After a crash involving a pedestrian

Collision Bureau is not a law firm and this is not legal or medical advice. It is general information about what happens after a crash. For advice on your situation, talk to an attorney licensed in your state or a treating clinician.

The scene is a medical event before it is a claim

A pedestrian crash is different from a two-vehicle collision in one respect that colors everything downstream, and it is worth saying out loud. There is no steel between a person and a car in this crash. The scene is a medical event first, a traffic event second, and only after both of those does it become anything an insurance adjuster will ever see. The order matters because the first decisions on the sidewalk are medical, not clerical, and the paperwork follows the ambulance, not the other way around.

Everything else in this guide assumes the medical side is handled by the people who handle it. If responders are on the way, nothing in a claim guide should move faster than they do. If a hospital trip is happening, that trip is the day's event, and the paperwork that eventually becomes a claim file is being created in the background by exactly the right people. There is no step in this article that competes with a stretcher, and there is no section of it that asks a person at a scene to prioritize evidence over care.

This guide describes what the paperwork does later. It does not describe what anyone's body needs now. That is a clinician's jurisdiction, and the only sentence this site offers about care is the sentence on every medical page: get seen because you are hurt, not for a claim. The scene is a scene, the hospital is a hospital, and nothing in these paragraphs changes the order of those two things.

What this section can describe honestly is the quiet shift that happens somewhere in the first day. Responders leave, a vehicle is towed or driven away, a chart gets a date, and the event becomes a file. The scene is the only thing that can be observed directly. From there, every later reader of the crash sees it through documents written by people who were present and documents written by people who were not. The file replaces the scene almost immediately, and once it does, the scene is gone. The section below is about how the file begins.

Two kinds of people arrive at this page. One was walking and was hit, or was with someone who was. The other was driving and the person they struck is a stranger who will become a claimant on their policy. Everything in this guide applies to both audiences in different directions. The mechanics of insurance, documentation, and fault examination are the same mechanics viewed from the two sides of the same file. Nothing here is written to one side only, and nothing here is written to help one side win against the other. The site's position on that is in the footer disclosure and does not move.

Why pedestrian files get read differently

Insurance claim systems were built around vehicle-to-vehicle collisions, and most of the diagrams, templates, and estimating tools in common use assume two cars with points of impact that can be marked on a form. A pedestrian crash takes those tools and leaves half of their fields blank. There is no second vehicle to inspect, no second insurer to argue with about repair figures, and no second estimate landing a week later. The file is one-sided in a way that quietly changes what gets emphasized while it is being read.

What takes the place of a repair estimate is the medical record. In a two-vehicle fender-bender with no injury, the records that drive the evaluation are both at body shops. In a pedestrian crash, the records that drive the evaluation are at a hospital, a clinic, and whoever follows up after that. The treatment-gap mechanics covered in the treatment gap after a crash apply with the same force here, and the dates on the records do the same quiet work.

A second difference is the asymmetry of outcomes. Vehicle-only claims resolve on dollar figures a repair shop or a valuation report can produce. A pedestrian injury claim resolves on medical files, which are richer, more private, and more variable. The record stack described in why medical records decide injury claims is the stack that drives this file, and every point about chart notes, discharge paperwork, and billing trails applies in full. If the pedestrian is not injured, the file converges toward a short property claim for clothing, a phone, a watch, or a bag. If the pedestrian is injured, the file follows the medical track for however long treatment and documentation continue.

The third difference is the physical scene. A pedestrian crash leaves evidence on the ground, on the vehicle, on nearby cameras, and inside signal timing systems. Each of those sources has its own custodian and its own retention schedule, and most of them do not call to tell anyone they are about to overwrite themselves. Vehicle collisions produce a lot of evidence in a few places. Pedestrian collisions produce less evidence in more places, and the places are run by third parties who are not party to any claim.

The last difference is the pedestrian's own paper trail going into the event. A driver files a crash and brings a policy, a declarations page, and a VIN. A pedestrian files a crash and brings a wallet. The absence of a vehicle on the pedestrian's side does not mean the pedestrian lacks coverage, which the next three sections explain in general terms. It does mean the paperwork a claim will reach for is less obvious at first, and the file has to be assembled with more awareness of what to go looking for.

The driver's auto insurance covers more than people expect

The first fact that surprises people is who the driver's policy covers. A standard auto liability policy, in general terms, is written to cover the people the driver is legally responsible to for injuries and property damage arising out of the operation of the vehicle. The policy does not require those people to be in another car. A pedestrian is a covered third party under the driver's liability coverage the same way a motorcyclist or a bicyclist or a passenger in another vehicle is. The absence of a second vehicle removes a lot of paperwork from the file. It does not remove the coverage.

