22
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N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 264:20 (Proof of Financial Responsibility, minimum limits). https://www.gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXI/264/264-20.htm
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N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 264:16 (Medical Payments Coverage). https://www.gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXI/264/264-16.htm
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N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 264:17 (Subrogation Prohibited). https://www.gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXI/264/264-17.htm
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N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 264:15 (Uninsured Motorist Coverage). https://www.gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXI/264/264-15.htm
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N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. 265:79-c (Use of Mobile Electronic Devices While Driving). https://www.gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXI/265/265-79-c.htm
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N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. ch. 507-F (Alcoholic Beverage Licensee Liability). https://www.gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/LII/507-F/507-F-mrg.htm
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Governors Highway Safety Association, Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State, 2024 Preliminary Data (July 2025), Tables 2 and 3. https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2025-07/Pedestrian%20Traffic%20Fatalities%20by%20State%20-%202024%20Data%20-%207.10.25.pdf