I'm Joe Crudo, and I've spent a lot of my career talking to people right after the worst day of their year. A pedestrian accident is one of the hardest, because you didn't have a bumper or an airbag or a steel frame around you. You were walking, and a car changed your life in a second. If that just happened to you or someone you love, I want to walk you through what your rights actually are in San Diego, and what I'd tell you if you were sitting across from me at my office.

I grew up here. I know these streets. I know the stretch of University Ave where people cross mid-block because the light is two hundred feet away. I know how fast people take that right turn off Rosecrans without ever looking right. San Diego is a walking city in a lot of neighborhoods, and it's also a city full of drivers staring at their phones. Those two things collide, literally, more than they should.

The First Thing to Understand: California Law Favors the Pedestrian, But It Isn't Automatic

A lot of people assume that if a car hits a person, the driver is automatically at fault. That's not quite how it works, but the law does lean in your direction. Under the California Vehicle Code, drivers owe pedestrians a duty of care, and that duty is heightened. A driver is supposed to exercise extra caution around people on foot, yield in marked and even some unmarked crosswalks, and keep a proper lookout.

But "the driver should have been careful" and "the driver was legally at fault" are two different sentences. To recover money for your injuries, we have to show negligence. That means the driver owed you a duty, breached it, and that breach caused your harm. In most pedestrian cases that's very provable, because a driver who hits someone on foot has almost always done something wrong. They ran the light. They didn't yield. They were speeding through a residential zone. They were looking at a text.

The insurance company knows all of this, which is exactly why they'll try to flip the story onto you. I'll get to that.

What To Do After You've Been Hit

If you're reading this in the hours or days after a crash, here's the practical stuff, in the order it matters.

Get medical care first, and get it even if you think you're fine. Adrenaline hides a lot. I've seen people walk away from a scene and wake up two days later barely able to move. Beyond your health, a gap in treatment is the first thing an adjuster points to when they want to argue you weren't really hurt. See a doctor, follow the plan, and keep going to your appointments.

Call the police and make sure a report gets made. San Diego PD or the CHP will document the scene, and that report is often the backbone of a claim. If you can, get the names and numbers of anyone who saw it happen. Witnesses disappear fast, and a stranger who saw the driver blow the stop sign can be worth more than any argument I make later.

Take photos if you're physically able, or have someone do it for you. The intersection, the crosswalk paint or lack of it, the car, your injuries, the lighting. Write down what you remember while it's fresh.

Do not give a recorded statement to the driver's insurance company before you talk to a lawyer. I mean that. Adjusters are trained, friendly, and working against you. A casual "I'm doing okay" or "I guess I wasn't really watching" can get twisted into a fault argument or a reason to lowball you. You're allowed to say you'll follow up later.

Comparative Fault: The Argument the Insurance Company Will Make

Here's the piece almost nobody knows until they need to. California is a pure comparative fault state. That means even if you were partly to blame, you can still recover. Your recovery just gets reduced by your share of the fault.

So if the insurance company convinces a jury you were, say, partly at fault for crossing outside a crosswalk, that doesn't wipe out your case. It reduces what you collect by that percentage. This matters enormously in pedestrian cases, because the defense almost always leans on it. They'll say you were jaywalking. They'll say you were on your phone. They'll say you stepped out too fast or wore dark clothes at night.

My job is to push back on that story with the facts, because a reduced recovery and no recovery are very different outcomes, and the number the insurer assigns to "your fault" is negotiable, not gospel. A driver still has a duty to avoid hitting you even if you're where you technically shouldn't be. That's the law, and it's a fight worth having. You can read more about how these claims work on our personal injury page.

The Deadline You Can't Miss

In California, the general deadline to file a personal injury lawsuit is two years from the date of the injury, under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. That sounds like a long time. It isn't, and here's the trap.

If a government vehicle was involved, or if a dangerous condition on public property played a role, like a broken crosswalk signal, a hidden sign, or a poorly designed intersection, the deadline can be much shorter. Claims against a public entity often have to be filed in a matter of months, not years. Miss that window and a strong case can be gone before it starts. This is one of the biggest reasons I tell people not to sit on a pedestrian case. Call someone early, even if it's not me.

What Your Case May Be Worth (And Why I Won't Give You a Number)

I can't tell you what your case is worth from a blog post, and you should be skeptical of any lawyer who throws out a figure before reviewing the facts. What I can tell you is what damages generally include in a California pedestrian case, depending on the facts.

There are the bills you can add up. Your medical treatment, past and future. Lost wages if you couldn't work, and lost earning capacity if the injuries follow you. Then there are the harder ones to put a price on, like pain, suffering, and the ways a serious injury changes your daily life. Pedestrian injuries tend to be severe, which is part of what makes these cases so different from a fender bender. Head injuries, broken bones, spinal damage. If you're dealing with a back injury or a neck injury, those can mean care that stretches out for years, and that future care is part of the claim.

A few practical things affect the money side too. Medical liens can attach to your recovery, meaning some providers get paid back out of the settlement. Available insurance coverage matters, because a policy limit can cap what's realistically collectible from one driver. These are the details we sort through so you're not surprised at the end.

Hit-and-Run and the Uninsured Driver

Pedestrian cases have an ugly wrinkle that car-on-car cases don't as often. Drivers flee. Someone hits a person on foot, panics, and drives off. If that happened to you, don't assume you're out of options. There may be coverage available through your own auto policy even though you were walking, and there are avenues to pursue when the driver takes off. We handle these situations, and I'd rather you ask than assume nothing can be done. Our hit-and-run page has more on how those cases work.

How I Handle These Cases

I'm not a firm that signs you up and hands you off to someone you never meet. When you work with me, you work with me. My father Frank has practiced law in San Diego since 1975, and I came up learning that the client is a person, not a file number. You'll have my attention, and you'll be able to reach an actual attorney.

Most injury cases I take on contingency, which means you don't pay a fee unless we recover for you. The consultation is free and confidential. There's no reason to guess about your rights when a conversation costs you nothing. If you've got questions before you even call, our FAQ page covers a lot of the common ones, and you can always reach out through our contact page.

A Quick Note

This article is general information about California law, not legal advice for your specific situation, and it doesn't create an attorney-client relationship. Laws change, and every case turns on its own facts. If you've been hurt, talk to a lawyer about what applies to you.

Talk to Me Before You Talk to the Insurance Company

If you were hit while walking in San Diego, the sooner we talk, the more I can do. Evidence fades, deadlines run, and the insurance company is already building its version of events. Let's get ahead of it.

Call Crudo Law at (858) 622-7280, or reach out through our contact page. The call is free, it's confidential, and there's no pressure. Let's talk about what happened and what your options are.