What the driver's liability coverage pays for, in general terms, falls into two buckets. Bodily injury coverage addresses the pedestrian's injury-related losses: medical costs, lost income, and the categories the policy and state law describe. Property damage coverage addresses the pedestrian's personal property that got broken, torn, or lost in the crash: a phone, a laptop in a bag, prescription glasses, a bike or a scooter being pushed across the intersection, the clothing itself. The second bucket often gets forgotten in the shock of an injury, and reminders of it exist in the paperwork a claim builds anyway.

Two numbers on the driver's policy matter later, and both live on the declarations page the driver received when the policy was issued. The first is the per-person limit on bodily injury, which caps what any one injured person's claim can recover from that policy. The second is the per-accident limit, which caps the total across all injured parties in one event. In general terms, those limits were chosen when the policy was bought, and the state has a minimum requirement that varies. What any specific limit means for a specific claim is a legal question, and it is the question a licensed attorney is paid to answer.

Coverage on the driver's policy	What it generally does in a pedestrian case
Bodily injury liability	Primary source for the pedestrian's injury losses, within the policy's per-person and per-accident limits.
Property damage liability	Addresses the pedestrian's personal property damaged in the crash, including items the person was carrying.
Medical payments coverage, where carried	Can pay for medical costs regardless of fault, up to the limit. Terms depend on state and policy.
Personal injury protection, where applicable	In some states, PIP on the driver's policy can reach pedestrians struck by the vehicle, under the state's rules.
Umbrella policy, if the driver has one	Can sit above the auto policy's limits in some cases. Existence, terms, and triggers vary.

General descriptions only. What any coverage does in a specific claim depends on the policy, the state, and the facts of the crash. Not a coverage opinion.

The driver's insurer does not generally function as an on-demand payer for a pedestrian's bills as they arrive. In a liability claim, the pattern is more often one resolution later, built from a complete file, rather than ongoing bill payment through the open period. That has consequences for how bills get paid in the meantime, which is why the next two sections exist. Nothing in this paragraph is a prediction about any specific claim.

The pedestrian's own auto policy as a second layer

Here is the fact that catches people most often: an auto policy owned by the pedestrian can still enter the file even though no car of theirs was involved. Several standard coverages on an auto policy are written in general terms to apply to the people the policy covers, in situations the policy describes, without a requirement that the covered person be in a car at the moment. The three that come up are medical payments coverage, personal injury protection, and uninsured-motorist coverage.

Medical payments coverage, where it exists on a policy, is a per-person limit that generally pays medical costs regardless of fault, up to that limit. The language on many policies covers the policyholder, resident family members, and sometimes additional listed persons, and in general terms applies when any of those people are injured by a motor vehicle, including while walking. Which specific policy says that, and what the exact scope is, is a reading of a specific document. The declarations page shows whether the coverage exists and at what limit.

Personal injury protection is state-dependent in its very existence. Some states require it, some permit it, and some do not have it at all. Where PIP exists, it is a no-fault coverage with broader reach than MedPay, generally including medical costs and sometimes lost income and other categories, up to the policy's limit. The language on most PIP policies, in general terms, reaches people the policy covers when they are injured by a motor vehicle, including as pedestrians. Which state's version applies to a given file, and what each category inside PIP covers, is state-specific and policy-specific and belongs to a licensed attorney in your state.

Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage is the layer that quietly saves many pedestrian cases from becoming nothing. If the driver carried no insurance, or carried too little, uninsured-motorist coverage on the pedestrian's auto policy generally applies to injuries caused by that driver, in situations the policy describes, including hit-and-run events the policy addresses by name. UIM, the underinsured version, picks up the difference between the driver's limit and the covered person's own limit, in general terms, in states that permit it in that form. Rules on stacking and application vary by state and defy summary.

The common mistake, from the pedestrian side, is to assume no auto coverage applies because no car was involved on the pedestrian's end. The common mistake, from the driver's side, is to assume the pedestrian has no coverage of their own and the claim rests entirely on the driver's limits. Both assumptions can be wrong on the same file. The paperwork that answers either question is a declarations page, and the declarations page is a document the policyholder owns and can request from the carrier if a copy is not already on hand. What any of this means for a specific claim is, again, a licensed attorney in your state.

