Pedestrian accident settlement amounts in Tennessee

There's no fixed price for a pedestrian injury claim, and any site that quotes you a single "average" number is guessing. What a Tennessee pedestrian case actually settles for comes down to four things: how much your injuries cost you, how a jury or adjuster splits the fault, the caps Tennessee puts on certain damages, and how much insurance money is realistically available to collect. Here's how each one works under Tennessee law.

What Tennessee lets you recover

Your losses fall into two buckets. Economic damages are the hard numbers: medical bills, future care, lost wages, reduced earning capacity. Tennessee puts no cap on them.¹ Noneconomic damages cover pain, suffering, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life, and those are capped. Under Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-39-102, noneconomic damages are limited to $750,000 in most cases, rising to $1,000,000 when the injury is "catastrophic," a category that includes things like paralysis, the loss of two or more limbs, or wrongful death.¹

The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld that cap in McClay v. Airport Management Services, LLC, 596 S.W.3d 686 (Tenn. 2020), ruling it doesn't violate the state constitutional right to a jury trial.² So in a serious pedestrian case, a jury can award $2 million for pain and suffering and the court will still cut it to $750,000. Your medical bills and lost income come through at full value on top of that cap.

The intoxicated-driver exception

The cap has an important carve-out. Section 29-39-102(h) removes the limit on noneconomic damages entirely when the at-fault driver was under the influence of alcohol or drugs to the point that their judgment was substantially impaired.¹ The same subsection lifts the cap when the defendant intended to cause serious injury or when their conduct led to a felony conviction. For a pedestrian hit by a drunk driver, that $750,000 ceiling simply doesn't apply.

Punitive damages, which punish bad conduct rather than compensate you, are separately capped at the greater of $500,000 or two times the compensatory award under § 29-39-104.³ Winning them takes clear and convincing proof that the driver acted intentionally, recklessly, maliciously, or fraudulently, the standard the Tennessee Supreme Court set in Hodges v. S.C. Toof & Co., 833 S.W.2d 896 (Tenn. 1992).

How fault can shrink your check

Tennessee follows modified comparative fault, a rule the state Supreme Court adopted in McIntyre v. Balentine, 833 S.W.2d 52 (Tenn. 1992).⁴ Your recovery drops by your share of the blame, and if you're found 50% or more at fault, you collect nothing. A $300,000 case where you're 20% responsible becomes a $240,000 case. The same case at 50% fault is worth zero.

That's why the driver's insurer will look hard at what you were doing when you were hit. Tennessee law gives pedestrians the right of way in a marked or unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, and it bars a following driver from passing a car that has stopped to let you cross.⁵ Drivers also have to stop in a marked school zone when the warning flashers are going.⁵ But the same statute says you can't leave a curb and walk into the path of a car that's too close to stop.⁵ If you crossed somewhere other than a crosswalk, § 55-8-135 required you to yield to traffic, and crossing mid-block between two signalized intersections is prohibited outright.⁶ None of that automatically kills your claim, but it feeds the fault percentage that gets subtracted from your award.

The insurance ceiling is usually the real limit

A large verdict is only worth what you can collect. Tennessee is an at-fault (tort) state with no personal injury protection requirement, so you pursue the driver who hit you and their liability insurer.⁷ The state's minimum liability limits are $25,000 per injured person, $50,000 per accident, and $25,000 for property damage, the last of which rose from $15,000 for policies issued or renewed after December 31, 2022 under Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-12-102.⁷ If the driver carries only the minimum and your hospital bill alone runs past $25,000, that $25,000 per-person limit often becomes the practical cap on what the driver's policy pays, no matter how badly you were hurt.

This is where your own auto insurance matters even though you were on foot. Under Tenn. Code Ann. § 56-7-1201, uninsured and underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage protects an insured person struck as a pedestrian, treating you as a non-occupant covered by the vehicle policy with the highest UM limit.⁸ Insurers must offer UM/UIM equal to your bodily injury limits, but you can reject it or take lower limits in writing, so many Tennesseans don't know whether they carry it until they check.⁸ If a hit-and-run or an uninsured driver put you in the hospital, your own UM coverage may be the only real source of recovery.

