Pedestrians Struck By Motor Vehicles

Las Vegas is a driver's city, not a pedestrian's city. Major streets have a speed limit of 45 mph and usually police don't ticket drivers going less than 10 mph over the speed limit unless it is a school zone, or maybe a construction zone. There are long stretches of some major roads without a marked crosswalk or a traffic light. Even if there is a marked crosswalk with pedestrian stop and go lights, a right turning car will often have a green light to cross the pedestrian's path even when the pedestrian has the green walk light. Unfortunately, some drivers don't "see" pedestrians, or even motorcycles and as a result sometimes people get injured.
 

Pedestrians and Crosswalks

Nevada Police generally take the view that any pedestrian who is outside of a crosswalk is at fault for getting hit by a car. However, where two streets intersect, there is a "statutory crosswalk" which is an imaginary continuation of the sidewalks on each street thru the intersection even if it is not striped as a crosswalk and even if the streets don't have sidewalks. Those of us who live in Las Vegas know that many car drivers don't respect pedestrians in crosswalks and the Las Vegas Police even demonstrate this fact periodically with a sting operation in which an officer dressed in some colorful attention getting costume tries to cross the street at a crosswalk and has to dodge cars. So you might think if pedestrians get no respect in a crosswalk maybe it is safer to cross the street between intersections where you only have to look for cars in two directions instead of every which way. But, you can count on Metro to always blame a pedestrian hit by a car outside of a crosswalk. Our firm has on occasion won cases involving a pedestrian hit outside of a cross walk, but we are very selective about taking such cases.

If you are pedestrian hit by a car and you have a favorable police report meaning the police blame the car driver and not you, our fee will be 25%. Learn more.
 

Struck By A Vehicle Outside Of A Crosswalk

If you are a pedestrian hit by a car outside of a crosswalk, either marked, or statutory as described above, it helps if there is a very long stretch between crosswalks. In one of our successful pedestrian cases, a crippled old man was dropped off from work by a co-worker on the opposite side of the street where he lived. It was hundreds of feet to the nearest crosswalk and he was dropped off on a hot summer afternoon. We still had to prove that the driver who hit him was careless.

We are sometimes successful in suing on behalf of a pedestrian who is crossing outside of a crosswalk (marked or unmarked) if the distance between safe crossing points if very large. However, these are challenging cases and typically the police report blames the pedestrian. If we take such a case our fee is 40%.