Health insurance as the near-term bill payer

The bills arrive on their own schedule. A hospital bills, a physician group bills, the imaging center bills separately, and the follow-up clinic bills every visit it logs. None of those invoices wait for a liability claim to resolve. The practical question in the first weeks is which paper pays which bill as it lands, and in general terms the answer is health insurance, running the way it runs any other day of the year.

There is a common instinct that crash injuries belong to the auto world and health insurance stays out of it. In general terms, that is not how it works. Health insurance is health insurance, and a crash does not suspend coverage, change the deductible, or move the network rules. A hospital stay from a pedestrian injury runs through the same claims process a hospital stay for any other reason would, and the explanations of benefits arrive the way they always do. Where MedPay or PIP exists, those coverages can sit above or beside the health plan, with rules that depend on both the auto policy and the state.

Two downstream concepts carry weight here, and this guide names them without pretending to explain them. Health insurers and some providers can hold rights to be repaid out of a later claim resolution, generally called subrogation and liens, and the rules vary by state and by plan type. Balance billing, the practice of billing a patient for the difference between what a provider charges and what insurance pays, is governed by a mix of federal rules, state rules, and plan terms, and the mix defies summary. All of it enters a file eventually, and all of it is a legal reading. The Insurance Information Institute publishes background on no-fault systems and PIP that shows how differently states build this part of the aftermath.

What this section can offer with confidence is a sequence: medical care produces bills, health insurance addresses those bills under its ordinary rules, auto-side coverages supplement where the policies and state allow, and a liability claim resolves once, later, from a complete file. The sequence is not the same across every state, which is the sentence this guide has to say more than once. The specifics of your state, your plan, and your policy are what a licensed attorney in your state reads, and nothing in this paragraph is a prediction about what any particular combination will do.

What a crosswalk changes about the file

A marked crosswalk is a fact in the file long before it is a conclusion in a claim. In general terms, states grant pedestrians a right of way inside marked crosswalks under conditions each state defines, and the presence of markings is a fact an investigator records on the diagram, a photographer captures on arrival, and an insurer notices on the first read. The crosswalk does not decide the case by itself. It is a strong fact among the other facts, and the other facts matter.

Signal state is the companion fact in most crosswalk cases, and it is time-sensitive in a way the crosswalk itself is not. A painted crosswalk looks the same an hour later. A walk signal does not; it moves on its own schedule, and the only way the file knows what it said at the moment of the crash is from a record created then. Witness statements, a nearby traffic camera, a dashcam from a passing driver, or a signal controller log maintained by the city can each carry that fact. None of them is guaranteed to exist, and none of them calls to say it will not.

Describe the standard reading plainly. A pedestrian in a marked crosswalk with a walk signal, struck by a driver turning across their path, produces a file where the driver's conduct becomes the center of attention. A pedestrian stepping off the curb against a do-not-walk signal into a vehicle traveling with the green produces a file where the pedestrian's conduct is on the page. Most real crashes sit somewhere between those two silhouettes, and the reading between them is the whole job of the people who evaluate the claim. This guide does not predict where any specific file lands.

The reading also leans on what any state calls comparative or contributory fault, which is a legal concept and varies, and this guide keeps that concept at arm's length deliberately. The general shape, with none of the state-specific detail that drives real outcomes, is that some states reduce a recovery by the share of fault assigned to a claimant, some states bar a recovery entirely at a certain share, and some states bar it at any share at all. The differences are too large to summarize across the country, which is why the next sentence in this section is the only honest one. A licensed attorney in your state reads these facts against your state's actual rule. Not this page.

Scene fact	What it tends to put in the file, in general terms
Marked crosswalk present at the point of impact	A documented pedestrian right-of-way context, subject to the state's specific rules.
Signal state at the moment of impact	A specific permission or prohibition for both the vehicle and the pedestrian at that instant.
Mid-block location, no marked crosswalk	A different right-of-way context under most state frameworks, often with pedestrian yield rules.
Vehicle turning across the pedestrian's path	A geometry that is well-known to investigators and has its own standard set of questions.
Driver speed and attention indicators	Skid marks, vehicle damage patterns, phone records subject to legal process, and witness accounts.

General descriptions of what scene facts can mean for a file. The actual meaning in any claim depends on the state and the full set of facts. Not a legal analysis.

Mid-block, signal timing, and visibility

Not every pedestrian crash happens at an intersection. Mid-block crossings are common in neighborhoods with long blocks, in commercial strips where traffic is light enough to feel safe, and anywhere a bus stop or a crosswalk is further away than people are willing to walk. State frameworks generally handle mid-block differently from marked crosswalks, with yield rules that go either direction depending on the circumstances. This guide names the category and stops there, because the state-specific rule is a legal subject.

