Pedestrian Accidents

The injuries are different in kind, not just degree

A person in a car has a steel frame, crumple zones, belts, and airbags absorbing the energy of a crash. A person walking has none of it. The result is that pedestrian cases involve broken bones, head injuries, and long recoveries far more often than ordinary collisions, and the medical picture keeps developing for months.

That matters for a practical reason. Settling one of these cases early, before anyone knows how the injuries resolve, is how people end up with a number that runs out long before the treatment does.

Expect to be blamed. Prepare for it.

In almost every pedestrian file, the defense theory is some version of the same sentence: they stepped out in front of me. Whether the crosswalk was marked, whether the signal was with you, whether the driver was looking at a phone, whether the sun was low, whether the driver was turning across your path without ever looking right.

California compares fault rather than treating it as all-or-nothing, so the argument is not really about whether you recover. It is about shifting a percentage of blame onto you to reduce what gets paid. Boyd will explain exactly how that math works in your case rather than letting an adjuster explain it for the first time.

The evidence that decides these cases

Pedestrian cases are won with the record of the intersection, not with argument.

• Signal timing at the intersection, which is documented and obtainable
• Nearby business and doorbell cameras, which overwrite themselves in days
• The vehicle's own data, including speed and braking
• Phone records showing what the driver was doing
• The physical scene: sightlines, lighting, crosswalk markings, and whether they were faded
• Witnesses, who scatter within minutes and are rarely all in the police report

Most of this disappears on its own. Camera footage is the usual casualty, because nobody asks for it until it is gone.

Where these happen in Orange County

The pattern is consistent: wide arterial roads with long distances between signals, right turns on red across a crosswalk, parking lot aisles, and drivers turning left across a walk signal while watching only for oncoming cars. None of that is your fault, and all of it is foreseeable to the person behind the wheel.

What to do if you were hit while walking

• Accept the ambulance. Head injuries do not always announce themselves at the scene.
• Do not tell anyone at the scene that you are fine, and do not apologize
• Photograph the crosswalk, the signals, the sightlines, and the vehicle position if you are able
• Get names and numbers from witnesses before they leave
• Get the police report number
• Say nothing recorded to the driver's insurer until you have talked to a lawyer

Boyd takes the call himself

If you were hit while walking, the case is worth doing properly and quickly, because the proof has a shelf life. The first conversation with Johnson Injury Law is free and obligates you to nothing.