You have one year, and it's strict

Tennessee gives you just one year from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit under Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104, one of the shortest deadlines in the country.⁹ It stretches to two years only if the driver is criminally prosecuted for the conduct that hurt you.⁹ Miss the one-year mark and the claim is almost always dead, regardless of how strong it was. The official crash report helps document the facts while they're fresh; you can get the Tennessee crash report here.

Distracted and impaired driving as evidence

Since July 1, 2019, Tennessee's hands-free law has barred drivers from holding a phone or reading and sending texts behind the wheel. A violation is a Class C misdemeanor carrying a fine up to $50 for a first offense, $100 if it caused a crash or is a repeat, and up to $200 in a work or school zone under Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-8-199.¹⁰ A citation issued to the driver who hit you is useful evidence of negligence and can push a settlement higher.

When alcohol is involved, Tennessee's Dram Shop Act allows a claim against a bar or store, but only in narrow circumstances: the seller served a visibly intoxicated person or a minor, and a jury must find that fact beyond a reasonable doubt, unanimously, under Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 57-10-101 and 57-10-102.¹¹ It's a high bar, though in a catastrophic pedestrian case it can open a second source of money.

What the Tennessee numbers look like

Pedestrian crashes here run above the national average. In 2024, Tennessee's pedestrian fatality rate was 2.39 deaths per 100,000 residents, higher than the national rate of 2.10, though down from 2.63 in 2023, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.¹² The state recorded about 15 fewer pedestrian deaths in 2024 than the year before, roughly an 8% drop, part of a national decline to 7,148 pedestrian deaths.¹² Severity is why pedestrian settlements skew high: a person on foot has no protection, so these crashes produce serious injuries and deaths far more often than a fender-bender, and the medical and wage losses climb accordingly.

Getting the number right

Two identical injuries can settle for very different amounts in Tennessee depending on the fault split and how much coverage is in play. A local attorney can identify every applicable policy, including your own UM/UIM, and push back when an insurer inflates your share of the blame. You can find a Tennessee personal injury attorney here.

This is general information about Tennessee law, not legal advice for your specific situation.

Sources

Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-39-102 (civil damage awards; noneconomic damages cap and intoxication exception). https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-29/chapter-39/section-29-39-102/
McClay v. Airport Management Services, LLC, 596 S.W.3d 686 (Tenn. 2020) (upholding the noneconomic damages cap). https://law.justia.com/cases/tennessee/supreme-court/2020/m2019-00511-sc-r23-cv-1.html
Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-39-104 (punitive damages cap). https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-29/chapter-39/section-29-39-104/
McIntyre v. Balentine, 833 S.W.2d 52 (Tenn. 1992) (adopting modified comparative fault). https://law.justia.com/cases/tennessee/supreme-court/1992/833-s-w-2d-52-2.html
Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-8-134 (pedestrians' right-of-way in crosswalks). https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-55/chapter-8/part-1/section-55-8-134/
Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-8-135 (crossing at other than crosswalks). https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-55/chapter-8/part-1/section-55-8-135/
Tennessee Department of Revenue, Drive Insured Tennessee (Financial Responsibility Law and minimum liability limits under § 55-12-102). https://www.tn.gov/revenue/title-and-registration/drive-insured-tennessee/why-you-should-have-insurance.html
Tenn. Code Ann. § 56-7-1201 (uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage; non-occupant protection and written rejection). https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-56/chapter-7/part-12/section-56-7-1201/
Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104 (personal tort actions; one-year statute of limitations). https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-28/chapter-3/part-1/section-28-3-104/
Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-8-199 (hands-free law, effective July 1, 2019). https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-55/chapter-8/part-1/section-55-8-199/
Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 57-10-101 to 57-10-102 (Dram Shop Act). https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-57/chapter-10/section-57-10-102/
Governors Highway Safety Association, Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State: 2024 Preliminary Data. https://www.ghsa.org/resource-hub/pedestrian-traffic-fatalities-2024-data

Pedestrian Accident Settlement Amounts in Tennessee