Signal timing is its own quiet source of file material. A traffic signal is not a single light; it is a controller running a program that defines phases, inter-phase intervals, and pedestrian clearance times. In general terms, those programs are maintained by the city or the state agency responsible for the roadway, and signal timing records can be requested through the ordinary channels those agencies maintain. The question of whether a signal controller log exists for a specific intersection on a specific date and how to obtain it is a procedural question. The question of whether obtaining it would help a specific claim is a legal question for an attorney, not a how-to for this page.

Visibility arguments are the third mid-block consideration, and the word argument is used here as mechanics, not as a courtroom scene. In a liability evaluation, visibility is a cluster of facts: the lighting on the roadway, the pedestrian's clothing, the vehicle's headlights and their condition, the sightlines established by terrain and parked cars, and the weather in the minutes before the crash. Each of those facts can be captured in the record if someone captures it. None of them captures itself.

What this means, in general terms, is that a mid-block case is often won or lost on documentation created in the first hours. A photograph taken from the driver's apparent position, the exact lighting condition at the time of day, the location of parked cars, and the clothing the pedestrian was wearing: each of these is cheap to document on day one and nearly impossible to reconstruct a month later. Weather services keep historical records, agencies may hold signal timing logs for a period, and sunlight angle at a given time and location can be computed after the fact, but the specific scene decays the moment it is cleared.

This paragraph is description, not advice about what to do at a scene where you or someone with you has been hit. Nothing in this guide asks a person on a sidewalk to prioritize photography over care. The description exists so that later, if a file is being assembled by somebody not at the scene, the categories of evidence that matter are visible to the person deciding whom to call. A licensed attorney in your state is one such caller, and the first conversation with one is a standard step after a crash of this kind.

The evidence that only exists for the first hour

Some facts about a scene are permanent until the next repainting. The crosswalk is where it was. The signs are where they were. The intersection geometry does not shift. Other facts are perishable in ways most people learn only when they go looking for them. Nearby surveillance footage is overwritten on a cycle that varies by business, often within days. Dashcam clips loop over themselves on retention schedules that depend on the device. Signal controller logs may be kept for a period defined by the agency and then rolled off. The things that disappear fastest are the things that would say the most about who had the light and who was moving how.

In general terms, there are three families of time-sensitive sources around a pedestrian crash. The first is private cameras: businesses with doorbell cameras or security systems, residential cameras with external views, and parking facilities. Most of those systems overwrite quickly, and most of the people who own them are not party to the claim and have no obligation to preserve anything unless asked. The second family is public cameras: traffic cameras, red-light cameras, and transit cameras, each on its own retention cycle and each requested through its own channel. The third family is the vehicles themselves: a dashcam in the driver's car, a dashcam in a passing car, a camera on a bus or a delivery vehicle, any of which carry only a short loop.

A pedestrian case where any of those sources exist and gets preserved is a very different file from one where the same sources existed and were lost. That difference does not reward hesitation, which is a factual observation about retention schedules, not a push to do anything specific. Preserving third-party footage generally requires asking the custodian in writing, and the asking has to be done soon enough to matter. In a live claim, that step belongs to a licensed attorney, who has standing to send preservation letters and the paperwork to make them stick. This page is not that step. It is the description of the step.

The witness list has its own clock. People move. Phone numbers change. Memories drift from specific to general within days, and from general to blurred within weeks. A witness statement taken on the day of the crash is a different document from a witness statement taken 6 months later, even when the person is the same. Nothing about those facts is scandalous; it is how memory and documentation work, and it is why the first hour matters disproportionately in a case where the only neutral narrators are strangers who happened to be walking past at the moment of impact.

The witness list is wider than it feels

In a two-vehicle fender-bender, the witnesses are usually the drivers. In a pedestrian crash, the witness list is wider than people realize, and most of the names on it are strangers. Pedestrian traffic is itself a witness pool: people walking the same stretch of sidewalk, people waiting at the bus stop, people pulling out of the parking lot, people at the window of a restaurant across the street. Any one of them might have seen something no one else did.

A separate witness category is the professional driver. In many urban blocks at any given moment, there is a delivery driver, a rideshare driver, a transit operator, or a commercial van driver somewhere within sight. Those witnesses are different from retail passers-by in one respect: they are reachable through their employer, and their employer keeps records of where they were. If one of them saw the crash and told a dispatcher so, a trail may exist long after the person's own memory has blurred. Reaching that trail is procedural work; this page notes only that the category exists.

