Pedestrian Accidents Involving Children in San Diego

California law does not treat a child hit by a car the same way it treats an adult. Drivers owe a higher duty of care around kids, children are held to a lower standard for their own safety, and the deadlines and procedures that govern the case run on a separate clock. Most parents do not learn any of this until after their child is in the hospital, which is the worst time to figure it out.

This guide explains the rules that make a child's pedestrian claim different from an adult's, where children are most likely to be hit in San Diego, the special California protections that keep a child's case alive long after a normal lawsuit would expire, and what to do in the days after the crash. If your child was struck while walking, a San Diego pedestrian accident attorney can handle the claim while you focus on your child's recovery.

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The Summary

If you only have a minute, these are the points that matter most:

• Drivers owe a higher duty of care around children. The law assumes that drivers will see and account for kids who behave like kids.
• Children are held to a lower standard for their own safety. A child is not judged like an adult who darted into traffic.
• School zones, parks, residential streets, and bus stops are where most of these crashes happen. Drivers must slow down in school zones, and a posted school zone speed limit in California is currently 25 mph (with cities now allowed to adopt 20 mph).
• The crash may not be only the driver's fault. A dangerous crosswalk, a missing signal, or a poorly designed street can put a public agency on the hook.
• The deadline to file your child's lawsuit pauses until they turn 18. But government-defendant deadlines do not pause, and they run in six months.
• A judge has to approve any settlement. The court protects the child's money, not the carrier's bottom line.

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Why the Law Treats a Child Differently

The rules of the road do not change based on the age of the person in the crosswalk, but the way California courts apply those rules around children does. Two doctrines drive every child pedestrian case.

Drivers must use more care, not less, when children are around. California courts have long held that a reasonable driver knows children behave like children. Kids run, chase balls into the street, ride scooters out of driveways, and step off the curb without looking. A driver who hits a child cannot defend the case by saying "the child ran out." If the driver could have foreseen that a child might dart into the road, the law expects the driver to have slowed down, scanned, and been ready to stop. This heightened duty is built into California's civil jury instructions and is the foundation of every child pedestrian case.

The child's own conduct is judged by a child's standard, not an adult's. Insurance adjusters love to argue comparative fault: the child was outside the crosswalk, the child was looking at a phone, the child stepped off the curb. The law allows that argument, but it does not allow the carrier to hold an eight-year-old to the same standard as a thirty-year-old. A jury is told to measure a child's care against what a reasonable child of the same age, intelligence, and experience would have done. Very young children are often not capable of negligence at all. The practical result is that fault allocations against children are much lower than against adults, and that affects the value of the case.

Those two rules combine to flip the usual roadside argument. In an adult case the question is often "what was the pedestrian doing." In a child case it is "what did the driver fail to do."

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Where San Diego Children Are Most Often Hit

Pedestrian crashes involving kids cluster in a small number of predictable places. Knowing where they happen helps explain why so many of these cases involve more defendants than just the driver.

School zones and the streets around them. California sets a special speed limit when a driver is approaching or passing a school, with children present. The default is 25 mph, and as of 2026 cities and counties can opt to lower the limit to 20 mph under the school zone framework set by California Vehicle Code section 22352. The statewide default is set to drop to 20 mph starting in 2031. A driver who blows through a posted school zone above the limit and hits a student walking home is operating outside the law, and a violation of a traffic safety statute is strong evidence of negligence under California's negligence per se doctrine.

Crosswalks near elementary and middle schools. Many San Diego schools sit on multi-lane streets that were designed decades ago for cars, not for the kids who have to cross them. California Vehicle Code section 21950 requires drivers to yield to pedestrians in any crosswalk, marked or unmarked, at every intersection. Drivers turning right on red, drivers rolling stop signs, and drivers passing a stopped vehicle in an adjacent lane are the three crosswalk scenarios that most often kill or seriously injure children. Our deeper guide to crosswalk accidents in San Diego covers how these crashes are proven.

Bus stops, drop-off zones, and the street side of a parked car. A child stepping out from behind a parked vehicle is a classic child pedestrian fact pattern. The defense always asks why the child crossed where there was no crosswalk. The answer that matters is California Vehicle Code section 21954(b), which says nothing in the "yield outside the crosswalk" rule relieves a driver of the duty to use due care for any pedestrian on the roadway. That subsection is the single most under-discussed rule in California pedestrian law, and it is the answer to a lot of "but the child wasn't in the crosswalk" defenses.

Residential streets and driveway exits. Cars backing out of driveways and pulling out of shopping-center exits make up a real share of child cases. Drivers entering a roadway from private property must yield to traffic, and that includes pedestrians on the sidewalk.

Parks, playgrounds, and the streets that border them. Drivers around a park have to expect a child to run after a ball. Speed matters more here than anywhere else: the CDC's pedestrian safety data show that the chance a pedestrian survives a crash drops sharply as vehicle speed rises, and the difference is biggest for small bodies.

