Yes, you can usually bring a claim. Crossing outside a crosswalk does not hand the whole fault to you in California. It has not even been a ticket in most situations since 2023.
Fault gets divided instead. A driver who was speeding, looking at a phone or turning without looking takes a share of it.
What did the 2023 law change?
The Freedom to Walk Act took effect on 1 January 2023. It stopped police from ticketing a person for crossing outside a crosswalk unless there was an immediate danger of a collision.
The law changed the ticket, not the civil claim. It removed the automatic assumption that a person crossing mid block was the one at fault.
Is crossing mid block against the rules at all?
There is a yielding rule. Vehicle Code section 21954 says a pedestrian outside a crosswalk gives way to vehicles close enough to be a hazard.
The same section adds a second half that drivers forget. It says the rule does not relieve a driver of the duty to use due care for the safety of any pedestrian.
Do drivers have to yield at a corner with no paint?
Yes. Vehicle Code section 21950 covers marked and unmarked crosswalks, and an unmarked crosswalk exists at most intersections whether or not anyone painted it.
Many drivers do not know this. Crossing at a corner with no white lines is not crossing outside a crosswalk. That single point changes the fault picture in a lot of cases.
What if part of the fault was mine?
California uses pure comparative fault. Your recovery drops by your share, and it does not disappear because your share was large.
A person found 40 percent at fault recovers 60 percent of the damages. Our guide to California’s pure comparative fault rule walks through how that division works.
What evidence decides these cases?
The dispute is almost always about where you were and how fast the car was going. These pieces answer it.
- Video from a bus, a business, a doorbell camera or a passing car.
- The point of impact and where the debris landed.
- Signal timing data from the city for that intersection.
- Vehicle data that records speed and braking.
- Independent witnesses, found in the first days.
Video gets overwritten in days. Ask someone to send preservation letters as soon as you can.
How this plays out in Los Angeles
Long blocks and wide arterials make mid block crossing common here, and some corridors have signals spaced far apart. A person crossing where there is no signal for a quarter mile is answering the street design, not ignoring it.
Our team pulls the street layout, the signal spacing and the collision history for that stretch. On a Vision Zero corridor, that history is often already documented.
What to do now
- Get medical care the same day, even if you feel able to walk away.
- Photograph the spot, the corner, the signals and the vehicle position.
- Write down where you stepped off the curb and where you were struck.
- Ask nearby businesses to save their video before it loops.
Do not tell the driver’s insurer that you were jaywalking. The word has a legal meaning, and the caller on the other end will use it.
Ask what your share of fault looks like
We can look at the crossing point, the signals and the video and tell you where the fault is likely to land. Some of these cases are stronger than the person crossing believes.
There is no fee to ask, and no fee unless we win. Here is how we work as a pedestrian accident lawyer in Los Angeles, and how to reach our team in English, Spanish or Armenian.