A quieter witness category is non-human. Signal controller logs, as mentioned above, are a kind of witness: a dated record of what the lights were doing at a specific time. Public transit vehicles often log their position by GPS second by second, and some fleet vehicles do as well. None of this exists as a video on request. It exists as data stored by an entity that was not party to the crash, and whether any of it can be reached depends on legal process a licensed attorney manages, not on asking politely.

What this section is good for, in a general-information guide, is to correct the common assumption that a pedestrian crash with no immediate eye-contact between the driver and someone else is a crash with no witnesses. The absence of a willing bystander at the scene is not the end of the witness question. The question continues through the camera list and the data list and the professional-driver list, and whether any of those paths is worth pursuing in a specific file is a legal reading, not a yes-or-no that this page can give.

Documentation habits specific to pedestrian cases

If you have made it to this section and are reading it in a situation where the first-hour decisions have passed, this is still useful. Pedestrian cases accumulate documentation differently from vehicle cases, and the categories to keep worth keeping are a short list.

The physical items destroyed in the crash are evidence as well as personal loss. A phone with a shattered screen is a document of the impact; a pair of glasses frames broken on the asphalt is a document of head position; shoes with scuffs from the roadway are a document of how the body moved. Repair receipts and replacement receipts matter later for the property-damage portion of a claim, and the physical items themselves matter if a file ends up needing to describe the mechanics of what happened. None of this is a hoarding instruction. It is a description of what categories a claim file will eventually have use for.

Medical paperwork accumulates in two places: with the providers themselves and in your own hands. Discharge paperwork, follow-up appointment slips, bills, explanations of benefits from your health insurer, pharmacy receipts. The chart notes stay with the providers until a release is signed, as described in why medical records decide injury claims. What you can keep is everything that arrives at your door with your name on it, in a single envelope or folder you can hand to a licensed attorney in one gesture.

Communications become documents. Any letter or email from an insurer, any voicemail from an adjuster, any text message from someone involved at the scene. Nothing in that list requires an answer that goes beyond basic facts, and the question of what to say to any adjuster, your own or the driver's, is a question for a licensed attorney, not for a stranger on a page. The adjuster is not your adjuster is a separate guide in this library that describes which insurer's representative is calling and what their job is, in general terms.

A personal timeline, written for yourself and no one else, is a documentation habit worth having. Where you were going, what time it was, what you remember of the scene before and after, when you first spoke to the police, when you first spoke to a provider, when a bill arrived. Memory is a resource that depletes, and writing things down the week they happen produces a reference that stays accurate longer than recollection does. What any of that is used for later is attorney work. The point here is that an honest, dated contemporaneous note is a record of the kind described in the first half of this guide, and records are the whole machinery.

How fault is examined, in general terms

Fault is not a feeling and it is not a verdict at the scene. It is a legal reading built on facts, and the reading happens in rooms far from the sidewalk. Officers at a crash may form impressions and may record a citation, and insurers may form impressions on their first look at the file, but the final answer to who was at fault, in what share, with what legal consequence, is a reading that happens inside a claim resolution or a court. This guide stays general on purpose.

The general shape of a fault examination in a pedestrian case runs through a short list of questions. Where were the pedestrian and the vehicle at the moment of impact, and what rules apply in that geometry under the state's framework. What was the driver doing immediately before: speed, attention, phone, impairment where documented. What was the pedestrian doing: direction of travel, position relative to markings, signal state, visibility conditions. What third-party evidence exists that corroborates any of these facts. The file answers each question with the records available, and the answers are weighed against the state's rule on divided fault.

The state's rule is the piece this guide refuses to pretend it can summarize. Some states apply pure comparative fault, which allocates recovery by the percentage of fault assigned to each party. Some states apply modified comparative rules that bar recovery at a specific threshold. A few states apply contributory negligence rules that bar recovery at any share of fault assigned to the claimant. The differences are enormous in practical effect, and a claim that goes one way in one state can go another way in the next state over. A general consumer reference on the concepts lives at law.cornell.edu/wex/statute_of_limitations for the companion topic of claim deadlines; the fault framework for your state is a question for a licensed attorney in your state.

One honest reading pattern worth stating: a pedestrian case rarely has an all-or-nothing fault profile. More often, a mix of facts carries some weight on each side, and the whole evaluation is about where the mix lands. That is why the records matter in the volumes they do, and why the first-hour evidence described earlier moves files in a way almost nothing else moves them. A clean record of the signal state and the position of the vehicle at the moment of impact is worth more than any eloquence after the fact. The job of a licensed attorney is to read that record against the rule.