National data make the same point. NHTSA's Traffic Safety Facts on pedestrians show that hundreds of children under 14 are killed walking each year, and many more are seriously hurt. San Diego County carries its share of that toll; the most seriously injured children are taken to Rady Children's Hospital in Kearny Mesa, the region's pediatric Level I trauma center.

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When the Road Itself Is the Problem

Sometimes the driver is at fault, but the road is the larger problem. A multi-lane crosswalk with no signal, no median, no signage, and high-speed traffic is not just dangerous; it is a design choice the government made and can be held accountable for.

California allows a claim against a public agency when public property was in a dangerous condition that caused the injury. The governing statute is Government Code section 835. It requires a plaintiff to show four things: a dangerous condition existed, it caused the injury, the danger was a reasonably foreseeable risk of the use being made of the property, and the agency had notice of the danger far enough in advance to fix it. Notice does not require a prior accident at the exact location. Internal documents, design bulletins, prior complaints, or engineering reports about that type of dangerous configuration are usually enough. Our piece on San Diego's most dangerous pedestrian intersections goes deeper into how these government cases are built.

The catch is the deadline. A claim against a public entity must be presented within six months of the injury under Government Code section 911.2. Six months. That is a hard rule, and it is the single deadline that kills more child pedestrian cases than any other, because parents reasonably assume they have years to deal with a lawsuit while their child recovers. They do not. By the time a family figures out the road was part of the problem, the six-month window may already be closing.

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"A roadway-design case is the difference between collecting on a $25,000 driver policy and recovering enough to actually fund a child's lifetime medical care."

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California Rules That Protect a Child's Claim

California also has a small set of procedural rules that exist to protect children. Parents often do not know about them until they sit down with a lawyer, and they explain why a child's case is handled differently from a parent's case.

The deadline is tolled until your child turns 18

The normal personal-injury deadline in California is two years from the date of the injury under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. For a minor, that clock is paused. Code of Civil Procedure section 352(a) tolls the statute of limitations while a person is under 18, so a child injured at age 10 has until age 20 to file a personal-injury lawsuit. Tolling is a real protection, but it has two big caveats.

First, the government-claim deadline under section 911.2 is not tolled. If a public entity is a potential defendant, the six-month claim must still be filed within six months of the injury, even if the child is two years old.

Second, evidence does not pause for tolling. Surveillance video gets overwritten, witnesses move, scenes change, and the driver's memory fades. A case you file at age 20 about a crash that happened at age 10 is a much weaker case than one you start working on at age 10.

A parent or guardian files the lawsuit for the child

A minor cannot sue in their own name. Under Code of Civil Procedure section 372, a child's lawsuit is brought by a guardian ad litem, which is a fancy way of saying an adult appointed by the court to represent the child's interest. Almost always this is a parent. The guardian ad litem signs the complaint, makes the litigation decisions, and answers to the court for what is done in the child's name. Appointing one is a routine motion at the start of the case.

A judge has to approve any settlement

This is the rule that surprises most parents. In California, a settlement of a minor's claim is not enforceable until the court approves it through a "minor's compromise" proceeding. The procedure is also rooted in section 372. The judge reviews the facts, the injuries, the medical bills, the proposed allocation, and the attorney's fee, and then decides whether the deal is fair to the child. If the judge thinks the number is too low, the deal does not go through.

The judge also controls how the money is held. For most children, the funds are placed in a court-blocked account or used to buy a structured annuity that pays out at age 18 or later. The parent does not get a check. The point is to keep the money intact for the child's future medical care, education, and lost earning potential.

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What to Do After a Child Is Hit by a Car

The right order in the days after a crash is medical first, evidence second, insurance third. Below are the practical steps in the order most parents need them.

1. Get the best care available, even if it means a trauma center. Children compensate physically for serious injuries longer than adults do, then crash. A child who looks "okay" at the scene can have a head bleed or internal injuries that show up hours later. If a vehicle hit your child at any real speed, the right place to be evaluated is a pediatric emergency department such as Rady Children's. Do not skip imaging because the child says they are fine.
2. Keep every medical record and every receipt. Ambulance bills, urgent care visits, follow-ups, physical therapy, mileage, parking, equipment, missed work for the parent. Your child's case will be valued largely on the documented medical record. Gaps in care are the single most common defense argument.
3. Photograph the scene, the vehicle, and your child's injuries while they are visible. Bruises fade, scrapes scab over, and casts come off. The early photos are the ones that show a jury what your child went through.
4. Identify and contact witnesses before they disappear. The pedestrian who was nearby, the parent dropping off another child, the school crossing guard, the driver of the car behind. Names and phone numbers in the first day or two are worth more than the same information months later.
5. Ask businesses near the scene to preserve surveillance video. Convenience stores, schools, churches, and apartment buildings often have cameras that may have captured the crash. Most systems overwrite footage on a 7-to-30-day loop, which is why preservation has to happen fast. Our guide to proving liability in pedestrian cases walks through what evidence matters and how to preserve it.
6. Do not give a recorded statement to any insurance company. Not the driver's carrier, not your own. Adjusters call quickly because early statements help the defense build a comparative-fault story. Get a lawyer first.
7. Stay off social media about the crash, and keep your child off too. Insurers monitor posts. A photo of your child smiling at a birthday party two weeks after a TBI will be used to suggest the child is fine. Privacy settings are not protection.
8. Talk to a lawyer before the six-month window closes. If anything about the road, the crosswalk, the signage, or the signal could be part of the case, the government-claim deadline is the one that runs first. Free consultations should be free; if a firm charges to evaluate your child's case, find another firm.

