Stay down and let someone call 911. Adrenaline masks serious injuries for the first several minutes, and pedestrians who stand up and walk it off out of embarrassment often turn a fracture into something worse. You have no vehicle carrying the evidence, so the license plate matters more than it would in any other crash. If you cannot get it, ask a bystander to. Then get names and numbers from witnesses and go to the hospital the same day, because the gap between the crash and the first medical record is the first thing an adjuster looks for.

You do, in most situations. Texas Transportation Code § 552.003 requires a driver to yield the right of way to a pedestrian crossing in a crosswalk when there is no signal controlling the intersection, and § 552.002 governs who moves when there is one. Two things surprise people. A crosswalk does not have to be painted, because every intersection has unmarked crosswalks where the sidewalk lines would continue across. And a driver turning on a green light still has to yield to people already crossing with the walk signal.

No. Texas Transportation Code § 552.005 requires a pedestrian crossing somewhere other than a crosswalk to yield to vehicles, and not doing so can be assigned to you as a share of the fault. It does not erase the driver's duty. Section 552.008 requires every driver to exercise due care to avoid hitting a pedestrian on a roadway, with no exception for people crossing mid-block. A driver who was speeding, looking at a phone, or running a light is still responsible for that, and the question becomes how the responsibility divides.

Yes, in some cases. The Lisa Torry Smith Act, at Texas Transportation Code § 545.428 and effective September 1, 2021, makes it an offense for a driver to operate within the area of a crosswalk with criminal negligence and cause bodily injury to a pedestrian. It is a Class A misdemeanor, and a state jail felony where the injury is serious. A criminal case is separate from your claim for compensation and neither one decides the other, but the investigation it triggers often produces evidence your civil case would never otherwise get.

Usually yes. Leaving the scene of a crash involving injury violates Texas Transportation Code § 550.021, which requires a driver to stop, return, and remain until they have given information and rendered aid. It is a third-degree felony where the injury is serious and a second-degree felony where someone dies, so police investigate these seriously. On the money side, uninsured motorist coverage is written to cover hit-and-run drivers, and it typically reaches you as a pedestrian. Report it to police immediately, because a prompt report is usually a condition of that coverage.

No. Texas courts treat a child under five as incapable of negligence, so a very young child cannot be assigned a share of the blame at all. An older child is measured against what a reasonably careful child of the same age, intelligence, and experience would have done, not against an adult. Drivers face the opposite adjustment: § 552.008 requires a driver to exercise proper precaution on seeing a child or an obviously confused or incapacitated person on the roadway. Expect the insurer to argue the child darted out anyway.

Often, yes, and this is the question most people get wrong. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage and personal injury protection follow people, not vehicles, so a policy held by a relative living in your household may cover you while you were on foot. Your health insurance pays treatment in the meantime, though it will usually assert a right to be repaid out of any recovery, and Texas hospitals can file liens against your claim. Those repayment claims are negotiable, and how they are handled changes what you actually keep.

In several ways that matter. Crashes on private property often produce no police crash report at all, which removes the neutral record most claims are built on, so photographs and witness names collected that day carry the case. Backing drivers, blind corners, and traffic moving between rows also raise the possibility that the property owner shares responsibility for the layout, lighting, or sight lines. Security video from the business is usually the best evidence available and usually the first thing overwritten.

It will be raised, and it is answerable. Texas does not require pedestrians to wear reflective clothing, and no statute makes dark clothing a violation of anything. What the law does require, under § 552.008, is that the driver exercise due care to avoid hitting people on the roadway, which includes driving at a speed that lets them stop within the distance their headlights actually illuminate. Where visibility is genuinely contested, the analysis turns on lighting, headlight range, speed, and sight lines rather than on what you had on.

Possibly the contractor or the entity that approved the work. Texas Transportation Code § 552.006 tells pedestrians to use a sidewalk where one is provided, and to walk facing traffic where one is not, which is exactly the position a closed sidewalk forces people into. A construction operation that shuts a sidewalk without providing a safe, marked route can be responsible for what happens to the people it pushed into a traffic lane. Claims against a governmental entity carry notice deadlines much shorter than the ordinary filing deadline, so these need a fast look.

Not by itself. Being intoxicated on foot is not the same as causing the crash, and it does not suspend the driver's duty to watch the road. It becomes a comparative fault argument about whether your own conduct contributed, which is measured against what actually happened rather than against a blood alcohol number. Austin's entertainment districts put large numbers of people on foot near traffic late at night, and insurers reach for this argument routinely in those cases. What answers it is the same evidence as always: speed, sight lines, signal timing, and where the impact occurred.

Yes. A crash report records the responding officer's opinion, it is not a finding of fault, and it is frequently written after hearing only one side, because the pedestrian was unconscious, sedated, or already in an ambulance. Officers can and do file supplements when new information comes in. Witnesses who left before anyone took their names, video the officer never saw, and the physical evidence of impact and rest position all bear on what really happened. Do not treat an unfavorable report as the end of it.

Texas allows past and future medical expenses, lost earnings, lost earning capacity, physical pain, mental anguish, physical impairment, disfigurement, and property damage. Pedestrian cases skew toward the categories that outlast the hospital stay, because these crashes produce a high share of orthopedic, head, and internal injuries. Personal property counts too, which people forget: the phone, glasses, hearing aids, and clothing destroyed in the impact. Where a person is killed, the family's claim is a wrongful death claim with separate rules and separate deadlines.

Two years from the date of the crash under Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.003. Two practical problems shorten that. If the driver was never identified, your recovery runs through your own uninsured motorist coverage, and that policy carries its own notice and cooperation requirements that can be missed long before the two years run. And if the crash happened on private property with no police report, there may be nothing on file establishing that it occurred at all, which makes early documentation the difference between a claim and a story.

The firm is based in Austin and represents clients throughout Texas, primarily in Travis County, Williamson County, and Bastrop County.

Board certification by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization recognizes attorneys who demonstrate substantial experience in a specific area of law, pass a rigorous examination, and receive peer review.Brent A. Devere is Board Certified in Consumer and Commercial Law, Consumer Bankruptcy Law, Residential Real Estate Law, and Commercial Real Estate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.Working with a board-certified attorney means your case is handled by a lawyer with proven knowledge, experience, and commitment in their field.

The initial consultation is free. You can call the Austin office or use the contact form to schedule one, and there is no cost or obligation to discuss your situation.

Yes. The firm handles most types of litigation. If your matter isn't listed among the practice areas, contact the office to discuss whether the firm can help.