If this is your week

Ask once for everything the crash broke.

One request covers the attorney, the tow, the repair, and the rental. It costs you nothing, ever.

Get help now How it works

The police report in a pedestrian case

A pedestrian crash with any injury generally produces a police response, and the resulting report becomes one of the earliest independent documents in the file. Reports vary by agency in format, but in general terms a crash report captures the location, the date and time, the vehicles involved, the parties and witnesses with contact information where collected, a diagram of the scene as the officer understood it, and a narrative in the officer's words. Citations issued at the scene appear on the report. So does weather, lighting, and road condition at the officer's observation.

Reports are not fault determinations, in general terms, and claim files are read by people who know that. An officer records what was observed and what parties said and may indicate contributing factors in the format the agency uses. Insurers and attorneys treat the report as one dated document from an independent third party, carrying the weight that comes from its author and the moment it was created. It is not the last word on anything, and it is also not nothing. It sits in the file alongside the records and the evidence.

A pedestrian can obtain the report through the agency that wrote it, generally on a schedule and for a fee the agency sets, and the timeline this site is built around assumes a report is one of the things most files eventually contain. A general reading of the report is possible; a reading of what the report means for your case is a legal task, and the first conversation with an attorney covered in what happens when you talk to a collision attorney is where that reading honestly starts.

Corrections and amendments to a report follow the agency's own process. Factual errors can sometimes be corrected on request, and the mechanics for doing so vary. A reading on the report is subject to the usual records practices covered earlier in this guide; nothing moves without someone with standing to move it. In a live claim, standing lives with an attorney. In a general-information article, the point is to say the mechanism exists.

The medical record carries the mechanism

In a pedestrian injury file, the medical record carries more than symptoms. It carries the mechanism of injury: how the injury happened, as described to a clinician at the first visit, in the clinician's own words. That description is a sentence or two in the chart, and it is the sentence every later reader of the file returns to when asking whether the injury connects to the crash. The onset discussion in the treatment gap after a crash applies with full force here, and the first record carries the link the same way.

Mechanism language in a pedestrian case is specific. The chart might describe being struck by a vehicle, being thrown onto the hood or the pavement, the direction the body moved, and the parts of the body that absorbed the impact. All of that goes into the record because a clinician needs it for treatment, not because anyone is building a claim. The byproduct is that the chart becomes a dated, independently authored description of the physical event itself, which is exactly the kind of document a later reader cannot manufacture.

The downstream reading of the mechanism depends on what the file is for, and this guide does not predict any specific reading. In general terms, consistency across records matters more than any single phrase, and gaps and silences get read exactly the way they are read in the main treatment-gap guide. The reading of records in a pedestrian claim is the reading of records in any injury claim, with the specific detail that the mechanism is more easily tied to the crash by the geometry involved.

One more time, because the medical lane requires repetition on this point: nothing in this section tells anyone what care to seek or when. Clinicians answer that, this website never answers it, and the records exist to document what honestly happened and when. Get seen because you are hurt, not for a claim. That is the only medical sentence this site ever gives, and it is the sentence that governs every paragraph above.

The clocks a pedestrian case runs on

Several clocks start at the moment of a pedestrian crash, and they run on different schedules. This section lists them in general terms so the shape is visible. Specific state deadlines and specific contract clocks belong to the paperwork of your situation and to a licensed attorney.

The medical clock is the one the treatment gap after a crash describes in full. It is the distance between the crash date and the first dated medical record, and it keeps running inside the file until a record ends a silence. The specific point for pedestrian cases is that an ambulance ride to the hospital generally produces a same-day record on the day of the crash. A pedestrian who declined transport and walked home has started the gap clock without necessarily meaning to.

The statute of limitations is the one legal deadline this guide names, and it varies by state. The length of time to file a claim or lawsuit for personal injury is state law, and the general shape is that two years is common and some states allow less. Missing the deadline generally bars a claim regardless of merit, which is why the first legal conversation lives at the top of the timeline. A consumer-grade reference to the concept is at law.cornell.edu/wex/statute_of_limitations; the exact rule for your state is what a licensed attorney reads.

The notice clock, where it exists, is a separate deadline that attaches to specific defendants and specific claim types. Claims that involve a government entity, a public transit vehicle, or a municipal roadway sometimes carry short notice deadlines that run from the date of the crash, and the clock is often much shorter than the ordinary statute of limitations. The existence, length, and recipients of a notice requirement vary dramatically by state and by defendant type, and this guide names only the category to prevent a surprise. The actual timing is attorney territory, and the first conversation is where it lands.

