Steps to Take After a Pedestrian Accident in San Diego

If you were seriously hurt, here is the first thing to know: you do not have to investigate your own crash. The long checklists that fill most articles assume you can stand up, take photos, and collect names at the scene. A badly injured pedestrian cannot do any of that, and a strong case does not depend on it.

This guide covers what actually matters after a pedestrian accident in San Diego, in the order it matters: get safe, get medical care, and protect your claim. If you or someone you love was hit by a vehicle while walking, a San Diego pedestrian accident attorney can take the investigation off your hands so you can focus on recovering.

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The Short Version

If you only have a minute, here is what matters most after a San Diego pedestrian crash:

• Your health comes first. Accept emergency care and see a doctor right away, even if you feel alright. Serious injuries hide behind adrenaline.
• You cannot afford to skip care. Medi-Cal or treatment on a lien can get you the care you need even with no insurance and no money.
• Call 911. It brings paramedics and police, and it starts the official record of the crash.
• Be careful with insurers. Do not give a recorded statement or accept a quick settlement before talking to an attorney.
• A police report is not the final word on fault. If it blames you, your case is not over.
• Deadlines are strict. You generally have two years to sue, but as little as six months if a government agency shares fault.
• The investigation is an attorney's job. Evidence can be reconstructed long after you have left the scene.

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Step 1: Get to Safety and Call 911

Your first priority is getting out of danger, and the first call is 911.

If you can move safely, get away from traffic, to a sidewalk or median. Do not move if you suspect a spine injury, a broken bone, or any injury that movement could make worse. If you cannot move safely, signal to drivers and bystanders for help.

Call 911 as soon as possible, or have someone nearby call. This does two things at once: it sends paramedics to treat you, and it brings police to document the scene. Tell the dispatcher your exact location, describe your injuries, and say whether the driver is still there.

If the driver fled, say so right away and describe the vehicle if you can. A fast call gives police the best chance of finding a hit-and-run driver before the trail goes cold. Our guide to hit-and-run pedestrian accidents in San Diego covers what happens next when the driver leaves.

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Step 2: Get Medical Care Right Away

See a doctor without delay, even if you feel mostly fine. Adrenaline and shock can hide serious injuries for hours or days. Brain injuries, internal bleeding, hairline fractures, and soft-tissue damage often show up late.

Pedestrian crashes also cause some of the most severe injuries, because the body has no protection against a moving vehicle. At the emergency room or urgent care, be honest about every symptom, no matter how minor, and tell the doctor how the crash happened. These first medical records become central evidence in your claim. If new symptoms appear later, go back and have each one written down.

Follow your treatment plan and keep every appointment. Your medical records are the backbone of the claim. Gaps in treatment, missed appointments, and skipped care are the most common damages problem in injury cases. The insurance company reads the records, and every missed visit becomes an argument that your injuries were not serious. Steady, documented treatment is what shows an injury is real.

What If You Cannot Afford Medical Care?

Many pedestrians who are hit by vehicles have no health insurance, and the fear of a large hospital or ambulance bill leads some people to delay or skip care. That is one of the most damaging things you can do, for your health and for your claim. Being uninsured does not have to mean going without treatment.

You may qualify for Medi-Cal. Medi-Cal is California's Medicaid program. Many pedestrian accident victims are eligible, and when they are, Medi-Cal can pay hospital bills and other necessary care. An attorney or a hospital financial counselor can help you check eligibility and enroll quickly.

You may be able to treat on a lien. If you do not qualify for Medi-Cal and have no health insurance, an attorney can arrange for your doctors and the hospital to treat you on a lien. A lien is a written promise that the provider will be paid out of your future settlement or verdict instead of billing you now. You get the care you need today, and payment waits until the case resolves.

The bottom line: if you cannot afford care, that is a reason to call a pedestrian accident attorney early, not a reason to skip the doctor.

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Step 3: Document the Scene, If You Are Able

If you are seriously hurt, skip this step entirely. The investigation is the responding police officer's job (and later your attorney's job), and the case does not depend on you doing it.

This step is for a family member, a companion who was with you, or someone whose injuries are genuinely minor enough to act. Evidence at a crash scene disappears fast, so if someone is able to capture it, here is what helps most.

If you are badly hurt, your job at the scene is to survive and accept treatment. Reconstructing how the crash happened is our job, and a good lawyer and expert can do it long after you have left the scene.