The first steps look the same as any pedestrian case, but the stakes are higher because a child's injuries carry a lifetime of consequences. The companion guide to general steps after a pedestrian accident covers the broader playbook.

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From My Practice: What a $28.1M Verdict Against Caltrans Taught Me

One of my most consequential pedestrian cases involved a 13-year-old client walking home from football practice. He had to cross five lanes of 60 mph traffic on a marked but uncontrolled crosswalk that connected a middle school on one side to a residential development on the other. There were no signals, no stop signs, and no center median. He was struck at high speed and suffered a traumatic brain injury and a disabling leg injury.

The driver was a defendant, but the much larger defendant was Caltrans. We pleaded a dangerous-condition-of-public-property claim under Government Code section 835. During discovery, we found an internal Caltrans memorandum that specifically addressed high-speed, multi-lane, uncontrolled crossings and required upgrades like signalization, refuge islands, lane narrowing, and signage. None of those upgrades had been installed at this crosswalk. The state agency was on internal notice of the precise danger that materialized.

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"The jury did not need me to tell them the crosswalk was dangerous. They needed me to put Caltrans' own engineer on the stand and let him admit it, one element at a time, in front of the jury."

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The verdict was $28.1 million. Past results do not guarantee or predict any future outcome, and every case turns on its own facts. But that case captures three lessons I carry into every child pedestrian case I take.

The driver is rarely the deepest pocket. A teenage driver, an Uber driver, an unlicensed driver, or an underinsured driver may have a $25,000 or $50,000 policy. A roadway-design case against a public entity opens up the resources to actually fund a child's lifetime of medical care.

The defendant's own internal paper is the best evidence in a government case. Memos, design bulletins, prior-incident logs, agency engineer reports. We litigate hard to compel internal documents because that is where the case lives.

"Notice" under section 835 does not require a prior crash at the same crosswalk. Internal agency awareness of the type of danger is enough. Defense lawyers argue otherwise. The statute, and the cases interpreting it, say otherwise too.

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If a Child Was Killed

If a pedestrian crash took a child's life, the parents have a wrongful death claim. California's wrongful death statute lets a child's parents recover for their own loss, including the love, companionship, comfort, and support they will never receive from their child. The estate can also bring a separate survival claim for the medical bills and the pain and suffering the child experienced before death. These are difficult cases to talk about and harder to bring, but they exist precisely because the law recognizes a child's life is not a small loss. Our guides on who can file a wrongful death claim in San Diego and the legal process for wrongful death claims cover the procedural side in detail.

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How a Child Pedestrian Case Differs From an Adult's

A few things to expect that you would not see in an adult pedestrian case.

• The valuation is heavier on future damages. Lifetime medical care, future earnings, future pain and suffering, and the developmental consequences of a brain or spine injury at a young age. We use life-care planners, vocational economists, and pediatric specialists rather than the standard adult-case experts.
• Settlement happens later, not sooner. Children take longer to reach maximum medical improvement, and we are reluctant to settle while the long-term picture is still developing. A child who looks like a full recovery at age 9 may have cognitive or behavioral issues at age 14.
• The cast of defendants is bigger. The driver, the driver's employer if one applies, the public agency that owns the road, the school district if the crash happened on school property, the property owner of a poorly maintained driveway, the contractor who built the crosswalk. We name everyone who realistically owes the child something and let discovery sort it out.
• The fee is the same as ours on any case. Whatever the percentage we agreed to with the family, the court reviews it as part of the minor's compromise and signs off only if it is reasonable for the work done.

If your child has injuries that may be life-altering, the broader pieces on children and traumatic brain injury and the common types and long-term impact of pedestrian injuries may help you understand what to watch for during recovery.

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Talk to a San Diego Pedestrian Accident Attorney

If your child was hit by a car in San Diego, the right time to ask a lawyer questions is now. The window to investigate the scene, preserve video, and meet a government-claim deadline closes fast, even though the lawsuit deadline on your child's behalf does not. A first conversation costs nothing.

Hulburt Law Firm is a San Diego personal injury practice focused on catastrophic injury and wrongful death. We have tried child pedestrian cases against private drivers and against Caltrans, and we know the difference between a driver-only case and a case where a roadway, a school, or a city is the real problem. Call (619) 821-0500 or visit our contact page to set up a consultation.

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