The paperwork clocks are smaller and more variable: policy-specific notice requirements, cooperation clauses, and other claim-handling timing rules that live in insurance contracts rather than in statutes. The declarations page points to the policy that governs each of these for the policies the parties carry, and the policy document itself has the specific language. In general terms, the sooner a knowledgeable person is reading the policies, the fewer surprises the paperwork clocks produce. The knowledgeable person in a live claim is a licensed attorney.

The rooms the file travels to

A pedestrian injury claim can resolve quickly on a clean file, or it can travel into rooms the first week never hints at. Knowing the rooms exist is general information, and it completes the picture of why the records in the first weeks carry weight long before anyone argues about anything.

The first room is the reserve inside the driver's insurer. Claim files get a dollar reserve set early, based on what the file suggests, and the reserve adjusts as records arrive. Reserves are internal and nobody outside the carrier ever sees them, but they shape how the file is handled from the inside, and the records that arrive in the first weeks have outsized influence on the initial figure. This is the room where early documentation does its quietest work.

The second room is the evaluation that happens when the file moves toward resolution. In general terms, a resolution conversation starts from a written summary of the records: the medical record stack, the police report, any available third-party evidence, the policy limits, and the facts the file established about the scene. A pedestrian claim often ends at this room on the strength of what the records say, which is the opposite of how most people picture claims resolving. There is usually no scene played out in a dramatic argument; there is a file, read by both sides, with the pieces each side carries into the conversation.

The third room is a potential independent medical examination, which is covered in general terms in the treatment gap after a crash. The specific pedestrian wrinkle is that mechanism of injury is often a central question in the exam, and the pedestrian-crash mechanism tends to produce a wider set of possible injuries than a low-speed vehicle collision. What the exam does with the question is clinical and procedural; what rights attach to one in your state is a legal question for a licensed attorney.

The last room is a dispute, where the file's contents become evidence in a proceeding and the mechanics of litigation enter. Most pedestrian claims resolve before this room; some do not. The important observation is that the file is the same file either way, and the records that mattered in the quiet rooms are the records that matter here. Everything in this guide is written as if any file might end up here, because the shape of the practice does not change based on where the file ultimately resolves.

The driver's side of the file

This guide reads from both sides, and it owes the driver's side its own description. A driver involved in a pedestrian crash is a party to the file as surely as the pedestrian is, and the mechanics the file runs on do not change based on which side a reader is on. What changes is who is building what, and which paperwork lands on which doorstep.

A driver's first paperwork task is generally to notify the insurer, under the terms the policy sets. Most auto policies include a cooperation clause and a prompt-notice provision, and the policy document itself describes the specifics. Notifying the insurer opens a claim file on the carrier's side, assigns it to an adjuster, and sets in motion the carrier's own investigation. From the driver's standpoint, the carrier is on the hook to defend covered claims within the policy limits and to pay covered claims as the policy describes. The exact scope of the defense and the exact handling of a specific claim depend on the policy and the state. These are legal readings, not casual ones.

What a driver's insurer does during the open file includes work that happens quietly on the inside: setting a reserve, requesting the police report, interviewing the driver about the facts, and in general terms, speaking with the pedestrian or the pedestrian's attorney about the claim. A driver's own statement to the carrier is a different conversation from a statement to the other side's carrier, and the adjuster is not your adjuster is a separate guide in this library that describes who is calling and in what role. The underlying point for a driver is that cooperating with your own carrier is a contract obligation, and the specifics are read against your policy by a licensed attorney where the stakes warrant it.

Policy limits enter the driver's picture as a specific fact worth knowing. The per-person and per-accident bodily injury limits on the driver's auto policy are the ceilings the insurer's defense and payment obligations are organized around. Where the exposure in a claim exceeds those limits, the driver's personal interest can diverge from the insurer's interest in ways that get complicated quickly. This paragraph does not describe how to handle any such situation; it names the category so that a driver reading this guide knows the first conversation with a licensed attorney of their own, separate from the insurer-provided one, is a conversation that exists.

What this section is not is any kind of script. Nothing in it tells a driver what to say to anyone. The conversations after a pedestrian crash are legal conversations whose shape and timing belong to a licensed attorney in your state. The general shape above is description: a driver's policy obligates certain cooperation, a carrier runs an investigation, and the exposure sits inside the limits a policy was issued at. Everything specific to any crash is specific, and specific is attorney territory.