Photograph Everything You Safely Can

Take wide shots of the whole scene and close-ups of the details, including the exact spot of impact, the vehicle and its damage, visible injuries, traffic signals and crosswalk markings (or the lack of them), road conditions, lighting and weather, and anything blocking the view. Skid marks, broken vehicle parts, and damage to nearby signs or fixtures all help an expert reconstruct exactly how the crash happened.

Get Names: the Driver and Any Witnesses

Collect the driver's name, phone number, license number, license plate, insurance information, and vehicle details, plus the names of any passengers. Then get names and phone numbers for anyone who saw the crash. If someone was walking with you when you were hit, that companion is often the most valuable witness in the entire case: they saw everything, and a jury knows they have no reason to shade the story.

Look for Cameras, and Save Your Clothing

Check for cameras on nearby businesses, especially gas stations, apartment complexes, gyms, and storefronts. Their cameras point at their own property but often catch the street and intersection in the background, and modern footage is frequently clear enough to show exactly how a crash happened. This footage is fragile, and many systems record over it within days, so identifying the cameras and sending letters to preserve the video is work an attorney can take over right away. Finally, do not wash or throw away the clothing and shoes you were wearing. They can carry impact patterns, tire marks, and paint transfer that experts use to reconstruct the crash. Store each item in a separate paper bag.

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Step 4: Report the Crash to the Police

A police report is important evidence in any pedestrian accident claim, but it is not the final word on who was at fault.

If officers did not come to the scene, file a report as soon as you can at your nearest San Diego Police Department station or with the California Highway Patrol. When you give your account, stick to the facts: describe what led up to the crash, the direction you were walking, whether you were in a crosswalk, and any signals involved. Do not guess, do not apologize, and do not downplay your injuries. If you are unsure about a detail, say so. Request a copy of the report once it is ready.

Here is why the report is only a starting point. In pedestrian cases, the injured person is often unconscious or in the hospital, so the officer hears only the driver's side. Investigators do not always canvass for witnesses or surveillance footage, and reports can be closed quickly with a fault finding that does not hold up under careful review. If the police report blames you, that is not the end of your case.

A police report is a starting point, not a verdict. In a pedestrian case the officer often has only the driver's side of the story, because the person who was hit is on the way to the hospital. Never assume the report tells the whole story.

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Step 5: Be Careful With Insurance Companies

The driver's insurance company is not on your side, and the simplest rule protects you best: say nothing and sign nothing until you have talked to an attorney.

The driver's insurer will likely call within days, sometimes within hours, and its goal is to pay as little as possible. Three tactics are worth knowing:

• The recorded statement. Adjusters are trained to ask questions that produce answers they can use against you. A friendly "How are you feeling today?" can turn a polite "I'm okay" into an argument that you were never really hurt. Do not give one without an attorney.
• The quick settlement. Early offers are almost always far below what a claim is worth, because they arrive before anyone knows how badly you are hurt. Brain and spinal injuries can take months to fully understand, and once you settle, you cannot reopen the claim if your condition worsens.
• The blanket medical release. Insurers often ask for access to your entire medical history, hunting for old conditions to blame your injuries on. An attorney can send only the records that actually relate to the crash.

If the driver who hit you had no insurance or fled the scene, your own auto policy may still help. Under California Insurance Code section 11580.2, uninsured motorist coverage is built for exactly this situation, and it can cover you even though you were on foot. Have an attorney review every auto policy in your household for coverage that may apply.

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Step 6: Protect Your Case in the Weeks After

Once you are past the scene, a strong claim depends on steady treatment, organized records, and staying off social media.

Save every medical record and bill. Keep documentation of emergency visits, hospital stays, surgeries, scans, physical therapy, medications, and assistive equipment. Ask your doctors for reports that explain the diagnosis, the treatment plan, and your long-term outlook.

Document your lost income. Get a letter from your employer confirming the time you missed and your pay rate. If you are self-employed, gather tax returns, profit-and-loss statements, and contracts that show what you earned before and after the crash.

Stay off social media. Insurance companies and defense lawyers routinely watch claimants' accounts. We have seen clients sit down for a deposition and watch the defense lay out dozens of pages of their own posts: every photo of them smiling, traveling, or out with friends. It does not matter that a photo caught a rare good moment in a long recovery. The damage is immediate. Set every profile to private now, do not accept requests from people you do not know, and stop posting about your life until the case is over. Remember that private does not mean protected: in litigation, the defense can formally demand copies of your posts, privacy settings and all. Ask family and friends not to post about you either, because a photo they share can do just as much damage as one you post yourself.

