According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 7,080 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes in 2024, with more than 71,000 injured. Among pedestrian fatalities, 73% occurred at locations other than intersections, while 76% occurred in dark conditions.
A pedestrian accident can result in serious injuries. As such, victims may face unexpected costs like medical treatment and lost income. In addition, they may also suffer lasting emotional and physical challenges.
With several pedestrian accidents on US roads, pedestrian accident laws act as protection for victims so they can seek compensation for their tragic experience. The amount and type of compensation they can receive depends on different factors surrounding the incident. This includes fault, insurance coverage, the severity of the injuries, and state law.
Let’s examine what compensation pedestrian accident victims may recover and what factors can affect the value of a claim.
Economic damages include anything a receipt proves. Ambulance ride, surgery, rehabilitation, medications, adaptive devices, changes to your home, money you’ve already lost, and earning capacity that, quite frankly, you will never be able to recover.
Non-economic damages include everything not covered by those pieces of paper. That could range from physical pain, mental suffering, scarring, and disfigurement, as well as loss of enjoyment from the usual weekend pastimes.
In a significant pedestrian case, the second figure is consistently more than the first. In fact, that figure varies more widely from court to court because there is no equation for it; a jury decides it.
Two states, the same crash, two different outcomes.
California runs pure comparative fault. A pedestrian jury finds 70 percent responsible for stepping off the curb and still collects 30 percent of the damages. The percentage trims the award and never kills it.
Georgia runs a modified system with a 50 percent bar. A pedestrian who carries half the fault or more walks away with nothing, however severe the injuries.
So the reduction is not a footnote. It is often the single largest line item working against a claim, which is why defense investigators spend so much effort on where exactly someone was standing.
Bentley & More LLP, the Newport Beach firm of Greg Bentley and Keith More, takes pedestrian, brain injury, and spinal cord cases across Orange County. An Orange County pedestrian accident lawyer and its page lay out the evidence these claims run on, from event data recorder downloads to intersection camera footage, alongside the damage categories the firm documents for California juries.
Anyone hurt in Georgia is working from different arithmetic than two years ago. Under Senate Bill 68, signed April 21, 2025, medical special damages now run to what medically necessary care was reasonably worth as the jury finds it.
Jurors get to see both the amount charged and the amount an insurer actually paid to settle it. That provision reaches causes of action arising on or after the signing date. A separate section limiting how a lawyer may argue a specific dollar figure for pain and suffering reaches pending cases as well.
None of that deletes a category of recovery. It moves what the jury is allowed to look at while pricing one, which tends to hit the medical column hardest and leave the human column untouched.
Ordinary carelessness never reaches them. A driver has to have done something aggravated, and the proof standard sits above the one that governs the rest of the case.
Impaired driving is the usual doorway. Georgia caps punitive awards at $250,000 in most tort actions. They also remove the ceiling entirely when the driver was under the influence to a degree that substantially impaired judgment.
Alcohol turns up often in these crashes. According to NHTSA, alcohol impairment is in 43 percent of fatal pedestrian collisions in 2024 for the driver, the pedestrian, or both. That last detail cuts both directions, because a pedestrian who had been drinking hands the defense its comparative fault argument on a plate.
The hardest conversation in a pedestrian case is rarely what the losses are worth. It is who has money.
A driver’s liability limits come first, and minimum coverage in most states sits nowhere near what a spinal cord injury costs over a lifetime.
Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage is tied to the person under their own auto policy.
In this case, pedestrian victims can still receive benefits even if there are no cars involved.
In 2024, hit-and-run drivers accounted for 24% of pedestrian deaths. When nobody ever identifies the driver, that coverage is frequently the only pocket left. Employers pay when the driver is on the clock. Cities and transit agencies pay when a public vehicle or a badly designed intersection contributed, though those claims run on much shorter notice deadlines.
The categories of loss barely differ from state to state. The fault percentage and the local evidence rules decide how much of that loss survives to a verdict. And the available coverage decides how much of the verdict ever gets paid. A claim that ignores the third part can win on paper and collect very little.
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