What the assembled file looks like after the first weeks

Zoom out from any one record and the file as a whole has a predictable shape by the end of the first few weeks. There is a police report with a date, a diagram, and a narrative. There are scene photographs, taken by whomever took them, including the officer, the parties, and any witness who thought to. There is a medical record stack beginning with the first dated chart. There are explanations of benefits from a health insurer, arriving on their own schedule. There are receipts for property damage. There is correspondence, in letters and emails, between each party and each insurer. The file is the sum of those documents.

Reading from the pedestrian's side, the file is a partial file. The pedestrian or an attorney for the pedestrian holds the medical paperwork, the receipts, their own correspondence, and whatever has been obtained of the police report and the independent documents. The pedestrian does not hold the driver's carrier's internal notes, which live inside the carrier and are not shared in general terms outside the ordinary processes a dispute would use. The driver's side holds its own file, with its own private layers and shared independent documents.

What a licensed attorney does with the file, in general terms, is read it against the state's rules and the policies in force, build the pieces that belong to the pedestrian's side into an argument for the resolution the file supports, and move between the two sides' representatives in the ordinary way attorneys do. The shape of that work is not the subject of this guide, which is a general-information article about what a pedestrian crash file is and is not. The point to carry out of this section is simply that the file is a known thing with known layers, and that the known thing is what a resolution gets built from.

A pedestrian file that resolves cleanly ends on paper. There is a release signed, a payment made, and a line drawn under the claim in the carrier's system. A pedestrian file that does not resolve cleanly moves into the dispute rooms described earlier, and the same documents become evidence in a different kind of proceeding. In either case, the file is still the file. The documents in it are still what they were. The reading of them is where any outcome lives.

The stack also carries one quiet property worth stating: the layers accumulate independently. The hospital adds to the medical tray on its own schedule, the agency releases the police report on its own schedule, and the correspondence tray fills as letters and emails arrive at each party's address. The assembly is not one person's project, which is part of why files are hard to argue with by the time they are complete.

How this site handles a pedestrian request

Collision Bureau exists to make one request cover the categories a crash broke, and a pedestrian crash is handled the same way everything else is. Reporting a pedestrian injury on our form routes you to the categories you select. If an attorney is one of the categories, participating attorneys in your state hear from us. If a vehicle on your side needs a tow or a repair, those categories hear from us. If a rental is one of the categories, same. Medical routing is the one lane that only happens when you explicitly ask for care, and that rule is written into the consent language on the form.

We do not rank, rate, or recommend providers in any category. The participation standards are published, and nothing more than participation should be read into a provider's presence. Using Collision Bureau costs you nothing. Providers pay us a flat fee for the connection, that fee never depends on what any claim is worth, and nothing is ever taken out of a settlement to pay us. The reason to spell that out in a pedestrian article is the same reason to spell it out anywhere else: you now know how much weight files and records carry, and you should know that nothing about our fee gives us any stake in what yours say.

If you reach the form and are not sure what you need, nothing routes anywhere until we confirm the categories with you on the call. The same answer applies on the phone at (877) 66-COLLISION. The call is where unsure lands, by design, because the week after a crash is not a week for guessing. The categories you tell us about are the only categories that hear from anyone, every time.

Which professional answers which question

A pedestrian crash generates questions in three different jurisdictions. The body has one professional, the claim has another, and the insurer's representative has a job that is not advising you. Keeping the desks straight prevents the most common confusions of the first weeks.

The question	Where it belongs
Am I hurt, and what does my body need?	A clinician. Nobody else, and never this website.
Whose insurance pays what, and in what order?	A licensed attorney in your state, reading your actual policies.
What does my state's fault rule do with these facts?	A licensed attorney in your state.
How are pedestrian cases handled in general?	General information. This page, and the rest of this library.
What is the driver's insurer's position on my claim?	The adjuster states it. An attorney evaluates it for you.

A routing of question types, not advice about any answer. Where any question honestly resolves to a licensed attorney, this page says so.

Every hard question in this guide resolves to the same place. The process is described here, in general terms, and a licensed professional answers the question for your situation. That is not a limitation this guide suffers. It is what general information can honestly be, and the first conversation with a licensed attorney is where your version starts. The cost of asking that conversation is zero.

If this is your week

The rest of the aftermath is one request.

One request covers the attorney, the tow, the repair, and the rental. It costs you nothing, ever.

Get help now How it works

Questions people actually ask