If you would not read it out loud to a jury, do not post it. And tell your family and friends the same, because a photo they post of you can do just as much damage as one you post yourself.

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Step 7: Know Your Filing Deadlines

California sets strict deadlines for injury claims, and missing one usually ends the case no matter how strong it is.

The general deadline is two years from the date of the crash, under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. Two years sounds like a long time, but building a strong case takes months of investigation, treatment, and negotiation, so starting early matters. Our guide to the personal injury statute of limitations in San Diego covers the deadline and its exceptions in more detail.

One exception is critical. If a government agency shares responsibility for your injuries, you must present a formal claim to that agency within six months of the crash, under Government Code section 911.2. This applies when a dangerous road condition is involved, such as a missing crosswalk signal, a broken sidewalk, poor lighting, or a badly designed intersection, and when a public bus is involved, such as a Metropolitan Transit System bus. Miss the six-month deadline and the claim is almost certainly barred. For children hurt in pedestrian crashes, the two-year deadline is generally paused until they turn 18, but a government claim must still be filed within six months.

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Your Rights Do Not Disappear Outside a Crosswalk

Many people wrongly assume they have no case if they were not in a crosswalk. California law says otherwise.

Drivers must yield to pedestrians in marked crosswalks and in unmarked crosswalks at intersections, under California Vehicle Code section 21950. But your rights do not end at the crosswalk lines. Vehicle Code section 21954 says a pedestrian crossing outside a crosswalk must yield to vehicles, but subsection (b) of that same law keeps the driver's duty of care alive: a driver still cannot hit you and walk away from responsibility just because you were not in a crosswalk. And many pedestrians are struck on a sidewalk or in a parking lot by a driver pulling out of a driveway. Vehicle Code section 21952 requires a driver to yield to a pedestrian on a sidewalk before crossing it, so you may have a strong claim even though you were never in the road. Our guide to pedestrian right-of-way laws in California explains how each of these rules works.

California also follows pure comparative negligence, which means you can recover money even if you were partly at fault. Your compensation is reduced by your share of the blame, but there is no cutoff that bars you completely. Comparative fault is the single biggest battleground in pedestrian cases, because every percentage point an insurer can pin on you lowers what it pays. That argument gets stronger when it was dark or foggy, and stronger still if the pedestrian had been drinking. None of it ends your claim, but it is why having an attorney who plans for the comparative-fault attack from day one matters so much. If your crash happened in a crosswalk, our guide to crosswalk accidents in San Diego goes deeper, and the common causes of pedestrian accidents in California can help you spot what contributed to yours.

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From My Practice: What Makes or Breaks These Cases

After years of handling catastrophic pedestrian cases in San Diego, a few things stand out as the difference between a strong case and a weak one.

Speed of investigation is the first. Scene conditions change: footage is recorded over, skid marks and debris are cleared, lane striping is repainted, and damaged signs are repaired. An attorney who moves quickly can lock down evidence and get experts to the scene while it still exists. In a contested case, that early work is often what wins it.

The second is planning for comparative fault from the very first day, not at mediation. The insurer will try to pin a share of blame on the pedestrian, so the case has to be built from the start to answer that attack.

The third is hunting for insurance coverage early. We look immediately at the driver's policy limits, at whether the driver was working at the time (which can bring an employer's far larger policy into play), and at whether a government agency shares fault. The amount of available coverage is often the single biggest factor in what an injured person can actually recover.

Cases like these are decided on the quality of the investigation and the experts. Get an investigator and the right experts to the scene early, before the evidence is gone, and you give the case a foundation the defense cannot take apart.

If your case cannot be resolved with the insurer and has to be filed, our guide to the pedestrian accident lawsuit process in San Diego walks through every stage that follows.

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Talk to a San Diego Pedestrian Accident Attorney

A pedestrian accident can change your life in an instant. Taking the right steps afterward, from accepting medical care to meeting your deadlines, builds the foundation for a fair recovery. But the heaviest work, the investigation and the fight with the insurer, is not yours to carry. It is an attorney's.

At Hulburt Law Firm, attorney Conor Hulburt and his team represent pedestrian accident victims across San Diego County, in cases ranging from drivers pulling out of driveways to collisions with city buses and dangerous, poorly designed crosswalks. The firm focuses on catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases, and you pay nothing unless we recover compensation for you.

Call us at (619) 821-0500 or contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation about your pedestrian accident case.

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